Phoenix Burn Injury Lawyer
A serious burn is one of the few injuries where the medical treatment can last longer than the legal case. Grafts, contractures, revision surgeries, and scarring that keeps changing for a year or more all happen on their own schedule, and the law does not wait for them.
The first question in a burn case is not how badly you were hurt. It is where the burn happened and who controlled that place, because the answer decides which body of Arizona law applies. A burn in a rental apartment, a burn behind a restaurant line, a burn on a jobsite, and a burn from a product that failed are four different cases with four different defendants and four different deadlines.
$50+ Million Recovered
Content Reviewed By: Derick Runion
Table of Contents
- Burn Depth Is the First Thing That Matters
- Who Is Responsible Depends on Where You Were Burned
- Do I Need a Lawyer for a Burn Injury Case?
- What To Do After a Burn Injury
- Why Injured People Choose Runion for a Burn Case
- Real Client Success Stories
- Frequently Asked Questions About Burn Injury Claims
- Talk to a Phoenix Burn Injury Lawyer
Runion Personal Injury Lawyers handles serious burn injury claims in Phoenix and throughout Arizona. Derick Runion spent years inside the insurance industry before he started representing injured people, and burn claims are where that background matters most, because carriers routinely undervalue scarring, contracture, and the surgeries that have not happened yet.
If you were burned because someone else was careless, the consultation is free and there is no fee unless we recover for you.
Burn Depth Is the First Thing That Matters
Burn severity is described by how deep the injury goes. Medicine increasingly uses thickness rather than degree, but both terms mean the same thing.
- Superficial, or first degree. The outer layer of skin only. Red and painful, no blisters. These generally heal in three to five days without significant scarring.
- Superficial partial thickness, or second degree. Into the upper dermis. Blisters, a wet pink base, and severe pain because the nerve endings are intact. These generally heal in 10 to 15 days with minimal scarring.
- Deep partial thickness. Into the deeper dermis. White or mottled, does not blanch, and often less painful because nerve endings were destroyed. These take roughly three to five weeks and produce significant scarring and contracture. Surgeons commonly excise and graft them.
- Full thickness, or third degree. Through the entire dermis into the fat. Leathery, dry, white to charred, and usually painless for the same reason. Grafting is required unless the area is very small. Permanent scarring and contracture are expected.
- Fourth degree. The term used when the injury extends past the fat into muscle or bone. Extensive debridement is required and amputation is sometimes unavoidable.
Two things about that list matter to your claim. A burn that hurts less can be the worse injury, and an adjuster who leans on your early pain reports is exploiting that. And the final scarring is not knowable for months, which is why settling a burn case early is almost always a mistake.
Burn depth descriptions above follow StatPearls, Acute and Chronic Thermal Burn Evaluation and Management, National Library of Medicine.
Who Is Responsible Depends on Where You Were Burned
Most burn cases fall into one of the situations below. The category is not a label. It determines who the defendant is, what has to be proven, and how long you have to act.
Apartment and Rental Property Fires
Arizona’s Residential Landlord and Tenant Act requires a landlord to comply with building codes materially affecting health and safety, to keep the premises fit and habitable, and to maintain all electrical, plumbing, heating and other supplied facilities in good and safe working order. A.R.S. § 33-1324(A). Faulty wiring, an unmaintained furnace, a water heater running dangerously hot, and a landlord-supplied stove that was never serviced all sit squarely inside that last duty.
Those core habitability and code duties cannot be signed away. The statute allows a landlord and tenant to shift some maintenance tasks by written agreement, but not work needed to cure noncompliance with the code and habitability provisions.
On smoke detectors, be careful with what you read elsewhere. A.R.S. § 36-1637 requires approved detectors in new residential units and in permitted remodels of sleeping areas. Once a detector is installed, the tenant is responsible for keeping it operable, but if the tenant gives the landlord written notice that it is malfunctioning, the repair becomes the landlord’s responsibility. Local fire and building codes can require more. Whether a detector claim works depends on those facts, so tell us what notice was given and when.
Restaurant and Commercial Kitchen Burns
Grease fires, fryer splash, steam, hot oil, and unguarded cooking surfaces injure restaurant customers and workers constantly. For a customer, the governing rule is the duty a business owes an invitee. The Arizona Supreme Court restated it in Perez v. Circle K Convenience Stores, No. CV-24-0104-PR (Ariz. Mar. 12, 2025): a business owner has an affirmative duty to make and keep its premises reasonably safe for customers.
