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Seattle Burn Injury Attorney

The Seattle burn injury attorneys at Fang Law Firm are extremely skilled in assisting burn injury victims recover financially from the at-fault party. You shouldn’t have to worry about paying for expensive medical bills for an injury that was caused due to someone else’s negligence or carelessness.

Burn injuries can vary from moderate to very severe. People who suffer from burn injuries are susceptible to painful infections and permanent scarring. Burn injury recovery can be a multi-year process and medical bills can start to add up from expensive skin graft treatments or debridement procedures.

Seattle Burn Injury Lawyer

Fang Law Firm is a Top Choice for Burn Injury Survivors

  • A winning record. We have a 98 percent success rate across 10,000 litigation cases.
  • 24/7 support. Our law firm’s policy is that we will return your call within 24 hours, guaranteed.
  • Attorney representation all the way through. We won’t pass you off to our support staff like other burn injury law firms. Our Seattle personal injury attorneys will be on your burn injury case from the first day to the last.

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How Can a Seattle Burn Injury Attorney Help You File a Claim?

Burn injury attorneys understand the toll these types of serious injuries take on every aspect of a victim’s life. A Seattle burn injury attorney can help maximize your chances of a successful claim by investigating your case, determining the liable party, collecting evidence, and crafting a compelling case for your compensation. Your burn injury attorney will help through the following actions:

  • Diligently handling all court filings in a timely manner
  • Collecting evidence about your injury including how it occurred
  • Determining the liable party
  • Gathering key evidence to prove liability for your burn injuries
  • Forming a strategy to accomplish your goals in the case including finding paths to maximizing compensation for your damages that you may otherwise overlook
  • Strengthening your case with eyewitness and expert testimony
  • Handling all correspondence and communication with insurers
  • Helping you prepare for testimony, appearances, and depositions

A skilled, experienced burn injury attorney not only has compassion for your injuries and the determination to help you recover compensation but will also make a significant impact on the amount of your settlement or court award by strengthening your case.

Severe burn injuries are much more than just painful and disfiguring. Often they limit mobility and require extensive medical treatment and ongoing physical therapy. They also dramatically affect the economic well-being of a family and may significantly diminish the quality of life for victims.

A Seattle burn injury attorney can help burn victims receive compensation for these damages that may not “undo” the injury, but can help the injury victim to gain access to the best medical care and relieve financial burdens caused by the accident.

How a Seattle Burn Injury Attorney Can Help You Recover Compensation

A burn injury attorney can help you recover financially from the at-fault party. Under Washington law, you can recover through someone’s insurance by filing a claim or you can file a negligence or personal injury action against the at-fault party in a Washington court of law.

Filing an Insurance Claim

If your burn injury resulted from a car or a workplace accident, you can file a claim against the at-fault driver’s car insurance or with your employer’s workers compensation insurance. A burn injury attorney in Seattle can help you navigate the insurance claims process in Washington and gather evidence to support your claim.

Filing a Civil Suit

In the event that the insurance company denies your claim or refuses to give you a settlement you deserve, you can file a civil suit for negligence and personal injury against the at-fault party and the at-fault’s insurance.

A Seattle burn injury lawyer from Fang Law Firm can help you present your evidence to a jury. In the event that the jury finds the other party negligent or the cause of your burn injury, the jury will likely award you economic and non-economic damages.

  • Economic damages are damages that are related to injury such as medical bills, lost wages, and rehabilitative care.
  • Non-economic damages are damages that compensate you for pain and suffering.

Besides recovering medical expenses, and lost wages from the immediate treatment following a burn accident, a successful claim helps burn victims recover the following damages:

  • Future medical expenses for any upcoming surgeries and ongoing treatment
  • Lost future wages for recovering from treatment
  • Diminished earning capacity in the event of permanent disabilities caused by burns
  • Pain and suffering
  • Mental anguish
  • Loss of enjoyment of life
  • Scarring or disfigurement

Damages from burns are often long-term or permanent. While monetary compensation cannot erase an injury, it can help compensate for both economic and non-economic damages associated with burn injuries.

How Long Do I Have to File a Burn Injury Claim?

Like all states, Washington sets a limit on the amount of time an injury victim has to file a claim, including those who suffer burn injuries. This limit helps to protect defendants against ongoing threats of lawsuits and preserves the quality of evidence that may be presented in insurance demands or in court litigation.

Burn injury victims in Washington have up to three years from the date of the injury to file a claim. If the burn victim was incapacitated by the injury, the three-year statute of limitations begins on the day they recover their cognitive function.

While a burn victim has up to three years to file a claim, it’s important to note that waiting too long to file can significantly reduce the likelihood of achieving maximum compensation for damages. While it’s best to wait just long enough to understand the extent of the injury and the scope of its physical and economic impacts on the victim’s life, waiting too long can hamper the ability to collect evidence and degrade the quality of evidence presented for your claim.

Who is Liable for a Burn Accident?

Burn injuries occur in many ways. Determining liability typically depends on the unique circumstances of each burn injury, how it occurred, and where responsibility lies for the accident that resulted in the burn. In many cases, burn injury lawsuits are car accident cases, workplace accident cases, or cases of product liability or premises liability. Establishing liability in burn accidents involves the following:

  • Pinpointing the cause of the burn injury and what safeguards were or were not in place to prevent it at the time the injury occurred
  • Determining if negligence, recklessness, or wrongdoing on the part of another person or entity (such as a business or government agency) caused the burn
  • Determining the severity of the burn injury and the resulting economic and noneconomic damages it causes

Determining liability for burns caused by a car accident requires an investigation into who was at fault or mostly at fault for the accident.

