Palm Springs Burn Injury Lawyer
On top of often being excruciatingly painful, severe burns sustained in traumatic accidents can also lead to long-term scarring, disfigurement, and loss of sensation in affected areas of the body. These are extremely serious injuries with the potential to cause life-altering consequences, and anyone who causes this kind of harm through their own negligence should be financially accountable for their actions.
Achieving a positive outcome from a civil claim built around a high-degree burn can be far from simple, as experienced catastrophic injury attorneys know too well. When you want the best chances of obtaining the compensation you deserve, contacting a skilled Palm Springs burn injury lawyer could be a vital first step to take.
Burn Injuries as Grounds for Civil Litigation
As is the case with many injury claims, negligence is the most common legal basis for filing suit over a serious burn injury. In the context of burn injury litigation, someone is negligent—and can be held financially liable for damages—when they meet all the following criteria:
- They owed a duty of care requiring them to act responsibly in a specific way under specific circumstances
- They breached their duty through a reckless, careless, or illegal act
- That breach was the direct cause of the burn injury, and the burn likely would not have happened at all without that breach of duty
- The burn injury was severe enough to require some form of professional medical care and was the direct cause of all the losses
That last requirement can be a significant obstacle to filing suit over first-degree burns, even if they stem directly from someone else’s misconduct, since most first-degree burns will heal completely on their own without any treatment beyond basic first aid. On the other hand, second-degree and third-degree burns may cause long-term harm even with immediate medical attention and often justify civil litigation. A Palm Springs attorney can go into further detail about whether a particular burn injury could be grounds for a lawsuit during a private initial meeting.
Getting Paid Fairly for a Burn Injury Within Filing Deadlines
Since burn injuries can result in permanent scarring and loss of bodily function, when pursuing civil litigation, a person must account for both past and future losses relative to when the claim actually begins. Depending on the circumstances, this could mean demanding compensation for expected future medical bills, lost working capacity, physical pain, psychological trauma and suffering, and more.
No matter how long a burn injury will continue to affect the injured person’s life, they generally only have two years under California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 to file suit after initially sustaining that injury. Anyone who fails to retain a burn injury lawyer in Palm Springs and formally begin the filing process before this deadline will almost always have their case thrown out of court and have no legal means of seeking civil restitution for their injury.
Get in Touch with a Palm Springs Burn Injury Attorney
Even when you are able to heal completely from your burn injury over time, the financial and psychological effects of that harm may still linger for months or even years afterward. In more serious situations, a burn caused by someone else’s conduct can fundamentally alter the course of your life and result in losses that no amount of money can fully make up for.
In both scenarios, you deserve reimbursement for the losses you did not deserve to suffer. Call today to learn how a dedicated Palm Springs burn injury lawyer could help you achieve the best possible outcome under your unique circumstances.
