A serious burn injury can change a person's life in an instant, bringing painful treatment, permanent scarring, and an uncertain road ahead. In 2024 alone, South Carolina recorded 1,450 treat-and-release emergency department visits for unintentional, nonfatal fire-related injuries.
When a burn injury is caused by someone else's negligence, the resulting claim can involve far more than immediate medical bills. Lost income, future treatment, disfigurement, pain and suffering, and other lasting consequences can all factor into the compensation a victim may be entitled to pursue.
At The Arndt Law Firm, we handle serious burn injury claims and understand how insurers evaluate these cases. With a results-driven approach, our firm is committed to helping Greenville burn victims pursue the compensation they may be owed under South Carolina law. Call us at (843) 310-4645 to schedule a free consultation.
Burn injuries arise from many sources, and identifying the cause is the first step in establishing who is responsible. Fires and explosions, whether in a building, a vehicle, or from a gas leak, are a leading cause of severe burns, and they can 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. Car accidents in Greenville can produce burns when a fuel system fails or a fire results from the collision.
Scald and contact burns are common in other settings. Defective water heaters, scalding tap water, 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. The precise cause and mechanism of the burn can indicate who is liable and how the claim should be structured.
This is why a burn case typically 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 a simple misfortune may have resulted from a water heater set dangerously high in a rental unit. Because the legal theory and the responsible parties follow directly from the physical cause, establishing exactly what happened is the foundation on which the entire claim is built, and getting it right at the outset shapes everything that follows.
In many burn cases, the cause investigation requires specialized expertise, because the origin of a fire or the nature of a product defect is not always apparent from the surface. Fire-origin investigators can examine a fire scene to determine where and how a fire started, distinguishing an electrical fault from a careless act from a defective appliance, and engineers can analyze a failed product to establish a defect.
This kind of investigation may turn what looked like an unavoidable accident into a clear case of a landlord's neglect, a manufacturer's defective product, or another party's failure. The cause of a serious burn must be investigated early because physical evidence, such as the fire scene, a failed product, or damaged wiring, can be quickly lost or altered. Promptly conducting an investigation can help determine whether the responsible party can be identified at all.
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 body surface area affected, along with the location and depth, determines the severity of the injury and the intensity of care required. The distinction between these degrees is not merely descriptive; it has real consequences for treatment and for the burn injury claim.
A superficial burn may heal on its own with minimal intervention, while a deep partial-thickness or full-thickness burn destroys the skin's ability to heal itself and requires surgical treatment, including the removal of dead tissue and skin grafting to close the wound. A burn that reaches into muscle, bone, or other deep structures can threaten the affected limb and require the most extensive reconstructive surgery.
Because the depth of a burn determines the kind of care it demands and the permanence of its consequences, the medical classification is a starting point for understanding both the survivor's road ahead and the value of the claim, and the records that document the depth and extent of the burns are central evidence in the case.
Serious burns in the Upstate typically begin at Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital, the region’s ACS-verified Level I adult and Level II pediatric trauma center, where a critically burned patient is stabilized. Definitive burn care generally happens elsewhere. Greenville Memorial does not operate a burn center, and South Carolina EMS trauma protocols route the most severe burns, including large body-surface burns, airway involvement, and burns with multiple trauma, to a burn center.
For Upstate patients, that usually means transfer to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, Georgia, or to the South Carolina Burn Center at MUSC in Charleston, the only burn center in the state verified by the American Burn Association. That transfer matters to a claim as well as to the recovery: it means records from two or more institutions, out-of-state treatment, and travel and lodging costs for family that belong in the damages.
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. A complete claim has to account for all of these dimensions rather than treating the injury as a wound that simply heals.
South Carolina follows a modified comparative negligence rule established through common law. In Nelson v. Concrete Supply Co., 303 S.C. 243, 399 S.E.2d 783 (1991), the South Carolina Supreme Court held that “a plaintiff in a negligence action may recover damages if his or her negligence is not greater than that of the defendant,” with the recovery “reduced in proportion to the amount of his or her negligence.” When more than one defendant is involved, the plaintiff’s negligence is compared with the combined negligence of all defendants.
