A defective appliance, a chemical reaction from a product you bought, or an unsafe place of work: all of these can cause burn injuries with long-term consequences, both physical and psychological.
A serious burn is a devastating injury, demanding intensive medical care, repeated surgeries, and a long recovery. When a burn results from another party's negligence in Columbia, South Carolina, law may allow a claim for the full extent of the harm.
You can recover if you were 50 percent or less at fault, but burn cases require careful proof of how the injury happened and who is responsible. If you wonder whether you are owed compensation, contact The Arndt Law Firm; we represent burn injury victims across Columbia and Richland County.
Burn injuries arise from many sources, and to begin establishing responsibility, it is necessary first to identify the cause. Fires and explosions, whether in a building, a vehicle, or from a gas leak, are a common cause of severe burns, and they often involve questions of property maintenance, code compliance, or defective equipment.
Apartment and rental fires caused by faulty wiring, missing or non-functional smoke detectors, or other landlord failures are a recurring source of serious burns. A Columbia car accident lawyer can also cause burns when a fuel system fails, or a fire results from a collision on the I-20.
Vehicle fires connected to crashes carry their own data trail that bears on causation analysis. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, fire departments responded to an estimated 211,500 vehicle fires in 2024.
Additional data from the Fire Administration shows that roughly six in ten fatal vehicle fires resulted directly from a collision. Electrical wiring or cable insulation and flammable liquids in the engine area were among the most frequently identified sources of ignition.
Scald and contact burns are also common. Defective water heaters, scalding tap water at a rental in Wales Garden, hot surfaces, and industrial equipment cause burns when they are not properly maintained or guarded, and these often arise on property where an owner failed to address a known hazard.
Chemical burns result from exposure to caustic substances, sometimes through defective products or inadequate warnings, and electrical burns follow contact with faulty wiring, exposed conductors, or unsafe equipment.
Each cause points toward different responsible parties and different bodies of law. A burn from a defective product implicates the manufacturer, a burn on poorly maintained property implicates the owner under premises law, and a burn in a crash implicates the at-fault driver and potentially a vehicle manufacturer.
To identify who is liable and how the claim should be built, a burn injury lawyer in Columbia should first determine the precise cause and mechanism of the burn.
This is why a burn case begins with a careful reconstruction of how the injury happened, sometimes well before the question of who pays is addressed. A fire that appears at first to be accidental may, on investigation, be traced to faulty wiring a landlord failed to repair, a defective appliance, or a code violation, each pointing to a different responsible party.
A scald that seems like simple misfortune may turn out to result from a water heater set dangerously high in a rental unit. Responsible parties are determined directly from the physical cause, so the claim is built entirely on establishing exactly what happened.
Burns are classified by depth and extent, and the classification drives both the medical treatment and the value of a claim. First-degree burns affect only the outer layer of skin; second-degree burns extend deeper and cause blistering; third-degree burns destroy the full thickness of the skin; and fourth-degree burns reach into muscle and bone.
The percentage of the body surface affected, along with the location and depth, determines the seriousness of the injury and the intensity of the care required.
Severe burns are among the most painful and medically complex injuries, often requiring treatment in a specialized setting. Serious burns in the Columbia area are treated at Prisma Health Richland Hospital, the Midlands' only Level I trauma center, where burn care, skin grafting, and the management of complications are handled.
Treatment frequently involves multiple surgeries, skin grafts, intensive wound care, and a prolonged hospital stay, followed by months or years of rehabilitation.
The consequences of a serious burn extend far beyond the initial injury. Burns commonly leave permanent scarring and disfigurement, can cause lasting loss of function and mobility, and carry a significant risk of infection and other complications during recovery.
The physical and psychological toll, including chronic pain and the emotional impact of disfigurement, makes a serious burn one of the most life-altering injuries, and a complete claim has to account for all of these dimensions.
The extent and location of a burn matter as much as its depth in shaping both treatment and the claim. A deep burn over a large percentage of the body surface can be life-threatening and may require intensive care, while burns to the hands, face, joints, or other functionally and cosmetically important areas can carry disproportionate consequences to their size.
The South Carolina Department of Public Health has reported roughly 1,450 emergency department visits in the state in a recent year for unintentional, nonfatal fire-related injuries that ended in treatment and release rather than hospital admission, a figure that does not include the more severe burns requiring inpatient burn care.
The same source notes that a working smoke alarm can reduce the risk of dying in a home fire by an estimated 60 percent, which is part of why the absence or malfunction of smoke detection equipment is so often scrutinized in a rental fire claim in places like Shandon.
Burns to the airway from inhaling hot gases or smoke add a dangerous internal dimension that may not be visible at all. Because the medical severity of a burn is measured along several axes at once, the documentation of each is important both to the survivor's care and to establishing the full scope of the harm.