That duty is not a guarantee. To show a breach, the injured person must prove the owner either created the unsafe condition, actually knew about it, or should have discovered and remedied it. Most of the fight in a burn case is over that third route, and it is won with maintenance records, prior incidents, inspection logs, and employee testimony rather than with the client’s memory.
Do not assume an obvious hazard ends the case. Arizona juries can be instructed that even where a condition was open and obvious, a person must still use reasonable care to correct, safeguard against, or warn of it if harm should reasonably have been anticipated.
Construction and Jobsite Burns
Arc flash, hot asphalt and roofing tar, steam lines, chemical exposure, and flash fires are jobsite burn injuries that tend to be severe.
If you were on the clock, workers’ compensation is generally your exclusive remedy against your own employer, your co-employees acting in the scope of their work, and the comp carrier. A.R.S. § 23-1022. The exception in that statute is narrow. It requires willful misconduct, which the statute defines as an act done knowingly and purposely with the direct object of injuring another. A safety violation, even a serious one, is not that.
What workers’ compensation does not bar is a claim against anyone else. A.R.S. § 23-1023(A) expressly preserves your remedy against a person “not in the same employ” whose negligence injured you. On a jobsite that frequently means another subcontractor, the property owner, or the manufacturer of the equipment that failed.
There is a deadline here that catches people, and it is not two years. Under A.R.S. § 23-1023(B), if you do not file suit against the third party within one year after the claim accrues, the claim is deemed assigned to the workers’ compensation carrier. The carrier can reassign it, but you no longer control that decision.
One caution so you are not misled: a general contractor that retained supervision or control over work that was a regular part of its own business can qualify as a statutory employer under A.R.S. § 23-902(B), which pulls it inside the comp bar. Whether that applies is fact specific, and it is one of the first things we look at.
Defective Products and Appliances
Water heaters without working thermostats, space heaters and patio heaters with no tip-over shutoff, pressure cookers, e-cigarette and lithium battery packs, fryers sold without adequate guarding, and flammable clothing and furnishings all produce burn cases against manufacturers and sellers.
Arizona defines a product liability action broadly. Under A.R.S. § 12-681(5), it covers injury caused by the manufacture, design, assembly, labeling or sale of a product, the failure to warn or protect against a danger in the use or misuse of the product, and the failure to give proper instructions. The definition of “product” expressly includes a component part, which matters when a single valve, thermostat or battery cell is the thing that failed.
The statute also puts the burden where it belongs. A.R.S. § 12-683 lists the defenses available, including state of the art, unforeseeable alteration, and unforeseeable misuse, and it requires the defendant to prove them.
Preserve the product. Do not return it, do not let anyone repair it, and do not let an insurer take it without a written agreement about testing. In a product case the item itself is usually the case.
Electrical and Arc Flash Burns
Electrical burns behave differently from thermal burns. Current travels through tissue, so the visible wound at the entry and exit points can badly understate the damage to muscle, nerve and organ along the path. Arc flash produces intense radiant heat and a pressure wave. Both frequently require imaging and monitoring that a routine burn does not.
Liability usually comes from one of three places: a property owner or landlord who failed to maintain wiring and equipment in safe working order, a contractor who energized or failed to isolate a circuit, or a manufacturer whose product failed. Cases involving overhead lines, transformers and utility equipment carry their own rules and evidence problems, and they are worth evaluating quickly because the physical scene changes fast.
Chemical Burns
Acids, caustics, solvents and industrial cleaners keep damaging tissue until they are neutralized and removed, which is why the injury often turns out to be deeper than it first appeared. Chemical burns show up in warehouses, car washes, pools and spas, salons, agriculture, and from consumer products used exactly as the label directed.
These cases are usually built on two theories at once. Against a property owner or employer, the question is what the hazard was, what protection was provided, and what training was given. Against a manufacturer, the question is frequently the warning and the instructions, which A.R.S. § 12-681(5) expressly makes part of a product liability action in Arizona.
Keep the container, the label, and the safety data sheet if you can get one. They are often the whole case.
Scalding Water and Hot Surfaces
Scald burns from tap water, coffee and other hot liquids, and from hot surfaces at hotels, gyms, pools and spas, are among the most common serious burns and among the most preventable. A landlord’s duty to supply and maintain hot water facilities in good and safe working order under A.R.S. § 33-1324(A) reaches a water heater delivering water hot enough to scald, particularly where children or older adults are foreseeable users.
For guests and customers, the business invitee duty from Perez v. Circle K applies the same way it does in a restaurant: the owner has to make and keep the place reasonably safe, and the fight is usually about notice. Thermostat settings, maintenance logs, prior complaints, and whether the property mixed a tempering valve into the system are the facts that decide these cases.
