Legal Remedies for Negligent Burn Injury Treatment

If you have a burn injury and you have gone to the doctor for treatment, the doctor needs to treat that burn injury with competence and professionalism. If your doctor fails to treat you with a standard of care that a reasonable medical professional would have used, you can sue your doctor for negligent burn injury treatment.

Negligent Burn Injury Treatment

Negligent burn injury treatment is a form of medical malpractice, assuming of course that you went to a doctor or medical professional to get that treatment. This means it is governed under malpractice rules, which is a form of tort law. You will thus need to prove several elements in order to recover your damages for the negligent burn treatment you received:

• You need to prove that the care your doctor provided you with was unreasonably poor. If a reasonable doctor would have done something differently or more professionally or performed a better method of treatment, then this goes a long way towards proving this element. It is important to note that simply choosing an ineffective treatment method alone is not sufficient to recover for negligent burn injury treatment, nor is administering treatment that doesn't work. To recover for negligence, the doctor had to have actually been negligent or breached his duty of care.
• You must prove you were injured as a direct result of the doctor's negligence. This means that if the injury is from the burn itself, you won't recover. The action or inadequate care that the doctor provided must have directly led to either creating or worsening the injury
• You must prove you have recoverable damages. If you incurred additional medical bills, missed work as a result of the negligent treatment that you wouldn't have otherwise missed, suffered pain and suffering as a result of the care, or passed away as a result of the negligent care, then you (or your estate) can sue to recover those damages.

Limits on Recovery

Because negligent burn treatment is a form of medical malpractice, like other medical malpractice cases, your recovery may be limited by tort reform efforts. Certain states have put caps on non-economic damages in an effort to lower medical malpractice insurance premiums and thus lower the cost of health care. This means, for example, that if you live in California, you are limited to recovering $250,000 of non-economic damages from your medical malpractice claim.

Getting Help

If you suffered negligent burn injury treatment, you should consult with an experienced medical malpractice attorney who can help you to determine whether you have a case for negligence and who can help guide you through the process of proving your case.