OK SB245

Personal representatives may maintain wrongful death actions if the decedent could have maintained an injury action had they lived, subject to valid agreements to mediate, arbitrate, or submit to alternative dispute resolution.

Actions must be commenced within two (2) years.

Recoverable damages include medical and burial expenses, loss of consortium and grief of surviving spouse, mental pain and anguish of decedent, pecuniary loss to survivors, and grief and loss of companionship of children and parents.

Punitive or exemplary damages may be recovered against the person proximately causing the wrongful death and shall be distributed to surviving spouse, children, or next of kin in the same proportion as personal property of the decedent.

Wrongful death provisions also apply to unborn children, except for deaths caused by legal abortions to which the pregnant woman consented or standard medical diagnostic testing or therapeutic treatment; mothers cannot be held liable unless they committed a crime causing the unborn child's death.

Effective date: November 1, 2015.