Does the judge or lawyer determine the amount that you can sue for in an wrongful death case?

You have two cases. The first is for the truck running over her, the second is for the malpractice. Any recovery will be set by a jury, or if no jury is requested or allowed, by a judge. You are unlikely to get anywhere close to 150 million dollar verdict and no lawyer can promise you what a jury will do. If a lawyer made you a promise like that you should get it in writting (it will never happen) or find another lawyer. Ethical lawyers can tell you they will work hard for you but can't tell you, in a medical malpractice case, what you will recover. Finally there may be caps on the amount anyone can give you, set by the legislature, which will protect the doctors and hospitals. If the caps apply a lawyer may be able to tell you the maximum available under the law.

Most trial lawyers who file wrongful death claims generally do not request an amount certain in the lawsuits that they file. This can be a trap for the unsuspecting lawyer in that the defense attorney may be able to use the amount to show that the family who filed the lawsuit is proceeding out of greed and only trying to profit from the unfortunate death of a loved one. Once all of the pretrial discovery is completed, the attorney will be in a much better posture to decide how much money to ask the jury to award. The only time that a judge will be able to determine the amount that someone should recover is if the case was tried before the judge and not a jury or the judge decides that the jury awarded too much and order a remittitur, or reduction in damages awarded.