Burn injury attorneys in San Diego

Representative cases of Casey Gerry's burn lawyers

Severe burn injuries can be caused by a variety of factors, including unsafe product design, inadequate safety equipment, negligent maintenance, and gross misconduct on the part of other persons. As a full-service plaintiff’s law firm, Casey Gerry has extensive experience not only with burn injuries, but with defective product design, product liability, and negligence and misconduct. The firm’s deep and broad experience enables its burn injury attorneys in San Diego to deal successfully with every circumstance that can lead to severe burn injuries. Here are some of our San Diego burn injury attorneys recent cases:

Dangerous product design

Casey Gerry burn injury attorneys in San Diego represented a young woman who suffered severe burns and disfiguring scarring when her sleeping bag caught fire and trapped her inside.

She had gone camping with friends in the desert not far from Los Angeles and had borrowed a sleeping bag. At their campsite one of her companions built a campfire inside a rock fire enclosure. Before they went to sleep he was careful to see that the logs had burned down to ash. They placed their sleeping bag a safe distance from the fire enclosure, more than three feet, then went to sleep.

Despite their care, a spark blew from the fire and landed on our client’s sleeping bag. She was awakened by intense heat and excruciating pain in both her legs, and looked down to see that her lower body was engulfed in flames. She tried to escape the flaming bag, but found herself trapped: the polyester fabric of the sleeping bag had melted into pool of sticky molten plastic that covered both her legs and one arm. She could not peel the plastic off, and it continued to sear and destroy her flesh.

She was initially treated at the local hospital, then moved to a burn unit at a Los Angeles medical center. There burn specialists and surgeons provided state of the art burn care and saved her life. Third and fourth degree burns covered more than 40% of her body. She received numerous skin grafts plastic surgery and other complex and painful procedures. She was hospitalized for weeks, and at discharge she remained disfigured. She had previously worked in the film industry, and would never be able to return to that work.

She had also suffered a stroke during her hospitalization, a complication that often develops after severe burns. She required months of rehabilitation for the aftermath of the stroke as well as for her burns and the extensive scarring.

A Casey Gerry burn injury attorney in San Diego researched the design and construction of the sleeping bag, and filed claims against the store that had sold it and the company that produced the bag. They argued that the company, a major manufacturer of camping and hiking equipment, knew or should have known that their sleeping bags would be used on camping trips, and would be use around fires. Further they knew or should have known that the polyester that was used in this sleeping bag is highly flammable. It ignites easily and burns at high temperature, rapidly liquefying, and the molten plastic reaches temperatures of nearly 1000° F. The molten plastic clings to flesh and continues to burn it.

The manufacturer designed, built, and sold a product whose three layers—inner liner, filling, and outer shell—were all made of polyester that had the potential to ignite, liquefy, and burn the person using the bag. Nor was there any fireproofing added to any of the three layers, and the bag had no warning label about the serious risk it presented. This large manufacturer further failed to conduct any kind of flammability test which could have shown the very high risk it presented to purchasers. The failures to test and to warn compounded the manufacturer’s negligence.

The store, a major outdoor equipment retailer, was equally negligent in failing to test for flammability and selling a highly dangerous product to trusting customers. Store and manufacturer shared responsibility for a shocking level of negligence which led to terrible injury and trauma for this young woman.

Casey Gerry burn injury attorneys in San Diego consulted with a life care consultant to determine the costs and economic consequences of her injuries for this now severely and irreversibly disabled young woman. She needs daily help from certified nursing assistants to help her with exercise and other rehabilitative work, medication, and personal safety; regular visits from a registered nurse; psychotherapy to treat her pervasive Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; a housekeeper, and a financial trust officer who can review and authorize the expenditures.

Restaurant Staff Negligence

Casey Gerry Partner Robert Francavilla recently settled a case for a young woman who was severely burned in a restaurant. She had ordered a flaming dessert which was prepared tableside. The waiter, who had only prepared this dessert once before, used a 150 proof rum whose label explicitly warned that it was not to be used for flaming preparations. The waiter poured the rum into the pan while it was still on the open flame, and the rum exploded. The waiter panicked, and dumped the contents of the pan onto our client. The flames engulfed her, severely burning her arm, face, and upper body. She was transported by Life Flight to UC San Diego’s Burn Center, and there required extensive hospital care, including several large skin grafts. Despite state of the art care at the Burn Center, she has prominent scarring both at the burn sites and at the sites of the skin grafts. She and her pre-school age son, who was with her in the restaurant, have both suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, with persistent psychological symptoms of severe anxiety and panic, flashbacks, and sleep disturbance.

Casey Gerry’s burn attorney in San Diego argued that the restaurant was negligent in allowing an inexperienced staff person to prepare the flaming dessert, and that the waiter’s failure to read the label, and his dumping the flaming alcohol onto his client constituted negligence. The case was settled for a substantial sum, which will assist this young woman and her son, helping him to better cope with the aftermath of this serious and utterly preventable trauma.