Burns that occur in workplace accidents require an investigation into the safety measures for prevention in place and what negligence caused the burns to occur.

Premises liability in a burn accident depends on showing that the premises owner owed a duty of care to take reasonable measures to keep people on the property safe and failed to take those measures.

Burns resulting from a faulty or defective product requires an investigation to show that the product did not perform as expected despite the burn victim using it according to directions or in a way that the manufacturer could have anticipated it would be used and whether or not the product’s safety warning labels were adequate.

These are some common examples of what effort goes into proving liability in burn accidents for the most common ways they occur. An experienced attorney knows how to collect evidence in burn cases to determine and prove liability.

What is a Burn Injury?

A burn is damage to your skin cells due to sunlight, chemicals, or radiation. There are three types of burns someone can suffer from:

  • First-degree burn: A first-degree burn is damage only to the outer layer of the skin.
  • Second-degree burn: A second-degree burn is damage to the out layer and the second layer of the skin.
  • Third-degree burn: A third-degree burn is damage to the deepest layer of skin and skin tissues.
  • Internal burn injuries: You can suffer from internal burn injuries by breathing in smoke.

Burn Injury Symptoms

If you have any of the following symptoms, you are likely suffering from a burn injury:

  • Swelling
  • Blistering
  • Scarring
  • Shock

It is important to seek medical attention immediately. Untreated burn injuries can lead to serious infection or permanent damage.

Healthcare providers treat the pain as well providing critical care to promote healing, prevent infection and retain mobility. Burn victims may experience different levels of pain depending on the severity of the injury. Patients with first-degree burns feel pain on the skin’s surface. Second-degree burns feel painful with air movement or temperature changes. Third-degree burns are painful under pressure.

Most burn victims experience a great deal of pain and itching during the healing process. Extreme fatigue is also a common physical response to burn injuries.

Causes of Burn Injuries

Burn injuries result because of someone else’s negligence. The most common ways burn injuries occur are the following:

  • Car accidents
  • Workplace accidents
  • Fires
  • Defective products
  • Spilled boiling liquids or hot grease
  • Exposure to hot steam
  • Contact with hot metal or glass
  • Electrical current
  • Contact with chemicals such as acid or lye
  • Radiation exposure
  • Flash burns from explosions

According to the World Health Organization, most burns occur in the home or workplace and are preventable. Around 180,000 deaths occur annually due to burn injuries and non-fatal burns are a leading cause of morbidity. While most burns are caused by fire exposure, some result from hot liquids, steam, or friction between the body and a hot surface. The symptoms and severity of burn injuries depend on how widespread the burn is and how deep below the surface of the skin the burn extends.

Burns cause tissue damage, redness, blisters, and often scarring and hair loss. Deep burn injuries may also damage muscle, fat, and even bones. The most serious burns result in charring and require skin grafts in order to heal since charred skin cannot heal on its own.

Common Complications of Burn Injuries

When burns go deep below the surface of the skin or cover a wide area of the body, secondary complications may arise and require extensive treatment. Some common complications of burn injuries include the following:

  • Severe infections and sepsis
  • Fluid loss
  • Lowered body temperature
  • Respiratory problems from smoke inhalation while the burns occurred
  • Ligament, joint, and bone problems from tightening due to scarred tissues

Burn injuries are among the most painful injuries imaginable and often require extensive painful treatments and therapies to maximize healing. Both long-term and permanent impacts occur on a person’s quality of life after they’ve been burned.

Common Treatments for Burn Injuries

The medical treatment for burn injuries depends on the severity of the burns and the amount of the body that experienced burns in an accident. Some of the following treatments may help to maximize a burn victim’s recovery:

  • Topical treatments to relieve pain, aid healing, and prevent infection
  • IV fluid intake to combat fluid loss and prevent dehydration
  • IV antibiotics to fight infection
  • Ultrasound mist therapy to promote healing
  • Wound dressings
  • Debridement (removal of dead or damaged tissue)
  • Skin grafts
  • Surgery to improve healing
  • Physical therapy to regain mobility
  • Plastic surgery to restore appearance and function
  • Psychiatric counseling for trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and depression

Often burn victims require ongoing medical care for months or even years after a burn accident. Treatments for burns cause extensive financial damage as well as physical and emotional damage to victims.

Understanding the Healing Process After a Burn Injury

Scarring after burn injuries heal may limit mobility. This occurs when healthy skin on both sides of a burned area knit together to try to heal the destroyed area, causing tightening as the wound grows smaller. For deep burns, the skin may contract around a joint and require physical therapy to stretch and allow a greater range of motion.

Regrowing nerves that were destroyed in a burn accident can be painful and cause itching during the healing process. Sweat glands and blood vessels may react to the damage in ways that cause unexpected perspiration or lack of perspiration during healing.

The burned sections of skin may change color during the healing process, typically turning very red before fading back to a near-normal skin tone. Severely burned skin may never regain its normal color.

Burn victims require extensive and ongoing medical treatment to maximize their healing potential.

Contact Our Seattle Burn Injury Attorneys Today

An insurance company is a business and they want you to settle for less than you deserve. A burn injury attorney from our personal injury law firm knows the tricks and underhanded ploys that an insurance company uses to convince you to settle for less. You won’t have to worry about whether the insurance company is giving you the settlement you deserve. Call Fang Law Firm today at (206) 489-5140 for your free case consultation.

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