This rule comes from a court decision, not a statute. S.C. Code § 15-38-15 is a separate statute that addresses how fault is apportioned among defendants; it is not the source of the rule that bars recovery when the plaintiff’s negligence is greater than the defendant’s.
As in other injury cases, the responsible party’s insurer may look for reasons to assign some fault to the injured person and reduce the amount of the recovery. The fault analysis in a burn case depends heavily on the cause.
Where 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. Where 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.
The comparative fault rule is a negligence rule. In a strict liability product claim under S.C. Code § 15-73-10, ordinary carelessness by the injured person is not a defense at all; South Carolina courts have held that contributory negligence "has no application to an action based on breach of warranty or liability for a defective product" (Wallace v. Owens-Illinois, 300 S.C. 518, 389 S.E.2d 155 (Ct. App. 1989)).
What does apply is S.C. Code § 15-73-20: a user who "discovers the defect and is aware of the danger, and nevertheless proceeds unreasonably to make use of the product" is barred from recovery entirely. That is a complete bar, not a percentage reduction, and it is why what the injured person knew about the product before the burn is often the contested issue in a product case.
Burn injuries generate some of the highest damages in personal injury law because of the intensity and duration of the care they require.
Economic damages cover the substantial 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 future medical costs 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 that 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.
Punitive damages require proof by clear and convincing evidence that the harm resulted from the defendant’s willful, wanton, or reckless conduct (S.C. Code § 15-32-520(D)). § 15-32-530 sets the limits in tiers. The base limit is the greater of three times compensatory damages or $500,000, a figure the Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office adjusts annually for inflation and publishes in the State Register.
The limit rises to the greater of four times compensatory damages or $2 million where the court finds the conduct was motivated primarily by unreasonable financial gain and its dangerous nature was known or approved by a managing agent, director, officer, or policymaker, or where the defendant’s actions could subject the defendant to a felony conviction.
No limit applies at all where the defendant intended to harm, has pled guilty to or been convicted of a felony arising from the same conduct, or acted while under the influence of alcohol or drugs to the degree of substantial impairment.
The availability of punitive damages can be significant in burn cases because the conduct that causes severe burns is sometimes genuinely reckless rather than merely careless. A landlord who was told repeatedly about faulty wiring and did nothing, a manufacturer that knew of a dangerous defect and continued selling the product, or a property owner who ignored a known and serious fire hazard may have engaged in exactly the kind of conduct punitive damages are meant to punish and deter.
Establishing this requires evidence of what the responsible party knew and chose to ignore, which is part of why the investigation into how the burn happened matters not only to liability but to the full measure of damages the law allows, since the same evidence that proves the recklessness also supports the punitive claim.
These punitive limits apply to private defendants. Punitive damages are not available at all when the responsible party is a government entity, which can include a public housing authority, a county or municipal water or gas utility, or a school district.
Under the South Carolina Tort Claims Act, recovery is capped at $300,000 for a single claimant’s loss from a single occurrence and $600,000 in the aggregate for a single occurrence (S.C. Code § 15-78-120(a)(1)-(2)), and no award may include punitive damages (§ 15-78-120(b)).
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.
South Carolina’s product liability statute, S.C. Code § 15-73-10, makes a seller liable for a product sold "in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer" where the seller is in the business of selling it and it reaches the user "without substantial change in the condition in which it is sold."
The rule applies even though "the seller has exercised all possible care," which is why a burn caused by a defective heater, appliance, or garment can support a claim without proving anyone was careless. Because the statute covers anyone who sells the product, the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer can all be defendants.
On a premises claim, what the owner owed depends on why the injured person was there. South Carolina still recognizes four classifications: adult trespassers, invitees, licensees, and children, and "the level of care owed is dependent upon the class of the person present" (Sims v. Giles, 343 S.C. 708, 541 S.E.2d 857 (Ct. App.)).
An invitee, such as a customer or a tenant in a common area, is owed reasonable or ordinary care for their safety; a social guest is owed less. Establishing the injured person’s status is therefore a threshold step in a premises burn case, not a detail.