South Carolina's modified comparative negligence rule applies to burn injury claims, allowing recovery as long as the injured person was 50 percent or less at fault, reducing the recovery by their percentage, and barring it at 51 percent or more. The rule comes from the common-law decision in Nelson v. Concrete Supply Company (1991).
As in any injury case, the responsible party's insurer will look for grounds to assign fault to the injured person and reduce the recovery.
The fault analysis in a burn case depends heavily on the cause. If a defective product caused the burn, the focus is on the manufacturer's responsibility, and the injured person's conduct may be largely irrelevant if they used the product as intended.
If a burn occurred on property, the premises analysis of duty and notice applies, and where a crash caused the burn, the ordinary fault analysis of the collision governs.
Since even partial fault reduces the recovery, it is central to establish the responsible party's failure and to minimize any share attributed to the injured person.
The evidence of how the burn occurred, the condition of the product or property, and the injured person's reasonable conduct all bear on the allocation of fault, and developing those facts protects the recovery from being unfairly reduced.
In product cases, especially, a person who used an item as it was intended to be used has a strong position, because the law asks whether the product was unreasonably dangerous, not whether the user was perfectly careful.
Under South Carolina law, you may be owed compensation for an injury even if you are partially at fault. For that, you should be less than 51 percent at fault, and your recovery is reduced according to your share of blame.
A burn injury victim, under South Carolina law, may recover economic and non-economic damages.
Economic damages cover the out-of-pocket medical costs, including emergency treatment, surgeries, skin grafts, hospitalization, and the extensive future care that serious burns demand, along with lost wages and reduced or destroyed earning capacity when the injury prevents a return to work. For a severe burn, the emergency treatment alone can be enormous.
Non-economic damages are particularly significant in burn cases. Burns cause severe pain, and they frequently leave permanent scarring and disfigurement that affect a person's appearance, function, and sense of self, losses the law recognizes as real and compensable.
The disfigurement and the emotional and psychological impact of a serious burn, including the effect on relationships and quality of life, are central elements of a burn claim rather than afterthoughts.
Where the conduct that caused the burn was reckless, such as in a drunk driving accident around Five Points, punitive damages may be available.
They are recoverable for willful, wanton, or reckless conduct proven by clear and convincing evidence. South Carolina caps them at the greater of three times compensatory damages or 500,000 dollars under S.C. Code § 15-32-530, with some exceptions.
A burn caused by egregious disregard for safety, such as a landlord's knowing failure to address a serious fire hazard, may support a punitive award in addition to the compensatory recovery.
Liability for a burn injury depends on the cause, and identifying every responsible party is essential because serious burns generate costs that a single defendant may not be able to cover.
When a defective product causes a burn, the manufacturer, and sometimes the distributor or retailer, can be liable under product liability principles, which can apply regardless of whether anyone was careless if the product was unreasonably dangerous.
A defective heater, a flammable garment, or a faulty appliance points toward the chain of parties that put it into commerce.
When a burn occurs on property, the owner may be liable under premises law for a hazard they should have addressed, and you may need a Columbia premises liability lawyer.
A landlord who failed to provide working smoke detectors or who ignored a known electrical hazard, or a business that failed to maintain safe equipment, can be responsible for a resulting burn. If the burn is from a car crash, the at-fault driver and potentially a vehicle manufacturer enter the picture.
Other defendants can share responsibility depending on the facts. A contractor whose defective work created a fire or electrical hazard at a construction site in Melrose Heights or a utility responsible for a gas or electrical failure may bear liability.
OSHA's electrical safety standards require employers to protect workers from contact with energized equipment and to distinguish between qualified and unqualified personnel when assigning electrical tasks.
If you were hurt on the job, workers’ compensation is generally your only remedy against your employer under South Carolina Code section 42-1-540: you usually cannot sue the employer in tort. You may still bring a third-party claim, under section 42-1-560, against a separate contractor, manufacturer, or property owner who controlled the hazard.
It is important to note that an OSHA violation does not by itself create a claim. It can serve as evidence of the standard of care in a negligence action against a third party (such as a contractor or equipment owner) who controlled the hazard.
To reach a compensation that even begins to cover the extensive costs of a catastrophic burn injury, it is essential to identify every responsible party and every applicable insurance policy.
A serious burn is not a single event but the beginning of a long medical journey, and a claim that captures only the initial treatment badly understates the harm. After the emergency stabilization and the first surgeries, a burn survivor often faces a sequence of reconstructive procedures, repeated skin grafts, and ongoing wound care that can extend over years.
Scar tissue contracts as it heals, sometimes limiting the movement of joints and requiring further surgery and physical therapy to restore function.
The future-care picture is central to valuing a burn claim accurately. A life-care plan, developed with medical input, projects the cost of the future surgeries, therapy, specialized garments, assistive devices, and ongoing treatment a survivor will need, and an economic analysis quantifies lost earning capacity when a burn prevents a return to the person's prior work.
