Burn Injury Lawyer Discusses Recovering Damages When Negligence Causes Burn Injuries
More than close to 95% of burn injury victims survive their injuries, but recovering from those injuries often requires a combination of extensive hospitalization, multiple reconstructive surgeries, and continual medical and occupational therapy. Most people assume that burn injuries are primarily external, as evidenced by visible scars, but a victim’s internal body systems and organs often suffer even greater damage from heat and smoke associated with the fire that caused the burn or infections that attack the victim while he is recuperating. Severe burn injuries can require medical treatments that cost more than $1 million. Disfigurement and scarring, psychological complications, skin and dermatological breakdowns, infections, and delayed or failed wound and skin graft treatment compound those injuries and add to treatment costs.
When you file a lawsuit to recover damages for your injuries, your burn injury attorney will first describe how and where the burn injury happened. Burn injuries are common in workplace accidents and at home. A victim can suffer burn as a result of a faulty product or appliance or following a negligently-caused accident.
If you suffered burn injuries in a workplace, your first source to recover damages will be workman’s compensation, which will typically be less than the you would receive as damages compensation for negligence. Workman’s compensation does not preclude a separate negligence lawsuit.
If you have suffered burn injuries in a vehicle accident, the negligent driver will generally be liable for your damages. If those injuries happened in a public environment, multiple parties may be jointly or severally liable for those damages. Burn injuries in a restaurant, for example, might be caused by a restaurant employee’s negligence, faulty equipment, or some other unsafe condition that exposed you to a burn hazard
Even though you may incur medical costs and expenses for a long period after you suffer burn injuries, you should file your burn injury lawsuit soon after you experience those injuries to avoid statute of limitations problems. Your burn injury lawyer will explain the full burn injury recovery process to a jury even if you have only begun that process. The process is divided into three phases: the resuscitative or critical phase, the acute phase, and the long-term rehabilitation phase. In the initial resuscitative phase, the victim’s medical team will stabilize his injuries, provide palliative care for pain, and offer psychological counseling for anxiety and depression disorders that may be caused by burn injuries. When the medical team has successfully stabilized and resuscitated the victim, it will move on to the second, acute phase in which the team restores the patient’s health to the fullest extent possible. In this phase, reconstructive surgeons perform skin grafts and debride any necrotic tissue. The victim will continue to receive psychological therapy in this phase.
The third, rehabilitative phase can last for several years and through the remainder of the victim’s life. Burn injuries can require a victim to relearn basic skills. If the victim’s organs suffered chronic damage, he will need further medical treatments. An experienced burn injury attorney will give a detailed analysis of all three of these phases to establish the monetary value of the victim’s injuries. Because the victim’s care and medical treatment will continue long after the lawsuit has concluded, the attorney’s argument must accurately describe and estimate the cost of future care to recover a maximum damages award from the negligent party that caused the victim’s injuries.
Please contact us for a free consultation if you have suffered burn injuries that were caused by another party’s negligence. We will marshall the facts of your case to get the largest possible damages recovery for you.