legal advice

The widow had suffered the death of her husband. He had been shot from ambush. She wanted to know if compensation was available for her.
She said it was 7:00 in the morning and Mr. Smith, her husband, was opening his carpet store. There was a shot and Mr. Smith fell to the ground mortally wounded.
Mrs. Smith came to my office and inquired if she could receive workers’ compensation death benefits due to her husband’s murder. In Virginia if a worker dies due to a cause related to his employment, his widow can be paid his funeral bills and 500 weeks of compensation.
The police had investigated the murder. They had narrowed the suspects down to one person. He was a disgruntled former employee who had made some threats against the deceased.
At the criminal trial the prosecution revealed that the suspect had been a fan of CSI and had destroyed all of the physical evidence. However, the suspect’s own daughter testified he had told her he had shot Mr. Smith. With this and other circumstantial evidence, the jury convicted the suspect of Mr. Smith’s murder.
I used the same evidence that the prosecution had used to convince the insurance company to accept the widow’s workers’ compensation claim. I contended the assailant had shot Mr. Smith as a result of Mr. Smith's termination of the assailant from his job at the carpet store. The insurance company agreed to accept the claim prior to the workers’ compensation trial. The widow received payment of the funeral bills and has started receiving weekly compensation checks. It was still a sad story but we did obtain some relief for the widow.
I believe we could have successfully shown Mr. Smith's death was caused by his work.
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