For burns that cause permanent disfigurement or loss of function, these forward-looking costs can dwarf the already substantial initial bills.
Burn survivors frequently experience significant emotional and psychological effects, including the trauma of the event itself and the lasting impact of visible scarring and disfigurement on daily life and relationships.
Mental health treatment is part of recovery, and state law recognizes this suffering as a real and compensable element of the claim. A complete burn case accounts for the whole arc of recovery, medical, financial, and psychological, rather than the snapshot of the initial hospitalization.
Burn cases require thorough investigation because the cause must be established with precision, and the evidence can be consumed or altered by the very event that caused the injury.
In a fire or explosion, the scene itself holds critical evidence about the origin and cause, and fire investigators, the fire department's reports, and physical evidence from the scene help determine what happened.
For example, if a faulty appliance causes a home fire in Elmwood Park, firefighters will put out the fire and, in that chaos, the cause of the fire might be harder to determine.
This evidence can be disturbed during firefighting and cleanup, so prompt preservation is important.
If a product caused the burn, the product itself is the central piece of evidence and must be preserved exactly as it was, because testing and analysis of the product can establish the defect.
It should not be discarded or altered because that can severely undermine a claim. Instead, it should be secured and preserved immediately. Maintenance records, inspection histories, and code-compliance documentation become important where property conditions or equipment are involved.
Medical evidence documents the severity and the future needs. The records from the trauma and burn care (including the classification and extent of the burns, the surgeries performed, and the projected future treatment) help establish both the injury and its long-term consequences.
Witnesses to the event and the conditions that caused it complete the picture. Because the deadline is three years under South Carolina Code section 15-3-530(5), but scene and product evidence can be lost quickly, the early investigation is decisive in a burn case.
The steps a survivor and their family take after a burn injury help protect both health and any claim. The priority is appropriate medical care, because serious burns carry a high risk of infection and complications that require specialized treatment.
Beyond that, preserving the cause of the burn is the key concern, and it often falls to family members when the injured person cannot act: keeping any product involved exactly as it is rather than discarding or repairing it, retaining photographs of the scene and conditions, and noting any fire department or official reports.
Victims should avoid giving recorded statements to insurers before understanding their rights, and should also keep a thorough file of medical records and expenses.
Every fire department in the state is expected to report fire incidents through the National Fire Incident Reporting System, and the South Carolina Office of State Fire Marshal compiles this data to track fire fatalities by county, cause, structure type, and other factors statewide.
This means that, alongside the local fire department's own incident report, there is often a parallel record maintained at the state level that can corroborate or clarify the sequence of events in a fire that caused a burn injury.
Finally, they should seek legal advice, since burn injury cases are usually complex, with time-sensitive evidence and, sometimes, with a long thread of responsibilities that has to be unraveled.
Burn cases in Columbia are filed in the Court of Common Pleas for the Fifth Judicial Circuit at the Richland County Judicial Center, 1701 Main Street.
| Burn cause | Likely responsible party | Governing framework |
| Defective product (heater, appliance, garment) | Manufacturer, distributor, retailer | Product liability |
| Fire or hazard on property | Property owner or landlord | Premises liability |
| Motor vehicle crash fire | At-fault driver, possibly vehicle maker | Negligence and product liability |
| Workplace or contractor-created hazard | Employer, contractor, or utility | Negligence; varies by circumstance |
Burns from fires, explosions, defective products, scalding water, chemicals, or electrical hazards can support a claim when another party's negligence or a defective product caused the injury.
Depending on the cause, a manufacturer, property owner, landlord, driver, contractor, or utility may be liable. Many burn cases involve more than one responsible party.
Severe burns require intensive, prolonged, and expensive care, and they leave lasting scarring, disfigurement, and pain, all of which the law recognizes as compensable.
Three years from the injury under South Carolina Code section 15-3-530(5). Against a governmental defendant, the deadline is two years, extended to three years if you first file a verified claim within one year, under section 15-78-110
Yes, as long as you were 50 percent or less at fault. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage and is barred at 51 percent or more.
The Arndt Law Firm handles burn cases on a contingency basis, meaning no fee unless there is a recovery. A free consultation is the usual way to discuss whether you have a claim.
At the Arndt Law Firm, we build every Columbia burn injury case by identifying every responsible party and applicable insurance, preserving all available evidence, and documenting the full cost of the injury. Attorney Jonathan Arndt previously defended insurers and institutional clients, so we understand how these high-value claims are evaluated and contested; we build claims to reflect the true cost of a catastrophic burn.
If you or someone you love suffered a serious burn in Columbia or Richland County, early action is essential. Contact us or call (843) 594-1861 for a free consultation; there are no fees unless we recover.
Last reviewed: June 2026
This page was reviewed by Jonathan S. Arndt, licensed in South Carolina since 2018.