Do I Need a Lawyer for a Burn Injury Case?
Not every burn needs a lawyer. If you were treated once and released with no scarring and no lost work, you probably do not need one, and we will tell you that on the phone rather than sign you up.
You should talk to someone if any of these are true.
- You needed a skin graft, or a surgeon has told you that you might.
- The burn is on your hands, face, feet, or across a joint, where contracture affects function.
- More than one company may be responsible, which is nearly always the case on a jobsite.
- You were hurt at work and someone other than your employer may have caused it, because of the one year deadline described above.
- An adjuster has already contacted you, or has asked for a recorded statement or a medical authorization.
The reason burn cases go wrong is timing. Final scarring, revision surgery needs, and functional limits are not knowable for months, and an early offer is priced as though they are.
“It’s really important to hire a personal injury lawyer in Arizona because you have to think about who is on the other side, who the opponent is.”
Derick Runion
What To Do After a Burn Injury
- Get burn-specific care. An emergency room stabilizes you. A burn center evaluates depth, plans grafting, and documents total body surface area, which is the number that follows your case from here on.
- Photograph everything, repeatedly. The wound, the scene, the product, the equipment, the labels. Then keep photographing the wound weekly as it heals. A burn that looks survivable on day two and disfiguring on day sixty tells the story no report can.
- Preserve the physical evidence. Do not discard the heater, the fryer, the battery, the chemical container, or the clothing. Do not let anyone repair or take it without a written agreement.
- Report it, in writing. To the property manager, the landlord, or your employer, and keep a copy. If you were hurt at work, report it promptly so your comp claim is not contested for late notice.
- Write down who else was there. Witnesses move on from jobs and apartments faster than cases resolve.
- Do not give a recorded statement to any insurer before you have talked to a lawyer. In burn cases, early statements about pain are routinely used to argue the burn was shallow.
Why Injured People Choose Runion for a Burn Case
Burn claims reward preparation more than almost any other injury case. The medicine is complicated, the damages keep developing, and there is usually more than one company that can be held responsible. Here is what we actually do differently.
Arizona Law, Applied to Your Facts
Derick Runion is an Arizona personal injury attorney who litigates in Arizona state and federal court. Burn cases pull from several areas of Arizona law at once: premises liability, product liability, the workers’ compensation statutes, and landlord and tenant obligations. Which one governs depends on where you were standing, and getting that wrong early costs the case.
We Look for Every Responsible Party
In a burn case the most obvious defendant is rarely the only one, and is often not the one with meaningful coverage. A jobsite burn can involve a subcontractor, the property owner, and the manufacturer of the equipment. An apartment fire can involve the landlord, a maintenance contractor, and an appliance maker. We identify each of them before the one year third party deadline under A.R.S. § 23-1023(B) forces the issue.
You can review our case results and client testimonials to see how we have handled past matters. Past results do not guarantee a particular outcome in your case.
$40,000
- Slip and Fall
Our client, an elderly individual, tripped and fell on a poorly maintained section of sidewalk near West Arizona Rose Drive in Oro Valley, sustaining a broken nose and other injuries. Our firm initiated the Notice of Claim process against the responsible municipality and retained a mechanical engineering expert to evaluate the defect. Using time-stamped Google Earth imagery, we proved the hazard had existed long enough for the city to have repaired it. The claim resolved for $40,000, providing accountability for the unsafe condition and compensation for our client’s injuries.
$165,000
- Slip and Fall
Runion Personal Injury Lawyers secured $165,000 for a man who suffered a compound fracture to his tibia and fibula after stepping into a concealed pothole in a poorly maintained parking lot near East Bell Rd & 47th St in Phoenix. The property owner’s insurer initially denied liability, claiming the defect had been properly repaired. Our firm retained a premises-liability expert and used time-stamped Google Earth imagery and nighttime site photographs to prove the hazard had merely been resurfaced rather than corrected. Following these findings, the insurer reversed its denial and paid $165,000 to resolve the claim.
Support Through a Long Recovery
Burn treatment runs on a timeline nobody chooses. Grafts, pressure garments, physical therapy for contracture, and revision surgeries can stretch over a year or more. We keep the case moving at the pace of your medical care rather than pushing you toward a number before anyone knows what the scarring will look like.
No Fees Unless We Recover
The consultation is free, we advance case costs, and you owe no attorney fee unless we recover money for you. Our Net Recovery Guarantee means our fee will not exceed what you take home.
Real Client Success Stories
Below are examples of results our firm has obtained. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee or predict the outcome of any other matter.
