A mild burn injury will cause severe pain but produce no long-term consequences. But severe burns could result in disfigurement, disability, and emotional distress. As a result, you might lack the ability to earn a living. You may even shut yourself off from others.
Burn injuries also damage your only protection against contamination and infection: your skin. You could suffer complications from your burns that might lengthen your recovery time or even kill you.
How Our San Antonio Burn Injury Attorney Can Help
A San Antonio burn injury attorney can provide you with assistance at every step of your case. At George Salinas Injury Firm, our attorneys have more than 110 years of collective experience handling injury cases and we are prepared and ready to bring that knowledge to your claim.
Our legal team will begin working from day one to help you in the following ways:
Gathering evidence
It will be up to you to prove that someone else was responsible for causing your burn injuries to occur. You’ll need evidence from the accident scene to do that. This could be evidence of a problem with the product you were using, for example, or it could be proof that a driver’s carelessness caused a car accident that led to your burn injuries.
Our legal team will interview witnesses, find experts, obtain police reports, obtain relevant documents from potential defendants, and otherwise do what’s needed to make a strong claim.
Documenting your damages
You should be fully compensated for all of the losses resulting from your burn injuries but it is up to you to show the extent of your damages. You can do this by taking steps like keeping medical bills, documenting time you miss from work, and maintaining a pain journal showcasing how your burns have affected your life
In some cases, you will suffer ongoing injuries due to your burns that impair your future ability to work and that necessitate future medical care costs. Experts can testify as to your ongoing financial needs so you can be fully compensated for past and future losses.
Negotiating with insurers
You’ll likely be compensated by an insurance company after a burn injury. This could be an auto insurer if your burns happened due to a car accident, a property insurer if you were burned while visiting someone else’s space as a result of their negligence, or an insurance carrier representing a company whose faulty products harmed you.
Insurers often make settlement offers to resolve claims outside of court. George Salinas Injury Lawyers can help you negotiate a fair settlement that results in an appropriate amount of compensation for your losses. By starting off negotiations on your terms with a demand letter, your attorney can maximize the chances you’ll get a fair offer and you won’t have to go to court.
Representing you in court
If your case does need to be resolved in trial, our legal team is ready to represent you. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports only around 3% of personal injury claims go to trial so not all attorneys are skilled litigators. Our firm can fight for you if your case doesn’t settle. We’ll make a compelling claim and prove liability and damages so you can get the money you deserve.
What Is the Structure and Function of Your Skin?
Your skin protects your body from contamination by chemicals, microorganisms, and radiation. It helps your body retain water so that it does not dehydrate. And it provides touch sensations to your brain.
The skin has three layers. The surface layer, called the epidermis, forms a water-tight barrier. The layer below the epidermis is called the dermis. The dermis provides the bulk of the skin’s structure. The dermis holds the hair follicles and contains the nerve endings. It also has oil glands that keep the epidermis smooth and moisturized.
The hypodermis sits below the epidermis and dermis. The hypodermis contains a layer of fat that insulates the body. It also includes connective tissues to hold the skin to the musculoskeletal system.
Skin cells are alive. They require oxygen for cell metabolism. The blood carries oxygen to the skin cells through blood vessels in the dermis.
The blood also carries platelets and white blood cells to the skin. When the skin gets breached, platelets form a clot to stop the bleeding, and the white cells attack and neutralize any pathogens that have entered the skin.
How Do Burn Injuries Happen?
Burn injuries result from a chemical reaction that destroys skin cells. Different reactions produce different types of burns, including these:
Thermal Burns
Hot objects, liquids, and gasses transfer heat energy to your cells. Heat damages and destroys cells by causing them to rupture. Thermal burns can happen in motorcycle accidents when your leg touches the exhaust system during a crash.
Combustion Burns
Flames consume your cells by using them for fuel. Combustion burns can happen in premises liability accidents when a landlord fails to fix fire hazards in a residence or business. They can also happen in car accidents when leaking fuel ignites.
Radiation Burns
Radiation damages skin cells by altering their atoms. The most common radiation burn comes from the ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. But radiation burns can happen in work accidents involving X-ray machines, lasers, and radioactive materials.
Chemical Burns
Caustic chemicals react with the skin and destroy the cells. Some chemicals that can burn skin include:
- Acids
- Organic solvents
- Oxidizers like bleach
- Lye, ammonia, and other alkaline chemicals
Chemical burns usually happen in work accidents. But they can also happen in car accidents when the damage causes caustic chemicals like brake fluid to leak.
Friction Burns
Friction burns result from high-speed rubbing of the skin. The most common source of friction burns is road rash from pedestrian accidents, motorcycle accidents, and bicycle accidents.
Electrical Burns
When an electric current enters your body, it can produce extremely high temperatures because of your body’s water content. Electrical burns can happen in work accidents and premises liability accidents.
How Do Doctors Rate the Severity of a Burn Injury?
Burn severity is categorized on a scale containing three degrees.
First-Degree Burns
First-degree burns damage the epidermis. These minor burns produce:
- Redness
- Pain
- Swelling
First-degree burns usually only require first aid. Your doctor will probably prescribe ice packs, painkillers, and antibiotic ointment to treat a first-degree burn.
