There is no pain like a severe burn. Burn injuries – whether from scalding, fire, explosion, chemical exposure or electrical contact – are unique in their permanence and psychological harm from visible scarring. They are also among the most expensive injuries in personal injury law. A single admission to a burn center can run into six figures before the first graft, and the treatment continues for years through scar revision, compression therapy and reconstruction. We build these cases around what the injury will actually cost over a lifetime, not what an insurer offers in the first ninety days.
Whether the fault lies with a property owner, a landlord, a product manufacturer, a utility, or a contractor working on a job site. Chalat Hatten & Banker has represented seriously injured Coloradans since 1987, with a particular understanding of the severe harms caused by second and third degree burns. We handle burn cases on a contingency fee basis, so there is no fee unless we recover money for you.
If you have been seriously injured in an accident, contact us for a 100% free consultation.
A defective product, an unmaintained property, an unsafe job site or a missed safety code can all establish fault.
You do not need to. Determining origin and cause is part of the investigation, and it often requires preserving evidence before it is repaired or discarded.
Claims involving burn center admission, grafting or lasting scarring carry materially different value than minor burns treated once.
Most Colorado burn claims must be filed within two years, and some within three, but the need to preserve evidence often requires us to act as soon as possible. It is best to talk with a burn injury lawyer as quickly as possible to ensure the preservation of evidence.
Burn severity is described two ways: by depth, which determines whether the skin can heal on its own, and by total body surface area, which determines how the injury is treated and how dangerous it is. Both drive what a claim is worth, because depth predicts permanent scarring and surface area predicts the length and cost of treatment.
| Classification | Depth | Typical Treatment | What It Means for Your Claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| First degree (superficial) | Outer layer of skin only | Heals on its own within days | Rarely supports a significant claim on its own |
| Second degree, superficial partial thickness | Into the upper dermis | Dressings and wound care, healing in two to three weeks | Usually heals without permanent scarring |
| Second degree, deep partial thickness | Into the lower dermis | Often requires skin grafting | Permanent scarring is common, disfigurement damages apply |
| Third degree (full thickness) | Through the dermis into fat | Surgical excision and grafting | Permanent scarring, contractures, years of revision surgery |
| Fourth degree | Into muscle, tendon, or bone | Extensive reconstruction, sometimes amputation | Catastrophic, a life care plan is typically required |
| Inhalation injury | Airway and lungs | Intubation and ICU care | Raises mortality risk and treatment cost sharply at any surface area |
Burns come from very different accidents, and the cause determines who is responsible. A fire in a rental unit is a landlord case. A battery that ignites is a product case. An arc flash on a job site may be a claim against a contractor rather than an employer. We handle all of them.
A fire in a rental unit is a premises liability case under CRS 13-21-115, and tenants are almost always invitees, which carries the highest duty a property owner owes. These cases turn on what the landlord knew: prior complaints about the wiring, a smoke detector never replaced, an exit blocked when the fire started. Code violations often establish the negligence outright.
Explosions rarely have one cause. A leak becomes a blast because of a failure somewhere in the chain: odorant that did not warn, a line struck during excavation, a failed regulator, an unlicensed installation. These cases are proven with records that existed before the explosion, including locate tickets, service logs, and inspection history.
Electrical burns damage tissue along the entire path the current travels, so the visible wound usually understates the injury badly. On a job site, the responsible party is often not your employer but another contractor who energized a circuit, skipped lockout, or left a panel unguarded. Overhead line cases turn on clearance requirements.
Chemical burns keep destroying tissue until the substance is removed, so severity often depends on the first few minutes rather than the strength of the chemical. Most claims run on failure to warn: a label that did not communicate the hazard, a missing safety data sheet, or a workplace with no eyewash station.
Scalds are the most common burn injury among young children, and most are preventable with a thermostat setting. Water at 140 degrees can cause a full thickness burn on a child in seconds. At 120 degrees it takes minutes. These cases turn on the delivered temperature and whether an anti-scald valve was working.
Colorado product liability law covers design defects, manufacturing defects, and failure to warn, without proof the manufacturer was careless. Lithium-ion batteries are the fastest growing category, because a failed cell goes into thermal runaway and burns hotter than ordinary extinguishers can stop. Preserving the product is essential.
When a collision turns into a fire there are often two claims. One against the driver who caused the crash, and a crashworthiness claim against the manufacturer on the theory that the vehicle should not have burned in a survivable collision. Preserving the vehicle before salvage usually decides whether that second claim exists.
Workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy against your own employer, but it does not bar a claim against anyone else, and on most job sites there is someone else. Compensation pays medical bills and a fraction of lost wages. It pays nothing for pain, disfigurement, or loss of quality of life, which for a burn survivor is most of what was lost. A third-party claim can recover all of it.
Burn cases are won or lost on evidence that disappears quickly. A damaged apartment gets repaired. A failed appliance goes in a dumpster. A vehicle gets released to salvage and crushed. Once that happens, proving what caused the fire becomes far harder and sometimes impossible.
If you were burned recently and the scene has not been repaired yet, that is the most time-sensitive part of your case. Call before it changes.
Three things decide whether a burn claim can be brought and what it can recover: how long you have to file, whether you were partly at fault, and whether a damages cap applies. Colorado law on all three changed recently enough that a lot of published information is out of date.
Most burn injury claims in Colorado must be filed within two years of the injury. If the burn arose from a motor vehicle, the deadline is three. Claims against a city, county, or other public entity are different and far shorter: written notice is required within 182 days, and missing it can end the claim entirely.
| Claim Type | Deadline | Statute |
|---|---|---|
| Most personal injury claims | 2 years | CRS 13-80-102 |
| Claims arising from a motor vehicle | 3 years | CRS 13-80-101 |
| Claims against a public entity | 182-day written notice | Colorado Governmental Immunity Act |
The public entity deadline matters more in burn cases than in most others, because fires and explosions involving municipal utilities, public housing, and city-owned property are common. If a government entity may be involved, the clock is much shorter than two years.
Colorado limits noneconomic damages, meaning compensation for pain, suffering, and loss of quality of life. It does not limit economic damages, so medical bills, future care, and lost earning capacity are not capped. There is also no limit on damages for disfigurement. In a burn case with visible scars, this is often the most severe element of the harm.
House Bill 24-1472 raised the noneconomic damages cap from $250,000 to $1.5 million for civil actions filed on or after January 1, 2025. The wrongful death cap was set at $2.125 million on the same schedule. Both figures adjust for inflation beginning January 1, 2028, and every two years after that.
A great deal of information published before 2025 still quotes the old $250,000 figure. If you have been told your case is worth less than it is because of a cap, that advice may be based on law that no longer applies.
Colorado follows modified comparative negligence under CRS 13-21-111. If you are found partly responsible, your recovery is reduced by your share of the fault. If you are found 50 percent or more responsible, you recover nothing.
This is where most of the fight happens in burn cases. Insurers routinely argue that the injured person ignored a warning label, used a product in a way it was not intended, disregarded a posted sign, or should have noticed the hazard. Those arguments are frequently overstated, and pushing back on them is a large part of the work.
For fires, scalds, and explosions on someone else’s property, CRS 13-21-115 sets the duty the owner owed based on your legal status when you were injured.
The cost of a serious burn does not stop when the hospital discharges you. Scar revision surgery continues for years. Contractures require repeat procedures. Compression garments get replaced. An early settlement offer is almost always built on the bills that exist the day it is made, not the bills that are still coming.
These are the measurable costs, and in catastrophic burn cases they are usually a significant part of the claim. There is no cap on economic damages in Colorado.
These compensate for how the injury changed your body, your self perception, and the way that you are perceived by others. There is no cap on disfigurement damages in Colorado
These compensate for pain you have had to endure as a result of the burns. Colorado limits damages in this category, though the cap was raised substantially for claims filed on or after January 1, 2025.
Where a fire or explosion was fatal, the claim becomes a wrongful death case brought by the family, which follows different rules on who may sue and what may be recovered.
The UCHealth Burn and Frostbite Center at Anschutz has been Colorado’s burn center since 1976 and is the only American Burn Association verified adult burn facility in the state and the Rocky Mountain region. It is also the only hospital in the region with both that verification and a Level I trauma designation, which matters because the most severe burns usually arrive with other traumatic injuries. Pediatric burns are generally treated at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Seriously burned patients from across Colorado are routinely transferred to Denver for care, which is one reason we handle these cases statewide rather than only along the Front Range.
Burn treatment generates bills faster than any case resolves, and several parties may claim a share of whatever you eventually recover. Handling those claims properly is often the difference between a good settlement figure and a good outcome.
We identify every lien early, challenge the ones that are improper or inflated, and negotiate the rest down before the case resolves.