A landlord who ignored a known electrical hazard, or a business that failed to maintain safe equipment can be responsible for a resulting burn. When a burn arises from a 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 or a utility responsible for a gas or electrical failure may bear liability.
An employer is generally not a defendant in a burn lawsuit. Under S.C. Code § 42-1-540, workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy against an employer that has accepted the Act, and it excludes all other rights and remedies against that employer at common law.
What a workplace burn can support is a claim against someone other than the employer: the manufacturer of a defective machine or chemical, an outside contractor, a property owner, or a utility. That third-party claim proceeds alongside the comp claim under S.C. Code § 42-1-560.
Because burn cases often involve several responsible parties, how fault is divided among them matters. Under S.C. Code § 15-38-15, joint and several liability does not apply to a defendant found less than fifty percent at fault; that defendant pays only its own percentage. A defendant whose conduct is willful, wanton, reckless, or intentional remains jointly and severally liable for the full amount.
For claims accruing after January 1, 2026, amendments under 2025 Act No. 42 also allow a defendant to place a nondefendant tortfeasor on the verdict form, subject to a 180-day disclosure requirement, with several exceptions, including that this does not apply where the cause of action involves strict liability.
When a burn is fatal, the claim changes form. A wrongful death action under S.C. Code §§ 15-51-10 et seq. must be brought by the personal representative of the estate for the benefit of the statutory beneficiaries, and its three-year deadline runs from the date of death, not the date of the fire (S.C. Code § 15-3-530(6)). A separate survival action under § 15-5-90 carries the decedent’s own claim for the pain and expense between the burn and death.
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 understates the harm.
After the emergency stabilization and the first surgeries, a burn survivor 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 joint movement and requiring further surgery and physical therapy to restore function.
The future-care picture is central to accurately valuing a burn claim. 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.
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.
The reason the future-care projection matters is that a serious burn imposes costs that continue for decades, long after the initial hospitalization that an insurer's early offer tends to focus on. A survivor with extensive scarring may need reconstructive surgery in stages over many years, pressure garments that must be replaced as they wear, ongoing physical and occupational therapy to combat contractures, and treatment for the psychological effects of the injury.
A young burn survivor may face a lifetime of such care. A settlement built only on the bills incurred to date, before this future course is understood and quantified, can leave the survivor without the resources to meet needs that will arise for years to come.
The psychological dimension deserves equal attention. Burn survivors commonly 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 the 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. This evidence can be disturbed during firefighting and cleanup, so prompt preservation is important.
Where 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. Discarding or altering the product can severely undermine a claim.
Maintenance records, inspection histories, and code-compliance documentation become important where property conditions or equipment are involved. A code or ordinance violation can do real work in a burn case through negligence per se.
Under Whitlaw v. Kroger Co., 306 S.C. 51, 410 S.E.2d 251 (1991), the injured person must show that the statute’s essential purpose is to protect against the kind of harm suffered and that the person is within the class the statute protects. A proven violation supplies the duty and the breach; causation and damages must still be proven separately. Note that some statutes expressly foreclose this route, so the code provision on which the violation rests matters.
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, establish both the injury and its long-term consequences.
Witnesses to the event and the conditions that caused it complete the picture. For the survivor and their family, 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.
The deadline is three years under S.C. Code § 15-3-530(5), but scene and product evidence can be lost quickly; early investigation is often decisive in a burn case.
Burn injuries in the Greenville area stem from the same general causes seen elsewhere, but the region's mix of housing, advanced manufacturing, and rapid growth shapes how and where they happen.
Apartment and rental fires are a recurring source of liability, where a landlord's failure to maintain electrical systems or to address a known fire hazard can lead to a catastrophic fire, and these cases raise premises and landlord liability questions that determine responsibility.
South Carolina law requires a landlord to comply with applicable building and housing codes that materially affect health and safety, and to maintain electrical and heating systems in good and safe working order under S.C. Code § 27-40-440.
Smoke alarms are treated differently. S.C. Code § 5-25-1330 requires an owner to install them, but § 5-25-1380 states that failure to comply with that article "does not create a cause of action for a per se statutory violation for liability, or for negligence-based liability, for death, injury, or damages."
