Syracuse Burn Injury Lawyers

A serious burn is one of the few injuries where the treatment is as hard as the event that caused it. Weeks in a burn unit, surgeries to remove dead tissue and cover the wound, dressing changes that hurt every time, months of therapy to keep a healing joint moving, and scars that change how you look and how you feel about being seen. If you were burned in New York because a landlord ignored a fire hazard, a product failed, a worksite was run carelessly, or a chemical was mishandled, the law lets you hold that party accountable for all of it, not just the hospital bill.

Porter Law Group represents burn victims and their families across New York State, from Syracuse and Central New York to Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, and New York City. We work with burn surgeons, fire cause and origin investigators, engineers, life care planners, and mental health providers to establish how the injury happened and what the rest of your life is going to require. Consultations are free, and we handle burn injury cases on a contingency fee basis, so there is no fee unless we win.

Why Choose Porter Law Group for a New York Burn Injury Claim

Burn claims are difficult in a way most injury cases are not, because the true cost of the injury stays unknown for a long time. A plastic surgeon cannot say how many reconstructive procedures a scar will need until it has matured, and that takes a year or more. Insurers understand the timing perfectly, which is why offers often arrive early, while the client is still in a hospital bed and frightened about money. Accepting one closes the claim before anyone knows what the next twenty years of care will cost.

When a Burn Injury Case Needs a Lawyer

Not every burn becomes a lawsuit. You should speak with an attorney when any of the following applies:

• The burn required a hospital stay, surgery, a skin graft, or treatment at a burn center.
• Scarring is visible, or the burn crosses a joint, a hand, the face, or the neck.
• A fire, explosion, or flash burn happened in a rented apartment, a hotel, a workplace, or a business.
• A product, appliance, heater, battery, or vehicle was involved, and the item still exists.
• You inhaled smoke or hot gases, or you were treated for carbon monoxide exposure.
• An adjuster has asked for a recorded statement, a broad medical authorization, or a signature on a release.
• Someone died in the same fire or explosion.

Statewide Reach With a Syracuse Base

Porter Law Group is headquartered in Syracuse and maintains six offices across New York State. That combination matters in burn cases, because the medicine is regional and the proof is local. Serious burns in Central New York are treated at the burn center at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, while the fire investigation file sits with a local fire department, the code violation history sits with a city or town building department, and the lawsuit is filed in the Supreme Court of the county where the fire happened.

How We Handle Burn Injury Cases

We move on the physical evidence first, because it disappears fastest. Fire scenes are gutted and rebuilt, damaged appliances go to the curb, and vehicles are sold for salvage. We send preservation demands, arrange for an engineer to examine the product or the scene before anyone alters it, and obtain the cause and origin report while investigators still remember the call. Then we build the medical side, documenting the injury as it heals rather than as it looked on day one, and retaining the specialists who can put a defensible number on future surgeries and lifetime care. You work directly with the attorney handling your case. Read our client testimonials, review our case results, and meet the team on the Attorneys and Staff page.

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Meet Some of Our Attorneys

Michael S. Porter

Founder, Managing Partner

Eric C. Nordby

Co-Founder, Partner

Mary E. Langan

Partner

View all of our attorneys →

Burn Degrees and What They Actually Mean

Burns are classified by how deep the damage goes, and the classification is not a formality. It determines whether skin can regrow on its own, whether grafting is required, and how much scarring is permanent. Adjusters use casual language about burns being minor or healed, so it helps to know what the terms in your chart mean.

First-Degree Burns

A first-degree, or superficial, burn affects only the epidermis, the outermost layer of skin. The area turns red, feels tender and dry, and there are no blisters. These heal within days and usually leave no scar, so on their own they rarely support a significant claim. They matter mainly at the border of deeper burns, where the true depth is often unclear for several days.

Second-Degree Burns

A second-degree, or partial-thickness, burn reaches into the dermis, the layer beneath the epidermis that holds nerve endings, blood vessels, sweat glands, and hair follicles. These burns blister, look wet and mottled, and are intensely painful precisely because the nerve endings are exposed rather than destroyed.

Depth within this category makes a large difference. A superficial partial-thickness burn generally heals within a few weeks with little permanent scarring. A deep partial-thickness burn damages most of the dermis, heals slowly and unevenly if at all, frequently needs grafting anyway, and typically leaves raised, discolored scarring. Insurers treat second-degree as a reassuring phrase. It is not one.

Third-Degree Burns

A third-degree, or full-thickness, burn destroys the epidermis and the entire dermis, along with the sweat glands, hair follicles, and the layer of cells from which new skin would ordinarily regrow. The surface may look white, waxy, leathery, or charred rather than red, and it often does not hurt in the center, because the nerve endings there are gone. That absence of pain misleads people into thinking the injury is less serious than the blistered second-degree burn beside it.

