Suffering a severe burn in an accident someone else caused can be a uniquely painful and traumatizing experience, especially if your injury ends up having permanent consequences. Even if you are able to handle your medical expenses and personal losses in the short term, the long-term impact that a serious burn can have on your life could be almost impossible to quantify.
Fortunately, with help from a Creve Coeur burn injury lawyer, you may be able to put a dollar figure on your past and future damages and seek comprehensive compensation for every one of them. A skilled local injury attorney who has helped individuals in your situation before could be a key ally in your fight to hold a negligent individual liable for the immense harm they caused you.
While burns are always painful and inconvenient injuries, not every type of burn is severe enough to justify civil litigation. For example, first-degree burns only affect the epidermis—or the outer layer of skin—and generally heal on their own after a few days. Accordingly, unless someone suffers first-degree burns in sensitive areas like their hands or groin, they generally do not need to seek professional medical attention to treat their injury, which means they likely would not have valid grounds for a civil claim.
Conversely, second- and third-degree burns often do justify litigation due to their severity and potential long-term consequences. In the former case, a burn is classified in the second degree if it damages both the outer epidermis and the inner dermis layers. Since this burn goes deeper into the skin and causes more significant damage, it is often extremely painful and can result in permanent scars without medical intervention.
Likewise, third-degree burns always require immediate medical care, as this type of burn penetrates completely through the epidermis and dermis and directly impacts underlying fat and nerve endings. A person who suffers a burn of this severity may require weeks or months of intensive treatment, skin grafts, and other surgical procedures, all of which a local attorney could help seek recovery for through a personal injury claim.
Unfortunately, the full scope of a burn injury often does not become clear until several months after the accident that causes it. While less severe burns may heal completely over time, widespread second-degree burns and virtually all third-degree burns will have permanent consequences, such as scarring, loss of sensation, loss of mobility, and potentially chronic pain.
Due to the lifelong impact this type of injury can have, working with a seasoned burn accident lawyer in Creve Coeur could be essential to pursuing comprehensive recovery for both past and future losses. Recoverable damages in a burn injury case may include but are not limited to expenses for emergency medical care as well as future corrective surgeries and rehabilitative treatments, loss of future earning capacity, the personal and psychological impact of permanent disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life.
Few types of personal injuries are more agonizing than high-degree burns. If you suffer harm of this magnitude because of someone else’s negligence, you can and should take action to hold that negligent individual financially accountable.
Retaining a local burn injury lawyer could put you in a better position for a positive conclusion to your case. To schedule your first consultation with a legal professional, call today.
