Burn injury cases present their own unique set of challenges even under the best of circumstances. Burn injury cases present themselves in many forms, including structure fires, construction site incidents, electrocution incidents, product defect, and product design failures, to name a few.

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When faced with a burn injury case, you are faced with a case that will contentious, expensive to litigate, and expert intensive. However, the earlier into the case an attorney is retained, the better off the litigant will be fore several reasons. One of the main reasons to retain an attorney early on is to preserve the evidence. Preserving the evidence, whether it be the accident scene or product, will allow an early and thorough investigation of the cause of the fire, electrocution, or product failure. Early thorough investigation as to the cause of the incident prior to the filing of the lawsuit allows you to focus your investigation and determine the viability of the case that will allow the potential for substantia l recovery and compensation to the burn survivor and/or family.

Due to the complexity of these cases, an initial review of the injuries and damages is crucial as generally speaking, these cases involve major injuries and thus present serious recovery challenges. In a perfect world, the burn survivor's testimony on the particular details of what took place that caused the incident in the first place will be important. However, often times as not, the burn survivor either has no recollection as to what happened or does not know what cause the fire, electrocution, or defect in the first place. Thus, the need for accident reconstruction by various types of experts. For example, in a structure fire, it is important to preserve the scene of the accident if possible and have a "cause and origin" expert investigate this fire scene to determine where the fire started and the cause of the fire. In other types of incidents, it may be necessary to reconstruct what took place by hiring various types of experts, such as electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, and perhaps a human factors expert to determine the cause of the incident. For example, if a power line is involved in an accident, it may be necessary to have an electrical engineer to go to the scene of the accident and take measurements of the height of the power line at the point where contact was made with the line and either the ground or structure that may have been involved, to determine whether or not there were any electrical code violations regarding the height of the line. It may also be important to determine the temperature at the time the incident took place to determine whether or not the power line had an excessive amount of sag which caused the line to be lower than allowed by law. This is a simple example of what is often times necessary in the investigation of this type of electrocution case. Each case requires its own analysis to determine what type of investigation and/or expert is necessary in reconstructing the accident and determining fault.

Depending on the nature of the way the accident took place, there may be several potential defendants, including public entities, premises owners, product manufacturers, private entities, such as general contractors, their subcontractors, and project managers. Often times it is necessary to identify who owned, controlled, and possessed the property, whether it be real or product at issue. Additionally, there may be multiple problems which caused the incident and thus multiple defendants; and if so, it is necessary to determine if each on its own presented a hazard or whether it was a combination that created the hazard. Next, you must establish how the defect or problem came into effect - who created it, how long it existed, whether there is a history of prior incidents or knowledge by someone in a position to have fixed it before the incident took place.

Another example would be an accident at a construction site which can be the result of a fire, an electrical failure, or perhaps a gas leak resulting in an explosion and fire. In these types of cases, it may be asserted that the potential defendant failed to maintain the area in a reasonably safe condition. In order for a burn survivor to prevail in this type of case, it must be established that: