Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

instantaneous death

Death occurring in an instant or within an extremely short time after an injury or seizure. ( It is a factor in determining an award of damages for the victim's pain and suffering. - Sometimes also termed immediate dearth. "Although the possibility of a death that is truly simultaneous with the injury that caused it has been pointed out that death may be so contemporaneous with the fatal injury as to be instantaneous in the sense that there could be no recovery for the victim's pain and suffering. Ordinarily, death is not regarded a, instantaneous if an appreciable length of time elapsed between the injury and the death. Indeed, even where the injury causing the death is necessarily fatal and death results therefrom in a few moments, it has been held that although it would commonly be called an instantaneous death, still if the injured person survive.; the injury for a brief period, it may not be said that the death is instantaneous . . . . In such case it is immaterial that the period of time between the injury and death is short." 22A Am. Jur. 2d Death § 43, at 158 (1988)