Client Testimonials
Testimonials are an excellent way for you and your family to see how our team has helped former and current clients. Here’s what our clients have to say:
Top-notch service. The entire staff was professional, courteous, timely, and I am very pleased with the settlements my daughter and I received. Great team to work with!
D.
Frequently Asked Questions About Burn Injury Claims
How Long Do I Have To File a Burn Injury Claim in Arizona?
In most Arizona personal injury cases the deadline is two years from the date the claim accrues, under A.R.S. § 12-542. If someone died from their burns, that statute treats the claim as accruing at the date of death.
Two exceptions matter in burn cases. If a government entity may be responsible, a notice of claim is required within 180 days and suit must follow within one year, under A.R.S. § 12-821.01 and § 12-821. And if you were hurt at work and someone other than your employer is responsible, A.R.S. § 23-1023(B) gives you one year to sue that third party before the claim is deemed assigned to the comp carrier.
Deadlines in Arizona are shorter than most people assume and they turn on facts you may not know yet. Call before you rely on any of these numbers.
Can I Still Recover if I Was Partly at Fault?
Yes. Arizona uses pure comparative negligence. Under A.R.S. § 12-2505, a claimant’s own fault does not bar the case; it reduces the damages in proportion to that fault. Someone found 40 percent responsible for their own burn can still recover 60 percent of their damages.
The statute makes comparative fault a question of fact for the jury in all cases. It does remove the benefit where a claimant intentionally, willfully or wantonly caused the injury.
Expect the other side to argue you should have seen the hazard. In a burn case that argument is usually aimed at an obvious heat source, and it is answerable.
I Was Burned at Work. Is Workers’ Compensation My Only Option?
Usually not. Workers’ compensation is generally your exclusive remedy against your employer, your co-employees acting in the scope of their work, and the comp carrier, under A.R.S. § 23-1022. The statutory exception is narrow and requires willful misconduct, defined as an act done knowingly and purposely with the direct object of injuring someone.
But A.R.S. § 23-1023(A) preserves your claim against anyone “not in the same employ.” On a jobsite that often means another subcontractor, the property owner, or the manufacturer of the equipment that burned you. Those claims are separate from comp and frequently worth far more, because comp does not pay for pain, disfigurement or loss of enjoyment of life.
One complication to check early: a general contractor that supervised work that was a regular part of its own business may qualify as a statutory employer under A.R.S. § 23-902(B), which would place it inside the comp bar. That is fact specific.
What Is a Burn Injury Case Worth?
Anyone who quotes you a number before reviewing your records is guessing. What actually drives value in a burn case is the depth and total body surface area, where on the body the burn is, whether grafting was required, how the scarring matures, whether contracture limits function, the number of future procedures, lost earnings and lost earning capacity, and how the injury affects daily life.
The mistake we see most often is settling before the scarring finishes developing. Final appearance and function can take a year or more, and a case settled at month three is priced on a wound that no longer exists.
We will tell you honestly what we think your case is worth, and we will tell you if we think you do not need a lawyer.
Talk to a Phoenix Burn Injury Lawyer
Runion Personal Injury Lawyers offers free consultations for burn injury claims in Phoenix and throughout Arizona. There is no upfront cost, and no attorney fee unless we recover for you.
If you were burned at work, do not wait on the one year third party deadline. If a product caused the burn, preserve it before you call. If a landlord or a business was responsible, write down what you reported and when.
Call us or use the form on this page and we will tell you what we think, including whether you need us at all.
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Case Results
Over $50 Million recovered
$4,600,000
- Wrongful Death
Our law firm represented the surviving family members of a doctor who passed away tragically after receiving a fatal dose of a central nervous system depressant in a recreational setting. Despite the insurance company’s zero offer to settle pre-litigation, we secured a substantial recovery of $4.6 million for our clients.
$600,000
- Car Accident
Our client was involved in a serious collision while driving her vehicle, resulting in head trauma and other injuries. Runion Personal Injury Lawyers presented scientific evidence to link her aneurysm to the automobile collision and obtained a $600,000.00 settlement for the client.
What Our Clients Say
Great law firm. Very responsive and took care of me and all my needs, as well as consistently checking on me and how I was doing with my treatment. Derrick was outstanding, and I wouldn’t use anybody else and I recommend him to anybody else who needs an attorney. Thanks again Derrick!
Dillan G.
Runion Personal Injury Lawyers truly came through for me after my truck accident. Between my injuries, my wrecked car, and a shady trucking insurance company, I didn’t know what to do. Their team handled everything from start to finish, knew A LOT about Truck law in Phoenix, AZ and fought to get me the compensation I deserved!! I couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated and supportive group! ❤️??
Jessica J.
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