Instantaneous Death Law and Legal Definition
Instantaneous death refers to death occurring in an instant or within an extremely short time after an injury or seizure. This factor is taken into consideration while determining an award of damages for the victim's pain and suffering. In instantaneous death, death is so contemporaneous with the fatal injury that there could be no recovery for the victim's pain and suffering.
Even though the terms instantaneous death and immediate death are used interchangeably, both are different. Ordinarily, death is not regarded as instantaneous if an appreciable length of time elapsed between the injury and the death. Even where the injury causing the death is necessarily fatal and death results there from in a few moments, still if the injured person survives the injury for a brief period, death is not instantaneous but immediate.
