Ryan Kiess, of Manhasset, was a volunteer firefighter, a skilled viola player, the captain of his high school hockey team and a University of Scranton graduate, where he played Division III lacrosse.

But Kiess, who was killed in 2021 at the age of 25, along with four others, in a high-speed, head-on wreck in Quogue, was not yet a husband, a father or a major financial breadwinner with dependents.

And in the eyes of New York State's pre-Civil War era wrongful death law, that means Kiess' life is valued less than a married stockbroker from Garden City with two young children.

That could change in the coming weeks as state lawmakers have once again passed the Grieving Families Act , a bipartisan bill that would alter New York's wrongful death statute by letting families recover damages

See Full Page