Your skin is your body’s largest organ, protecting you from infections, regulating your temperature, and enabling you to recognize hot and cold so you can react to either extreme. Burn injuries can be minor – a reddening of the area and a stinging sensation that heals on its own with proper treatment – or they can be severe and even deadly, affecting nerves, tissue, muscles, and bones to the point that an infection sets in and you cannot feel the area.
Medical treatment for severe burns may include skin grafts and plastic surgery, which are both expensive ways to treat scarring and disfigurement. If you cannot work, your financial health will decline, causing your family stress, too. Let a Pittsfield burn injury lawyer fight your legal battle for compensation from the party that acted negligently and put you in this situation. Contact our catastrophic injury attorneys for a free case review.
The medical community assigns degrees of severity to burn injuries. First-degree burns are superficial and affect the outer layer of skin. They redden but clear in a few days without scarring. Second-degree burns damage the epidermis (the outer layer) and the dermis (the second layer). You may experience pain, and the angry red site often blisters. Infection is possible, but with proper medical care, these burns heal well. Third-degree burns penetrate below the second layer into the tissue, charring and numbing the skin. The area can only be restored through skin grafting. Fourth-degree burns destroy muscle mass, bones, and fat and are often deadly.
Most people think of fire when someone is burned, and although fire causes most burns, they are also the result of:
Make sure you receive medical treatment for burns that are more than superficial. When you are stable, call a Pittsfield burn injury attorney if someone else acted negligently, recklessly, or intentionally, causing your injuries. Although compensation cannot erase the trauma you have experienced, it can help cover your losses.
Your attorney must prove your burn injuries resulted from someone else’s negligent actions. The person must have had a duty to act as a reasonable person would in a similar situation but failed to do so, and that behavior was the foreseeable cause of the accident that resulted in your burn injury. For example, if a drunk driver T-bones another motorist at high speed, shoving the driver down an embankment, and the car catches fire as it rolls, badly burning the driver, they may be liable for your injuries.
Compensation is generally meant to help restore the injured person to their condition before the accident. Although severely damaged skin will never be the same, compensation can help cover medical bills and lost wages. Jurors must determine the amount of money that appropriately compensates the injured person for injuries that are not economic, such as pain and suffering, and psychological and emotional trauma. Our Pittsfield lawyers have won substantial settlements for burn injury patients by bringing years of negotiating and litigating skills to each unique case. Let us apply our caring advocacy to yours.
While severe burn injuries are devastating now, we fight for the future you can build with enough compensation to heal and live in dignity. We value you as a person whose dreams have been sidetracked by an accident caused by another person’s reckless behavior. With legal help from a Pittsfield burn injury lawyer, you can resume your life’s journey. Contact us now to schedule a free consultation in English or Spanish.
Pellegrini, Seeley, Ryan & Blakesley
N/a 