Attorney Michael Rehm - (916) 233-7346
Burn injuries are among the most painful injuries a person can survive. They are also among the most expensive to treat. Approximately 29,165 people are admitted to burn centers in the United States each year — about 88.5 admissions per million people. The survival rate at verified burn centers is 97.7 percent, which means the majority of serious burn victims live with the consequences of their injuries for the rest of their lives: permanent scarring, contracture, reconstructive surgeries, chronic pain, and the psychological weight of a changed appearance.
When a burn is caused by someone else's negligence — a vehicle fire, a defective product, a landlord who ignored faulty wiring, an employer who failed to maintain safe conditions — California law allows the injured person to recover for the full extent of what the injury has cost and will cost. Attorney Michael Rehm handles burn injury cases in Sacramento County.
What You Can Recover
California law provides for both economic and noneconomic damages in burn injury cases. In catastrophic burn cases, the damages claim is often the most complex part of the litigation — and the most important.
Economic damages include past and future medical expenses, lost earnings, and impaired earning capacity. Burn treatment is expensive at every stage: acute care in a verified burn center, multiple surgical procedures including skin grafting, infection management, critical care monitoring, and then a long course of physical therapy and rehabilitation. For serious burns requiring surgery and prolonged ventilation — which account for approximately 4.4 percent of burn center admissions — the mortality rate rises to 17.8 percent. Those who survive face cumulative medical costs that can extend for years or decades.
Future medical expenses must be proven with reasonable certainty under California Civil Code § 3283. In a serious burn case, this typically requires a life care planner to project the cost and scope of ongoing reconstructive surgeries, wound care, pressure garment therapy, scar management, and psychological treatment. Those projections must then be reduced to present value by an economist. The standard for past medical expenses follows Howell v. Hamilton Meats & Provisions, Inc. (2011) 52 Cal.4th 541 — the plaintiff recovers the lesser of the amount billed or the amount actually paid or incurred.
Noneconomic damages include pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life. In burn cases, disfigurement stands on its own as a compensable element. Permanent scarring — across the face, hands, or body — causes humiliation, embarrassment, insecurity, and anxiety that the law recognizes as real losses. Under California law, the trier of fact can assess these damages from the disfigurement itself (CACI 3905A). There is no statutory cap on noneconomic damages in personal injury cases in California.
Loss of consortium is an independent claim available to the spouse or registered domestic partner of a seriously injured burn victim when the injury has damaged the marital or domestic partnership relationship — including companionship, affection, and intimacy. It is a separate tort under California law (Civil Code § 1714, CACI 3920).
Economic damages are subject to joint and several liability. Noneconomic damages are allocated severally under Civil Code § 1431.2 (Proposition 51) — each defendant pays their proportionate share.
How Burn Injury Claims Work
Most burn injury claims rest on one of three legal theories: negligence, product liability, or premises liability. The facts of the injury determine which applies — and often more than one theory applies at once.
Negligence
Under Civil Code § 1714(a), every person is responsible for injury caused to another by want of ordinary care or skill. In burn cases, negligence is the primary theory when the burn results from a motor vehicle crash — vehicle fires following fuel system ruptures or post-collision ignition — or from an employer's failure to maintain safe working conditions. The plaintiff must prove duty, breach, causation, and damages (CACI 400, CACI 401).
California's burn admission data shows that flash and flame burns account for 41.7 percent of admissions, scalds 32.2 percent, contact burns 10.8 percent, chemical burns 3.7 percent, and electrical burns 2.9 percent. Each cause implicates a different liability theory and a different set of potential defendants.
Product Liability
When a burn results from a defective product — a lithium-ion battery that ignites, a defective appliance, a gas line with a manufacturing flaw, faulty electrical equipment — California's strict product liability doctrine applies. Under Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. (1963) 59 Cal.2d 57, a manufacturer is strictly liable when a product causes injury during reasonably foreseeable use. The plaintiff does not have to prove the manufacturer was careless. The defect and the causation are the issues.
Strict liability in burn cases can be based on a manufacturing defect (the specific unit deviated from design), a design defect (the product's design was unreasonably dangerous), or a failure to warn (the manufacturer failed to disclose known risks of fire or thermal injury). Every company in the distribution chain — manufacturer, distributor, and retailer — is subject to liability. Vandermark v. Ford Motor Co. (1964) 61 Cal.2d 256.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission maintains a public database of product recalls. If a product that caused a burn has been recalled, that recall is evidence of a known defect — and significantly affects how the case is valued.
