If you or someone in your family suffered a serious burn, a NYC burn injury lawyer can help you hold the responsible party accountable and recover for what the injury will cost across a lifetime. Burns are different from other personal injury cases in one important way: the treatment does not end when the wound closes.
Grafts, revision surgery, scar management, and the daily reality of living with visible damage continue for years. A burn case handled properly accounts for all of it. Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower builds these claims around the full arc of the injury rather than the hospital bill. Below are the questions burn survivors and their families ask our burn injury attorneys most.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
You likely have a case if someone else's carelessness caused the burn. That includes a landlord who ignored dangerous conditions, a contractor or property owner who created a hazard, a company whose product failed or lacked warnings, an employer's site where safety steps were skipped, and a business that served or handled something dangerously hot.
You do not need to know what ignited a fire or why a device failed. Determining that is the work of the investigation, and our burn injury lawyers review the facts at no cost.
Two measurements drive both the medical care and the value of a claim.
The first is depth. Superficial burns affect only the outer layer and heal without scarring. Partial thickness burns extend deeper, blister, and often scar. Full thickness burns destroy the layers of skin entirely, cannot heal on their own, and require grafting, and because nerve endings are destroyed the burn itself may not hurt, which fools people into thinking it is less serious. The deepest burns reach muscle and bone.
The second is how much of the body is involved, along with where. Burns to the hands, face, feet, joints, and genitals are treated as critical regardless of size, because of what they cost a person in function and appearance. A burn covering a small area of the hand can be far more disabling than a larger burn on the back.
Because the injury is not finished. In the first weeks the picture looks like emergency care, debridement, and grafting. What follows over the next several years is the part that determines what a person actually lost.
Grafts create a second wound at the donor site. Scars tighten as they mature, and contractures across a joint can limit motion months after everything looks healed, requiring release surgery. Revision procedures continue over years. Many survivors live with chronic itching, nerve pain, sensitivity to heat and cold, and skin that no longer sweats normally in the burned area, along with permanent sun restrictions.
An insurer who offers a number at six months is pricing a wound. The case is about a lifetime. Resolving before the treating surgeons can describe the final result is the single most common way burn claims get undervalued.
As its own element of the claim, separate from medical bills and lost income. New York recognizes disfigurement as a real and compensable loss, and in a burn case it is frequently the largest component.
What it is worth turns on location and visibility, permanence after all reasonable surgery, the effect on function, and the age of the injured person. It is proven with photographs taken over time from the first days through healing, the treating surgeon's opinion about what can and cannot be corrected, the plan and cost of future revision procedures, and the person's own account of how the injury has changed daily life. Building that record starts early, which is why our burn injury lawyers ask survivors to keep photographing as they heal.
The cause determines who is responsible and what evidence proves it.
Apartment and building fires, where the injuries usually trace to conditions the owner controlled: missing or dead smoke alarms, doors that did not close on their own, blocked exits, illegal partitions, and unsafe wiring.
Water delivered dangerously hot, steam and radiator burns in apartment buildings, and hot liquids in restaurants and workplaces. Radiator and steam burns to small children in New York City housing are a recurring and preventable category, and they usually involve a valve, a cover, or a repair the building was told about.
Contact with live wiring, panels, and overhead lines, and arc flash injuries that burn without any contact at all. These often arise on job sites, as covered on our electrical injury page, and the damage frequently runs deeper than the surface mark suggests.
Cleaning agents, industrial chemicals, and solvents, where the questions are labeling and warnings, protective equipment, training, and whether the substance should have been accessible at all.
Fuel system and battery fires after a crash, along with heaters, chargers, appliances, and equipment that ignite. These are product claims, and they depend on preserving what is left of the item.
Depending on how it happened, a claim can run against a building owner, landlord, or managing agent, a contractor or the general contractor on a site, a utility, a manufacturer, distributor, or retailer of a defective product, a restaurant or business, a maintenance or repair company, and a public agency where the building or property is publicly owned. Public entity claims carry a notice deadline of about ninety days, as explained on our municipal liability page.
Often, yes. Landlords and building owners have a duty to keep a building reasonably safe, which includes working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, self-closing doors, safe wiring, safe heat and hot water systems, functioning radiator valves and covers, and clear ways out.
These cases are built on what the owner knew. Violation histories, 311 complaints, prior repair requests, inspection records, and correspondence with tenants show whether a condition was reported and ignored. A tenant does not lose the right to bring a claim because of a lease provision, and the same applies in premises liability claims generally.
Children are burned most often by hot liquids, radiators and steam, and building fires, and their claims are handled differently in two ways that matter.
Medically, a burned child is not finished growing. Scar tissue does not grow with a child, so contractures return and release surgery may be needed repeatedly through adolescence. A settlement that does not fund those procedures leaves a family paying for them.
Legally, New York extends the deadline for a child's own claim, though a parent's separate claim for medical expenses runs on the ordinary adult clock. A settlement for a child also requires court approval, which protects the money until adulthood.
Workers' compensation covers your treatment and part of your wages regardless of fault, and it usually bars a claim against your own employer. It does not bar a claim against anyone else, including a property owner, a general contractor, another trade, a utility, or the maker of the equipment or chemical involved.
That separate case is where compensation for disfigurement, pain, and full lost earnings comes from. At the end of it the compensation carrier is repaid part of what it spent, and that amount can be negotiated down.
Through the cause and the consequences, developed in parallel. On cause, our burn injury lawyers pursue the Fire Department's cause and origin findings, an independent examination by engineers where a product or a system failed, the physical evidence itself, building violation and complaint histories, repair and inspection records, permits, and any recall notices.
On consequences, the case is built from the burn center and surgical records, the photographic record over time, the treating surgeon's opinion on future procedures, a life care plan where the injury is catastrophic, and, where a person cannot return to their work, an evaluation of what earning capacity was lost. Both halves have to be strong. A clear cause with a thin damages record still gets undervalued.
Generally three years from the date of the injury against a private person or company, and two years in a death case. Where a public agency such as the Housing Authority or the City is involved, a written notice of claim is usually due within about ninety days. Children have extended time, subject to limits.
The practical clock is shorter, because fire scenes are gutted and rebuilt and products are discarded long before any of those deadlines arrive.
No. Our burn injury lawyers handle these cases on a contingency fee basis, which means there is no fee unless there is a recovery. The first consultation is free and carries no obligation.
Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower carries the case so you can concentrate on treatment and on your family. Our burn injury lawyers:
Our burn injury lawyers prepare every case as if it will be tried, because that is what makes an owner, a manufacturer, and their insurers take permanent scarring seriously. A settlement on the right number is welcome. A settlement that shortchanges what the injury cost you is not one this firm accepts just because it comes early.
If you or your child was seriously burned, the evidence that proves what caused it is easiest to reach right now, and the record that proves what it cost you starts today. The consultation is free, and Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower does not get paid unless you do.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
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