PHOENIX (Legal Newsline) - The five children of a man who surrendered parental rights after a divorce can’t collect a share of a $1.5 million wrongful death settlement his widow negotiated with the government after he was killed in an accident with a tribal police officer, an Arizona appeals court ruled.
Arizona’s wrongful death statute limits recoveries to close relatives and doesn’t extend to children in another state when the victim lost parental rights in a judicial action, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled, upholding the dismissal of a lawsuit an earlier wife filed against the widow and her law firm.
Khawla Wise was divorced from Robert DeHardy (formerly named Robert Wise) in Maine in 2014 after having five children with him. DeHardy lost custody of those children and was killed in Arizona in 2017. His widow, Abrehet Wise, hired the law firm Aspey, Watkins & Diesel Hashim to sue the government on behalf of herself, DeHardy’s mother, four children and one unborn child.
Aspey, Watkins sued the government in 2019 for $32 million on behalf of the seven claimants, but not the five Maine children. The two sides settled for $1.5 million in November 2020. Before the case was dismissed, Khawla Wise learned about the settlement and objected, arguing the Maine children were statutory beneficiaries under Arizona’s wrongful death statute. She sued Abrehet Wise and her lawyers for breach of fiduciary duty but the trial court dismissed the case in 2021.
Khawla Wise appealed, but the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal in a Feb. 3 decision. Arizona law states that when parental duties are terminated in another state, it divests both the parent and children of “all legal rights” except for inheritance. But Arizona’s wrongful death statute excludes some people with relationships that would otherwise entitle them to inheritance, such as siblings, grandparents and grandchildren, the court noted.
The appeals court also rejected claims the lawyers had a fiduciary duty to the Maine children. The plaintiffs cited a case where lawyers owed a duty to other statutory beneficiaries.
“Nothing in that case illuminates what, if any, duty exists to individuals who claim to be statutory beneficiaries but are not,” the appeals court concluded.