Calculating Burn Injury Damages: Medical Costs, Pain, and Disfigurement

Burn injury damages encompass extensive medical treatment, permanent disfigurement, lost earnings, and profound pain and suffering. Calculating these damages requires understanding treatment costs, evaluating earning impacts, and quantifying non-economic losses. Serious burn cases often result in substantial recoveries reflecting the severity of these life-changing injuries.

Medical Expense Damages

Past medical expenses include all treatment from the burn injury through the present. Emergency care, burn center hospitalization, surgeries, rehabilitation, and follow-up visits all contribute to past medical costs. Serious burns routinely generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in initial treatment costs.

Future medical expenses project treatment needs extending throughout the victim's life. Ongoing scar treatment, revision surgeries, physical therapy, and medical monitoring continue for years. Life care planners create detailed projections of these future needs that economists translate into present-day values.

Prosthetics and adaptive equipment costs apply when burns require amputation or cause functional limitations requiring assistance. Lifetime equipment needs including replacements and upgrades contribute to total damages.

Lost Earnings and Earning Capacity

Lost wages cover income missed during treatment and recovery. Burn victims may be unable to work for months or years during initial treatment, surgeries, and rehabilitation. Documentation of pre-injury earnings establishes lost wage claims.

Lost earning capacity compensates for permanent reduction in ability to earn. Burns affecting hands, faces, or causing significant disfigurement may prevent return to previous occupations. Vocational experts evaluate how burns limit employment options and calculate lifetime earning impacts.

Economic experts project future lost earnings using work life expectancy tables, wage growth assumptions, and present value calculations. Young workers with decades of expected earnings face the largest lost earning capacity claims when severe burns prevent them from reaching their earning potential.

Pain and Suffering Damages

Physical pain from burn injuries is among the most severe in personal injury law. The burning itself causes extreme pain that may continue during healing. Wound care, debridement, and physical therapy involve ongoing painful procedures. Chronic pain from scarring and nerve damage may persist indefinitely.

Emotional suffering accompanies the physical trauma of burns. The psychological impact of disfigurement, the trauma of the burning incident, and the challenges of recovery all cause emotional distress. Many burn victims develop PTSD, depression, or anxiety requiring treatment.

Calculating pain and suffering involves subjective evaluation because these damages have no direct economic measure. Multipliers of economic damages, per diem approaches, and jury consideration of injury severity all factor into non-economic damage calculations.

Disfigurement Damages

Permanent scarring from burns supports separate disfigurement damages beyond medical costs. The emotional impact of altered appearance, effects on self-image and confidence, and social consequences of visible scarring all merit compensation. Disfigurement damages recognize that scars affect quality of life beyond their medical treatment needs.

Location and visibility of scars significantly affect disfigurement damages. Facial scarring is generally valued highest because the face is central to identity and constantly visible. Hand, neck, and arm scarring visible during normal activities also commands significant compensation. Scars hidden by clothing may receive lower valuations.

Photographs documenting scarring throughout recovery support disfigurement claims. Images showing wound severity, healing progression, and final scar appearance help juries understand the permanent changes burn victims endure.

Impact on Quality of Life

Loss of enjoyment of life damages compensate for activities victims can no longer perform or enjoy as fully. Sports, hobbies, and physical activities may be limited by burns. Social activities may be affected by appearance concerns or physical limitations.

Relationship impacts from burns affect family, romantic, and social connections. Intimate relationships may be affected by scarring. Parenting activities may be limited. Social participation may decrease due to self-consciousness about appearance. These impacts support loss of consortium claims for spouses and quality of life damages for victims.

Factors Affecting Burn Case Value

Burn severity including degree, body surface area, and location drives case valuations. Third-degree burns affecting significant body surface areas with visible scarring command higher values than limited, less severe burns.

Victim age affects damage calculations significantly. Young victims face more years of lost earnings, more lifetime medical expenses, and more years living with disfigurement. Child burn cases often value higher than similar injuries to older adults.

Defendant liability clarity affects settlement and trial values. Clear liability allows focus on damages. Disputed liability reduces case values even when damages are substantial. Multiple defendants may increase total recovery.

Conclusion

Calculating burn injury damages requires comprehensive analysis of medical costs, earning impacts, and non-economic losses. The severity of burns, extent of scarring, and victim circumstances all affect total damages. Working with medical experts, life care planners, economists, and experienced attorneys ensures that damage calculations capture the full impact of these devastating injuries.