Second-Degree Burns
Second-degree burns destroy the epidermis and reach down into the dermis. These burns cause the same redness, pain, and swelling as first-degree burns, but you might also experience blistering and seeping wounds.
Second-degree burns also only require first aid. However, you should still consider consulting your doctor to make sure that you did not suffer third-degree burns. And if your burns cover a large area, your doctor may need to dress them and prescribe antibiotics to reduce your risk of infection.
Third-Degree Burns
Third-degree burns are also called full-thickness burns. These burns destroy the epidermis and dermis. Since the dermis holds the nerve endings, third-degree burns do not cause pain. Instead, you will feel numbness in the burned areas.
Other symptoms of a third-degree burn include:
- Swelling
- Dry or leathery skin texture
- Red, black, white, or gray skin color
Third-degree burns require medical treatment. Without whole, healthy skin, you are vulnerable to dehydration and infection. Your doctor will need to clean and dress your wounds. The doctor might even perform a skin graft operation to protect your wounds.
You might need to stay in the hospital while you recover from third-degree burns. Afterward, you may need follow-up surgeries to address any disfigurement.
What Complications Can Result from Burn Injuries?
Burn injuries often lead to complications because of the importance of the skin in maintaining your health. Some common complications include these:
Infections
Infections happen when pathogens enter your body. When your skin gets burned, it cannot protect your body from harmful bacteria and viruses. Once inside, the pathogens multiply and battle your body’s cells.
In response, your body will trigger swelling and fever. Between the toxic pathogens and your body’s response to them, you will get sick. You may even die.
Scars
Scars happen when replacement skin cells grow back tougher, thicker, and less elastic than the original skin cells. First- and second-degree burns usually produce only minor skin damage with no scarring. But third-degree burns can produce significant scars, particularly if doctors performed a skin graft procedure.
Contractures
Contractures happen when your tissue shrinks after suffering burn damage. This damage can contort your skin, muscles, and connective tissue so tightly that your movement gets limited.
Potential Compensation for a Burn Injury Claim in San Antonio
Burns can be very expensive to treat. In fact, a recent study called Cost Analysis and Influencing Factors Amongst Severe Burn Patients reported that “the cost of burn care is still very high and much higher than that for other diseases or trauma.”
The research estimated the median cost of acute trauma for burn patients was $22,448. Unfortunately, when burns are severe or extensive, costs can be much higher, sometimes totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars when extensive hospitalization or complex reconstruction surgeries are necessary.
If your burns are caused by someone else’s negligence or wrongdoing, you should be fully compensated for current and future medical care. This is a type of economic damage that can be easily calculated by adding up your medical bills and getting an expert to testify as to any ongoing future costs you’ll face.
You should also be compensated for other actual economic losses, such as missed work days and impairment of your earning abilities.
Beyond these economic damages, you are entitled to additional payment for non-financial losses such as pain and suffering, emotional distress, and disfigurement. Burns can be painful to treat and can forever change your appearance, so these non-economic damages can also be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in some circumstances.
Because burn injury damages are so extensive, it’s important that you’re able to document and prove the extent of your loss. A San Antonio burn injury lawyer at George Salinas Injury Firm will help you to show how severe your injuries are so you are compensated for all of the damages that you have endured.
What Are the Top Causes of Burn Injuries?
Penn Medicine explains that burns typically occur as a result of:
- Fire or flame
- Steam or scaling from hot liquids
- Touching objects that are hot
- Exposure to electrical current
- Exposure to chemicals
There are many potential causes of these burns. As Penn Medicine explains, burns are often the result of the following types of accidents or incidents:
- House fires
- Industrial fires
- Car accidents
- Faulty products such as furnaces, space heaters, or industrial equipment
- Unsafe use of fireworks
- Kitchen accidents
- Breathing in steam, chemicals, super-heated air, or fumes in poorly ventilated areas
Some of these causes of burns are entirely preventable. For example, if a company makes a grill that blows up because of a faulty part, that can lead to a preventable burn. If a car accident happens because a driver is unreasonably careless, that can cause preventable burns as well.
When your burn occurs as a result of the carelessness or wrongdoing of others, you have the right to hold them accountable. A San Antonio burn injury attorney at George Salinas Injury Lawyers will help you identify the cause of your burn, determine if a person or company can be held legally responsible, and take legal action on your behalf.
You have just two years from the time of an incident to make a personal injury claim under Texas Code Section 16.003 so you should make certain that you get help from a legal professional as soon as possible whenever a burn occurs that may have been caused by someone else’s failures to protect your safety.
How Do You Obtain Compensation for a Burn Injury?
When you suffer a burn injury in an accident caused by someone else’s negligence, you can pursue compensation. You can often secure significant compensation for a burn injury due to the cost of treatment, substantial recovery time, pain, suffering, and disfigurement. All of these are compensable under Texas law.
A burn injury can leave you disfigured and disabled. You could require expensive treatment, including follow-up surgeries. To discuss your burn injuries and the compensation you can seek for them, contact the experts at George Salinas Injury Lawyers or give us a call at (210) 225-0909 for a free consultation.