Boca Raton Burn Injury Lawyer

Burns are painful, potentially catastrophic injuries. They can impact a person’s emotional well-being, leave scars, and cause disfigurement. Severe burn incidents can also result in death.

If you or a loved one have been burned in an accident, it is in your best interest to promptly contact a Boca Raton catastrophic injury lawyer to protect your legal right to recover damages. An experienced burn injury lawyer in Boca Raton can build a claim to help produce a successful outcome on your behalf.

Causes of Burn Injuries

According to research compiled by the American Burn Association, fires and flames are the cause of 43 percent of burn injuries. Scalding amounts to 34 percent, contact with fire to 9 percent, electrical fires to 4 percent, chemical fires to 3 percent, and 7 percent belong to various other causes. Burns are considered catastrophic injuries and can have long-term medical expenses.

Most fires happen in homes, while 8 percent occur in work situations, 5 percent on streets and highways, 5 percent in sporting and recreational activities, and 9 percent from other situations.

The survival rate for burn victims is 96.8 percent and a death from burn injuries happens every 2 hours and 41 minutes, with most of these in residential fires, followed by vehicle wrecks. The death statistics reported by the American Burn Association combine fire and smoke inhalation. This is because burns and inhalation of smoke toxins cannot always be medically determined.

Treatment Options for Burn Injuries

Treating severe burn injuries is expensive and can require extensive hospitalization. Severe burns, as reported by the Mayo Clinic, require plastic surgery to reconstruct the burned area to improve the appearance of scarring and increase joint flexibility. Skin grafts use the victim’s own skin or donor skin, including pig skin, to replace tissue. This is a temporary treatment.

Other procedures include breathing assistance, tube feeding, and helping blood flow around the burn if the scab encircles a limb and could stop blood circulation. If the burn encircles the chest, the surgeon will cut the scab to relieve pressure.

In cases that the burns cover a large area, particularly joints, physical and occupational therapies will be necessary to improve the strength and coordination of muscles. Since these treatments can often be expensive, an individual should not hesitate before contacting a Boca Raton burn injury lawyer.

Negligence Law in a Burn Injury Case

In Florida law, if another person, business, or establishment is responsible for the circumstances that caused the burn injury, an individual has a legal right to recover damages. These include medical and therapy expenses, pain and suffering, loss of current and future income, and even punitive damages if the party at fault acted in a negligent manner.

To prove negligence, each of the law’s four elements must be proven by a preponderance of the evidence. The elements are:

• Duty of care: A reasonable person has a legal obligation to act in a manner that does not cause harm to another. Drivers, for example, share the road with others and therefore have a duty of care for the others
• Breach: If the defendant did have a duty of care and still caused harm, the duty of care is breached
• Causation: The breach of the duty of care caused the incident that resulted in injury or damage
• Damages: An injury, property damage, or both, did occur

Florida uses the standard of modified comparative negligence. This means that if a person’s actions resulted in partial fault for the incident, recoverable damages are reduced by the percentage of fault up to 50%. If the plaintiff is found to be 51% or more at fault, they are barred from recovery entirely. For example, if a party is 40 percent at fault, they can only recover 60 percent of their damages. This law can be best explained by a Boca Raton burn injury attorney.

Benefit of an Attorney from Kogan & DiSalvo

If you have been seriously burned, contact a burn injury attorney in Boca Raton to discuss the circumstances of the incident leading to your burn injury. Your lawyer can evaluate the strength of your case and advise you on the best course of action.

A Boca Raton burn injury attorney can thoroughly investigate the incident, depose all parties and witnesses, and aggressively represent you to achieve the best possible outcome.