Few types of injuries are more painful than burns caused by exposure to extreme heat, caustic chemicals, or scalding liquids. To make matters worse, high-degree burns can leave physical and emotional scars that last a lifetime, often costing thousands of dollars to treat.
Fortunately, a Bridgeport burn injury lawyer can help you seek civil compensation for all of your burn-related injuries and losses. By helping you gather relevant evidence and build a comprehensive settlement demand or lawsuit, a skilled catastrophic injury attorney like George W. Ganim, Jr. can serve as an essential ally in your fight to hold the responsible party liable for their negligence and your injuries.
What Are the Common Types of Burn Injuries?
While burn injuries are typically associated with contact with a hot object, there are other ways that it can happen. Any of these injuries can result in a lawsuit if negligence was involved.
Burn injuries caused by hot surfaces are known as thermal burns and occur after making contact with a hot object, scalding liquid or even steam. Open flames are also a common cause for thermal burns.
Some burns occur due to contact with an electrical current, while others are due to exposure to harsh chemicals like detergents or acid. Even extreme cold could lead to a severe burn injury.
How Do Burn Injuries Happen?
There are numerous ways that a person can sustain a burn. During a lawsuit, the court will consider the facts surrounding these injuries to determine if compensation is necessary. Some of the factors that can lead to a burn injury claim include:
- Exposed wiring
- Faulty heating pipes
- Spilled chemicals
- Defective consumer products
- Inadequate fire prevention equipment
How Long Does a Burn Victim Have to File Suit?
Importantly, burn victims do not have an unlimited amount of time to seek compensation for their injuries and losses through civil litigation. This is because of a legal concept known as the statute of limitations, which exists to ensure civil cases proceed quickly, while relevant evidence is still readily available.
As per Connecticut General Statutes §52-584, anyone who fails to file suit within two years from the date the injury is first sustained or discovered or in the exercise of reasonable care should have been discovered, providing it is not greater than three years from the injury date, shall be permanently barred from seeking monetary compensation. Therefore, it is usually a good plan to seek counsel from a local burn injury lawyer as soon as possible after your injury so that you do not miss the deadline to file your claim.
How Do You Establish Negligence in a Burn Injury Case?
Before a burn injury victim can recover compensation, they must establish that their wounds occurred due to another person’s or entity’s negligence. There are four elements required to prove negligence: duty, breach, causation and damages.
The initial step in proving negligence requires establishing a duty of care. A person is only liable for causing a burn if they owed a duty of care to the victim. Once this duty is established, the Attorney Ganim must also show that this duty was breached. Breach can result from a careless, intentional, or reckless act. Finally, a burn victim must also demonstrate a causal link between the breached duty, and the damages that resulted.
The Impact That Burn Degrees Have on Recoverable Compensation
Broadly speaking, more severe burns allow you to seek greater amounts of compensation through a settlement or court verdict. This is because civil litigation is meant to compensate the plaintiff for specific losses stemming from an accident, and more severe injuries tend to result in greater personal losses.
For example, because first-degree burns only impact the outer layer of skin and rarely require professional medical attention, they often do not justify civil litigation since there are no medical bills or other losses that would constitute compensable damages. Conversely, second-degree burns generally do require medical care and may result in long-term scarring, both of which can be factored into a settlement demand or lawsuit.
Third and Fourth-Degree Burns
In the event someone suffers from a third or fourth-degree burn due to another person’s negligence, they can seek hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to make up for intensive surgical treatments, loss of income due to an inability to work, loss of enjoyment of life due to permanent disfigurement or disability, and more. A burn accident lawyer in Bridgeport can discuss what damages you may be entitled to for your injuries and losses.
Speak with a Bridgeport Burn Injury Attorney Today
Burn injuries can be complex and difficult to ascertain damages and that is the reason you should consult an experienced attorney. If you want to get the best results out of your unique claim, you should strongly consider seeking representation from Attorney George W. Ganim, Jr., who has handled similar cases successfully in the past.
A Bridgeport burn injury lawyer can stand by your side from start to finish of the litigation process, working tirelessly to obtain fair compensation on your behalf. Set up a meeting to discuss your legal options today.