Burn Injury Settlement Calculator, from your losses, your share of fault and your state's rules.
Estimate a burn injury settlement from your costs, scarring and recovery, see your state's filing deadline, and read the NIH on burns and their treatment.
How burn injury settlements are calculated
This calculator adds up the losses you enter, multiplies the injury losses for pain and suffering, and then applies your share of fault, your state's rules and any policy limit you give it. Here's what each step actually does to your number.
What the formula returns at these inputs
These are outputs of the calculator on this page, not settlements anyone received. Each row feeds the inputs described into the same formula the calculator runs, and the last column is the number it returns. We hold no dataset of closed cases, so we publish the formula working instead of figures we cannot source.
Every row is run in Arizona with no share of fault assigned to the claimant. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. Arizona is used because our state-law data records it as a pure comparative fault jurisdiction with no damages cap of any kind, so nothing here is clipped by a state limit and you can see the formula itself. Pick your own state in the calculator above and the number moves.
What a burn is, and its degrees
MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine's health site, describes burns this way.
“A burn is damage to your body's tissues caused by heat, chemicals, electricity” (MedlinePlus, Burns (Last updated October 10, 2024)), among other causes the page lists.
It names three degrees. “First-degree burns damage only the outer layer of skin” (MedlinePlus, Burns (Last updated October 10, 2024)); “Second-degree burns damage the outer layer and the layer underneath” (MedlinePlus, Burns (Last updated October 10, 2024)); and “Third-degree burns damage or destroy the deepest layer of skin and tissues underneath” (MedlinePlus, Burns (Last updated October 10, 2024)).
What a burn can do: “Burns can cause swelling, blistering, scarring” (MedlinePlus, Burns (Last updated October 10, 2024)), and in serious cases more. “They also can lead to infections because they damage your skin's protective barrier.” (MedlinePlus, Burns (Last updated October 10, 2024))
Treatment, and what it adds to a burn injury settlement
The treatment a burn needs sets the costs a claim adds up.
MedlinePlus on treatment: “Treatment for burns depends on the cause of the burn, how deep it is, and how much of the body it covers.” (MedlinePlus, Burns (Last updated October 10, 2024))
And: “For more serious burns, treatment may be needed to clean the wound, replace the skin, and make sure the patient has enough fluids and nutrition.” (MedlinePlus, Burns (Last updated October 10, 2024))
Each step is a cost to enter: emergency care and any burn unit stay, wound care and dressings, grafting or other surgery, therapy, medications, and later care for scars. Enter what you can show with bills or estimates.
How the burn injury settlement estimate is built
The calculator prices the claim from your figures and starts on the burn injury type, which you can change.
Enter the medical costs so far and ahead, the pay lost so far and the earnings the injury will cost ahead, then the severity, the length of recovery and your share of fault. The pain-and-suffering factor runs from 1.0x to 5.0x, and the injury type adjusts it.
Where we publish a general cap on non-economic damages for your state, the calculator holds pain and suffering to it; we publish one for four jurisdictions. Where a state has a cap we do not publish, the result says so.
Then it takes out a contingency fee, case costs and medical liens at fixed rates, which are stand-ins and not what your lawyer will charge. The result is a range, not a promise: a claim's value turns on its evidence, its insurance and the law of the state.
Documenting a burn
A burn changes over the weeks after it happens, so the record has to follow it.
Ask for copies of the emergency and burn care records, the notes of each surgery and dressing change, and the therapy records, with the dates. Keep the discharge instructions and every bill.
Photograph the burn and, later, the scar, with the dates, and keep a short record of pain, of sleep, and of what you could not do. Keep what caused the burn if it is safe to keep, such as a product or its packaging, and the names of witnesses.
Keep the records of work missed and of any change in duties or hours.
When the clock starts on a burn claim
The filing period is your state's general injury period, which the table below shows for every state.
The calculator counts from the date of the injury. A state's law can start the clock later in some cases, and this page applies none of that, so it never counts a later deadline for you.
How the burn happened can change the period. A defective product can run on a state's product period and repose, which the product liability calculator on this site shows, and a crash can run on a motor-vehicle provision. Where one of those fits, use the calculator for that kind of claim, which shows its period, and plan around the earliest date either shows.
If the burn happened at work, a workers' compensation claim runs on its own rules, which the workers' compensation calculator shows.
Before you settle a burn claim
This site is not a law firm, does not refer anyone to a lawyer, and cannot say what a lawyer would recover.
A settlement is final, and scarring and its treatment can take time to show their full extent. Before you sign a release, ask your doctors what further treatment is expected, and ask a lawyer who handles injury claims in your state whether the offer reflects the costs ahead as well as the bills so far.
Bring your medical records, your photographs and notes, your records of work missed, the insurer's letters, and the figure this calculator shows.
What actually moves your settlement
Two cases with the same medical bills can settle for very different amounts. These are the variables that pull them apart.
Burn injury settlement: filing deadlines by state
Once this deadline passes, your case is gone, regardless of how strong it was. The calculator counts each period from the date of the incident, and a lawyer in your state can confirm when yours began.
Do you need a lawyer?
- Minor injury only, no lasting impact
- Clear liability, soft-tissue injury with a fast recovery
- Insurer's first offer meets your documented damages
- You're comfortable negotiating and have time to document
- Any surgery, hospitalization, or permanent impairment
- Disputed liability, multiple parties, or commercial defendant
- Insurer is delaying, denying, or lowballing
- Policy limits exceeded or underinsured issues
- You're unsure what your case is worth, which is what this tool is for