A rental fire case therefore has to be built on the landlord’s other duties and on ordinary negligence, not on the smoke alarm statute, and the tenant’s written notice of the defective condition is usually the pivotal fact.
When a landlord ignores a tenant's reports of electrical problems or defers needed repairs, and a fire results, the records of those complaints and the maintenance history can establish the landlord's responsibility, which is why preserving any communication with the landlord about the condition of the unit is valuable in a rental-fire case.
The area's advanced manufacturing and industrial economy adds another dimension. Greenville sits at the center of an Upstate manufacturing economy with more than 250 automotive-related companies, and Michelin North America is headquartered here (Upstate SC Alliance). Plants and supplier facilities expose workers to molten material, chemicals, high-voltage systems, and industrial heat every day, which is where a share of the region’s most severe burns originates.
While workplace injuries can involve the separate workers' compensation system, a burn caused by a defective product or by a party other than the employer may support a separate claim against that responsible party.
Whether a third party, such as a product manufacturer or a contractor, bears responsibility is an important question in a workplace burn case. That third-party claim falls outside the workers' compensation system and can reach damages workers’ compensation does not pay, including pain, suffering, and disfigurement.
It comes with conditions. Under S.C. Code § 42-1-560, the action must be commenced no later than one year after the carrier accepts liability, and the carrier holds a lien on the recovery for the compensation it has paid or will pay, less reasonable and necessary expenses including attorney’s fees.
A settlement made without the carrier’s written consent for less than the total compensation is invalid as against the carrier. Handling the lien is part of what determines what the injured worker actually keeps.
Burns also result from vehicle crashes, defective consumer products, and other incidents throughout the area. Whatever the cause, the same approach generally applies: establishing precisely how the burn happened, identifying every responsible party, and documenting the full medical, financial, and human cost of an injury that is among the most devastating a person can suffer.
| 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 burn | Third party only (product manufacturer, contractor, property owner); NOT the employer | Workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy against the employer; separate third-party negligence or product claim |
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 S.C. Code § 15-3-530(5). If a government entity is responsible, the South Carolina Tort Claims Act applies instead: § 15-78-110 bars the action after two years from the date the loss was or should have been discovered, but if the claimant first files a claim under the Act, the deadline becomes three years.
Different timing applies when the burned person is a child. Under S.C. Code § 15-3-40, the period of minority is not counted against the deadline, and the five-year outer limit on tolling expressly excepts infancy, but the action must be brought no later than one year after the disability ends. In practice, a child’s claim runs to the later of three years from the injury or age nineteen. Because the computation is fact-specific, a parent should not assume a deadline has passed without having it checked.
A Greenville burn injury lawsuit is filed in the Greenville County Court of Common Pleas, the civil side of the circuit court for the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, which covers Greenville and Pickens counties, at 305 East North Street in Greenville. A case that belongs in federal court is heard in the Greenville Division of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, at the Carroll A. Campbell, Jr. United States Courthouse, 250 East North Street.
At The Arndt Law Firm, we start every Greenville burn injury case the same way: pinpoint exactly how the burn happened, identify every party who bears responsibility and the insurance that applies to each, and move quickly to preserve the scene and product evidence before it disappears. Then, we document the full impact of the injury, medical, financial, and personal.
Attorney Jonathan Arndt has experience defending insurers and institutional clients, so our firm knows firsthand how these high-value claims get evaluated and challenged from the other side, and builds each case to withstand that scrutiny and reflect the true cost of a catastrophic burn.
If you or someone you love suffered a serious burn in Greenville or elsewhere in Greenville County, don't wait to act. The evidence that proves how the injury happened and who's liable is usually at its clearest in the days right after the injury, but it can fade or disappear. Consultations are free, and we handle burn injury cases on contingency; you owe nothing unless we recover for you. Contact us to talk about what happened.
Last reviewed: June 2026
This page was reviewed by Jonathan S. Arndt, licensed in South Carolina since 2018.
Content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed South Carolina attorney for guidance specific to your situation.
