Legal action by an estate

8till8

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Can a deceased persons estate take legal action through the executors?

So by way of example, a person makes an investment that then goes wrong, a few years later the person dies. Can the executors take legal action to get a refund of the investment?
 
If something like misselling is suspected then why not go the FSPO route instead of taking a (presumably potentially costly) legal case?

What sort of scenario and figures are involved here?
Even if sueing is possible it may not be advisable - think Bleak House etc...
 
Can a deceased persons estate take legal action through the executors?
In general, yes. Whatever right of action the deceased had immediately before his death passes to his legal personal represntatives, and they can institute the proceedings that the deceased is too dead to institute.

But:

There are some personal rights of action which die when you do. Your estate can't sue for defamation over something that somebody said about you when you were alive; the law only protects the reputation of living people.

Plus, even if the right of action survives, the ability to recover damages may be limited. If I carelessly run you over in my car, you can sue me and recover your medical costs, damages for pain and suffering, maybe — if e.g. you incapacitated — damages for loss of future earning capacity. But if your estate sues me after your death, they can revover the medical costs, but not damages for pain and suffering (because no award of money at this point can help you there) or for loss of future earnings (because we now know that you wouldn't have had any future earnings anyway).

If your claim is financial/commercial nature, and you are seeking to recover quantifiable financial losses then, yeah, those damages are in principle recoverable. But you face another issue which is, with you dead, how is your estate going to prove the case? You're not around to give evidence about what was said to you, what you understood, etc, and you are not around to contradict evidence the defendants may give about what they said to you at the time, etc. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff, the person who brings the action, and with a key witness already dead that may be a very difficult burden to discharge.
 
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