Putting a value on a case is often difficult. Some accidents involve serious injuries that change the victim’s life for years to come, while others only affect you – however intensely – for a short time. Burns are one such example where the value of the case can swing drastically.
For a very serious burn injury, you should expect to get pain and suffering damages to account for the pain, numbness, disfigurement, and disabilities that you will suffer for the rest of your life. Many short-term burn injuries are also quite intense and should result in high-dollar pain and suffering, while lesser injuries might not be as high. In any case, you should also get all medical care costs and lost wages paid.
For a free case review, call our New York personal injury lawyers at The Carrion Law Firm today at (718) 841-0083.
What Damages Can You Claim in a Burn Injury Case?
In most injury cases, a “good” settlement will always account for these three areas of damages, though there may be more damages you can claim on top of these:
- Medical bills
- Lost wages
- Pain and suffering.
The “economic” damages – the ones that have a clear value or expense attached – are somewhat straightforward and cover your monetary costs and losses.
Most expenses have a bill or statement attached to show the cost. Others are based on money you no longer have coming in, such as lost earnings. We can compare your current income to what you made before the accident to figure out current and ongoing lost earnings.
Pain and suffering damages are based on the overall severity and the effects the injury had on your life, creating important factors we need to consider when calculating pain and suffering.
What Does Pain and Suffering Cover in a Burn Injury Case?
Burns are notorious for being one of the most painful injuries, but this is somewhat of a misconception. That can lead to confusing applications of “pain and suffering” to burn injuries.
How Painful Are Burns?
As a burn victim, you would know better than anyone how painful your injury was, but there are some important notes about burn injuries.
The burn itself is not always painful, especially for more severe burns. Third-degree burns may destroy the nerves, causing you not to feel anything. Instead, less serious first- and second-degree burns are often the ones that leave short-term pain.
In any case, the treatment for those burns is often quite severe, as skin grafts can be incredibly painful procedures. That pain of treatment is also included in the “pain and suffering” of your injury.
In any case, pain is only one part of “pain and suffering.”
Factors for Pain and Suffering
The idea of “pain and suffering” sounds straightforward: injuries that hurt more are worth more. But these damages actually account for much broader experiences, including any of the following negative experiences from the burn injury:
- Physical pain
- Mental anguish
- Emotional distress
- Disfigurement, especially to the face and other visible areas
- Disabilities, especially when burns cause loss of limb
- Lost ability, including lost touch or other senses/sensations
- Numbness, which is common with more severe burns
- Lost participation in activities
- Difficulty with activities of daily living
- Embarrassment
- Increased fear from the risk of reinjury, especially when brought on by numbness or other effects of the burns.
There may also be other factors we can incorporate into our arguments about how much your burn injury’s pain and suffering should be worth.
How Does the Degree of Burn Injury Affect Damages?
Burns are often classified in different “degrees” based on how much penetration the burn caused:
- First-degree burns affect just the first layer of skin (your epidermis)
- Second-degree burns affect the next layer (dermis) and often involve blisters and wetness
- Third-degree burns destroy all layers of skin and might cause less pain because the nerves are destroyed
- Fourth-degree burns also burn muscle, bone, and other tissue under the skin.
As discussed, some of these burns don’t hurt as much because the nerve endings are all burned away. However, they still cause serious pain and suffering:
- They cause disfigurement, lost sensation, and other permanent harm
- They often require painful medical treatment
- They often involve disfigurement
- They may take a long recovery time
- They may cause other permanent damage that requires additional pain and suffering damages.
Because of this, the classification of your burn injuries will be important when convincing the jury how severe your injuries are.
How Pain and Suffering is Calculated for Burns in New York
Our Staten Island personal injury lawyers may be able to apply some shortcuts to calculating the value of pain and suffering for certain burn injuries, depending on the degree of burn and what percentage of your body was covered. Otherwise, traditional calculation methods might also be available.
Pain and suffering is usually calculated two ways: a per diem method or a multiplier method. With the per diem method, we assign a per-day value – usually based on your income – to every day you faced pain and suffering. For the multiplier method, we choose a multiplier to reflect the severity of your injury and multiply your other damages by that amount.
Our attorneys can assess the pros and cons of all methods, adjust our demand up or down after initial calculations, and otherwise help you calculate a fair amount for damages.
Should I Accept a Settlement for My Burn Injuries?
You should never accept a settlement before having our lawyers review it. If you do, your case is over; you cannot undo a settlement or go back to court for more damages in most cases. This means you only get one chance to settle, so you should ensure you are comfortable with the amount before saying yes.
Our lawyers can use all of the information above, plus the medical records and other evidence in your case, to determine what a good settlement would be in your case. We can advise you, but the final decision of whether to settle or not is yours to make, not ours.
Call Our New York Personal Injury Attorneys to Get Started
For help with your potential case, call our Long Island, NY personal injury attorneys at The Carrion Law Firm right away at (718) 841-0083.