Los Angeles Burn Injury Lawyer

On top of being extremely painful, severe burns stemming from accidents born of negligence can also make for surprisingly complicated civil litigation. The value of an accident victim’s recoverable losses—and even whether they can include those losses in their claim—can vary significantly depending on the circumstances leading to their accident and the quality of legal counsel they retain.

If you want a good chance of securing a great case result, seeking help from an experienced Los Angeles burn injury lawyer should be a top priority after seeking necessary medical attention. Beyond just helping to maximize available restitution, your knowledgeable catastrophic injury attorney could also play a key role in proving liability for your injuries and contesting allegations that you yourself bear some fault for ensuring damages.

What Is the Value of a Burn Injury Claim?

The specific type of injury an accident victim sustains due to someone else’s misconduct has no bearing on the amount of compensation they may be entitled to recover through an ensuing lawsuit or settlement demand. Instead, a burn injury case’s value depends on the specific ways in which that injury will cause physical, financial, and/or personal harm to a plaintiff in both the short term and the long term.

For example, first-degree burns are generally minor enough that they do not even require professional medical care to heal completely, so they often do not justify civil litigation even if they stem directly from another person’s negligence. A second-degree burn, on the other hand, might necessitate recovery for medical expenses, physical pain and suffering, lost short-term work wages, and potentially various effects of permanent scarring or loss of sensation.

Third-degree burns that damage multiple layers of skin, fat, and muscle tissue allow for exponentially greater recovery, but only because these types of burns are extremely serious and potentially life-threatening injuries. A dedicated burn accident attorney in Los Angeles could demand restitution on your behalf for numerous long-term damages like lost enjoyment of life, lost earning capacity, and the costs of future rehabilitative care.

Establishing Fault for a Burn Accident in Los Angeles

Of course, it is impossible for an accident victim to recover any compensation for the consequences of a severe burn if they cannot show that someone else is to blame for causing that burn. Specifically, successful burn injury claims generally revolve around a finding of negligence—in other words, the plaintiff demonstrating that a named defendant had a duty of care towards them, violated that duty through careless or reckless conduct, and proximately caused the harm they are filing suit over through that breach.

Partial Fault

It is also worth noting that California’s pure comparative fault system allows civil courts to impose percentages of fault on plaintiffs they deem to have partially caused or contributed to their own damages through negligence of their own. Then, the court could proportionately reduce that plaintiff’s final damage award in value based on the assigned percentage. An experienced lawyer could further explain how partial fault works in a burn injury case.

Speak with a Los Angeles Burn Injury Attorney About Legal Options

Fair resolutions to civil claims based on burn injuries can be hard to come by, especially if you to proceed with your claim without knowledgeable legal representation. Even if you have extensive evidence that someone else’s misbehavior directly caused your injury, recovering for the full value of future losses stemming from that injury could be next to impossible if you do not have the legal expertise and experience to effectively demand compensation for them.

A Los Angeles burn injury lawyer could provide support from start to finish of your settlement negotiations or civil court case. Schedule your initial consultation today.