We’ve all experienced minor burns growing up. Perhaps we learned painful lessons by touching the stove when it’s hot. Maybe you accidently grabbed the wrong end of your curling iron or spilled a little bit of boiling water. Burns can be minor, or they can be devastating and debilitating, deeply affecting a person’s overall quality of life. They can require much more care than simply running your hands under cold water. If you are a severe burn injury victim or the family member of one, you’ve experienced this suffering first hand.
You’ve experienced the disfigurement, the anguish, and the painful recovery. You’ve undergone surgeries and treatments to attempt to treat the damage. The emotional damage from the burn trauma, though, is not as tangible of a recovery. There is no set procedure to cure the trauma and stress one endures from an incident. Some scars, both visible and internal, will never truly disappear.
According to the American Burn Association, about 486,000 people sought medical care for burn injuries in 2016. 73 percent of burns occurred at home, 8 percent in an occupational setting, and 5 percent of those burns happened during a car, truck, or motorcycle accident.
The lawyers at Schlapprizzi Attorneys at Law have experience helping burn injury victims across St. Louis, including a recent home explosion on Pershall Road in Florissant, MO, that injured two men from the explosion and resulting fire.
If you have suffered a serious thermal or chemical burn from flames, products, or hazardous chemicals, your life may be altered. Burns are not only excruciatingly painful, but they can also leave life-long injuries, disabilities, and scarring that affect your everyday actions, possibly including your job, social life, and the ability to move around, regulate your body temperature, or susceptibility to reinjure your compromised and now vulnerable parts of the body.
Burns From Products
We don’t pay much attention to news of recalls until they directly affect us. Recalls of appliances and products are because of consistent injury claims. Many times, these injuries are burns, and they’re quite severe. Whether your injury was caused by your defective coffee-brewing system, a space heater, or another type of defective appliance, it is crucial that you speak to an attorney about what happened.
Many people shirk away from contacting an attorney because they believe that their injury may have been their fault. You were clumsy or used the product wrong. You didn’t take the right precautions. In many cases though, this is not true and is not the full story! Your appliance isn’t working properly, the installment, component parts, or operation is unreasonably dangerous and you’ve received a debilitating burn because of it.
Have you been burned by a product or received another injury? Learn more about product defect injuries and what steps you should take after being injured due to product liability.
Chemical Burns
When your job requires you to come in contact with or handle dangerous chemicals, you learn the proper procedures and complete your duties with safety in mind. Earning your living shouldn’t put you in unreasonable danger, though. Despite your efforts to stay safe, some elements are out of your control. Accidents involving serious chemicals can happen, leaving you with disfiguring burns and life-altering injuries.
Chemical burns can result from a number of situations and causes, with contributing factors such as:
- Length of contact with the chemical
- Inhalation or swallowing of the chemical
- Skin contact with the chemical (taking cuts and wounds into special consideration)
- Location of the contact (some areas of the body are more sensitive)
- Amount, strength, and concentration of the chemical
- If the chemical was in a liquid, gaseous, or solid-state
Burns resulting from heat can come from open flames, explosions, and heated metals (engines, furnaces, heaters, industrial equipment, stoves, electrical wiring or appliances, etc.). When you’ve been seriously burned, your abilities to work may be seriously compromised, leaving your family and your finances in a very vulnerable situation.
How will you pay your medical bills? Do you have any legal rights? Did this happen due to your negligence or your employers? Could the accident have been stopped?
Call a Burn Injury Lawyer Today
If you or your family member is suffering from a burn injury due to harsh chemicals or another occupational or workplace hazard, contact our St. Louis office. We have experience helping injured individuals just like you recover from your agonizing burn injuries. At Schlapprizzi Attorneys at Law, we want to help you move on with your life.
If you are suffering from serious burns and other injuries, you should not be suffering alone. You have questions—too many to count—and your family needs honest answers. The Schlapprizzi team wants to give you those honest answers. We will act with compassion, and fight for your family as if you were our own.
If you or a loved one has been seriously burned, causing you severe pain and possibly even disfigurement, contact an experienced and caring attorney at Schlapprizzi Attorneys at Law today. We will seek justice for you and your family, guiding you through each step of the legal process. Reach out to our St. Louis, Missouri, office today.