Premises Liability
Landowners and possessors of land owe a nondelegable duty to put and maintain their premises in reasonably safe condition. When a residential or commercial fire is caused by faulty wiring, a defective heating system, the absence of working smoke detectors, or other property conditions the owner knew about or should have known about, the owner is liable for the injuries that result. This applies to landlords, property management companies, and commercial property owners alike.
The duty is nondelegable — meaning a property owner cannot escape liability by pointing to a contractor or maintenance company they hired to handle repairs. Brown v. George Pepperdine Found. (1943) 23 Cal.2d 256, 259–260. If the condition was dangerous and the owner had the ability and responsibility to correct it, the owner is liable regardless of who they delegated the work to.
Punitive damages are available where the defendant's conduct constitutes malice, oppression, or fraud under Civil Code § 3294. Clear and convincing evidence is required. In burn cases, this standard can be met when a property owner ignored repeated complaints about defective electrical systems, when a manufacturer concealed known fire risks, or when an employer was aware of serious hazards and did nothing. The standard requires showing despicable conduct with willful and conscious disregard of the rights or safety of others (CACI 3940). Government entities are immune from punitive damages under Government Code § 818.
Sacramento's Burn Center
When a serious burn occurs in Sacramento or anywhere in inland Northern California, the patient is almost always transported to the Firefighters Burn Institute Regional Burn Center at UC Davis Medical Center, 2315 Stockton Boulevard, Sacramento. It is the largest burn center in Northern California and the only burn center in inland Northern California and the Central Valley verified by the American Burn Association. Fewer than half of the 125 hospitals with burn centers in the United States hold ABA verification.
The center operates a 12-bed ICU and admits approximately 700 burn patients per year — adult and pediatric combined. Pediatric patients with severe burns are often treated in collaboration with Shriners Hospitals for Children Northern California, 2425 Stockton Boulevard, Sacramento.
The UC Davis Burn Center was established in January 1974 — founded in direct response to the catastrophic 1972 airplane crash in Sacramento that killed 22 people and severely burned dozens more. For more than fifty years, it has been the regional referral center for the most serious burn injuries across a 33-county, 6-million-resident area of inland Northern California and the Central Valley.
The burn center medical records — acute care documentation, surgical reports, wound care progression, rehabilitation notes — are the evidentiary core of a burn injury damages case. The gap between initial presentation and the long-term prognosis for reconstructive surgeries, scar management, and functional recovery is where the lifetime damages are established.
Statute of Limitations
California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 sets a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims. The clock generally begins on the date of injury.
As with other catastrophic injuries, burn victims who are hospitalized and incapacitated following their injury may have the limitations period tolled under California Code of Civil Procedure § 352(a). The statute of limitations does not run during any period in which the plaintiff lacks the legal capacity to bring the action due to physical or mental incapacity. A burn victim who is sedated in the ICU, undergoing multiple surgeries, or otherwise incapacitated is not expected to file a lawsuit during that period.
If a government entity is involved — a public agency vehicle, a publicly owned building, a government employer — a separate claim must be filed within six months of the date of injury under Government Code § 911.2. Missing this deadline is generally fatal to the claim. If a government entity may have contributed to the burn — through a poorly maintained public facility, a government vehicle, or any other public agency involvement — call immediately.
Filing a Burn Injury Case in Sacramento
Burn injury cases in Sacramento County are filed at the Gordon D. Schaber Sacramento County Courthouse, 720 Ninth Street, Sacramento. Cases involving catastrophic burns — multiple defendants, competing expert testimony, extensive medical records, and large damages — frequently warrant complex civil designation under California Rules of Court, Rule 3.400. Complex designation assigns the case to a single judge for its full duration, which typically results in more structured management of expert witness disputes and discovery.
Serious burn cases require multiple retained experts: a burn surgeon or rehabilitation specialist to establish the prognosis and future care needs; a life care planner to project ongoing treatment costs; a vocational expert where earning capacity has been affected; and an economist to reduce future damages to present value. The time to identify and retain those experts is before the statute of limitations runs — not after.
Attorney Michael Rehm handles burn injury cases throughout Sacramento County on a contingency fee basis. No fee without a recovery. Call (916) 233-7346 for a free consultation — home visits, and hospital visits available.