Because the regenerative layer is gone, a full-thickness burn of any real size cannot close on its own. The dead tissue has to be surgically removed and the wound covered with a skin graft taken from an unburned area of the patient’s own body. The donor site becomes a second painful wound with its own scar, and where too little healthy skin is available at once, grafting is staged across multiple operations.

Fourth-Degree Burns

The deepest burns pass through the skin and subcutaneous fat into muscle, tendon, and sometimes bone. These are life-threatening injuries, common in high-voltage electrical contact and industrial explosions. Reconstruction requires flap surgery rather than simple grafting, function is often permanently lost, and amputation is sometimes the only option, which is why these cases frequently overlap with our amputation injury practice.

Why Size and Location Matter as Much as Depth

Two other measurements drive the medical picture. The first is how much of the body’s surface is burned, which governs fluid resuscitation, infection risk, and how sick a person becomes overall. The second is where the burn sits. A burn on the hand, face, foot, or genitals, or one that crosses a joint, causes disability far out of proportion to its size, because those areas depend on thin, mobile, sensitive skin. A burn that wraps completely around a limb or the chest can constrict as it swells and cut off circulation, requiring emergency surgical release. Whether depth and surface area were properly assessed and recorded is one of the first things we check in the medical records.

Complications That Follow a Serious Burn

Burn injuries rarely stay confined to the skin. The complications that follow often cause more lasting disability than the original wound, and they belong in the claim.

Inhalation Injury and Breathing Problems

Anyone burned in an enclosed space may also have breathed superheated air, smoke, and the gases released when synthetic furnishings burn, including carbon monoxide. The airway can swell rapidly, sometimes hours after the fire, which is why patients are intubated as a precaution. Survivors are frequently left with reactive airways, chronic cough, and vulnerability to respiratory infection. Carbon monoxide exposure can also produce lasting cognitive effects that surface weeks later and are easy for a defense expert to blame on something else if no one documented them early.

Infection and Sepsis

Skin is the body’s barrier against bacteria, and a burn removes it over a wide area at exactly the moment the immune system is under the most strain. Wound infection, cellulitis, graft failure, pneumonia, and bloodstream infection progressing to sepsis are what burn units watch for constantly. An infection that destroys a graft means repeating the surgery, extending the hospital stay, and adding another scar.

Contractures, Nerve Damage, and Chronic Pain

Healing burn tissue tightens as it matures. When a scar crosses a joint, that tightening pulls the joint into a fixed position, a contracture, treatable only with aggressive splinting, daily therapy, and often surgical release. Nerve damage in and around the burn produces numbness in some places and burning, electrical pain in others. Relentless itching in healing scars is one of the least appreciated long-term complaints, disrupting sleep for years. Destroyed sweat glands also leave people unable to regulate temperature in the burned area, which quietly ends outdoor work and recreation for many clients.

Scarring, Reconstruction, and Years of Treatment

Reconstruction after a serious burn is a long program, not a procedure. Grafted and deeply burned skin frequently heals into thick, raised, discolored scar tissue that is stiffer than the skin it replaced and can keep changing for a year or longer. Pressure garments worn most of the day, silicone sheeting, moisturizing, massage, and splinting are standard for months on end, and keeping to that regimen is itself exhausting.

Surgical reconstruction is then staged over years. Scar release to restore motion, additional grafting, flap reconstruction to rebuild contour where tissue was lost, laser treatment to soften scar tissue, and tissue expansion to generate skin for later repair are all common, and each carries its own recovery. Work on the face, eyelids, lips, ears, and hands is the most demanding, because the goal is not just coverage but function and appearance.

Children require a different plan entirely. Scar tissue does not grow the way healthy skin does, so a graft that fits a seven-year-old will not fit that same child at fourteen. Reconstruction is repeated as the child grows, sometimes through the end of adolescence, and a claim resolved without a treating surgeon’s written opinion on that future schedule will fall far short of what the family needs. This is the single most common way burn victims lose money, and it cannot be undone once a release is signed.

The Psychological Injury Insurers Try to Discount

Burns cause psychological harm through two separate routes, and both are real injuries. The first is the event: a fire, an explosion, or a moment of being unable to escape is exactly the kind of experience that produces post-traumatic stress disorder, with nightmares, hypervigilance, panic at the smell of smoke, and avoidance of the place it happened. The second is the treatment. Debridement and dressing changes are repeatedly painful over weeks or months, and that repetition is traumatic in its own right, particularly for children.

Layered over that is the long adjustment to a changed appearance. Visible scarring on the face, neck, arms, or hands means being looked at, asked about it, and treated differently, every single day. Clients describe covering up in summer, avoiding pools and beaches, dropping out of social life, and dreading a return to customer-facing work. Depression, anxiety, and disrupted sleep are ordinary consequences, not signs of weakness, and survivor guilt is common when someone else died in the same fire.

Insurers routinely dismiss all of this as soft damage. The answer is documentation. A treating psychologist or psychiatrist, a diagnosis, a course of treatment, and a written opinion on what further care is needed carry far more weight than a client’s own account. If you or your child are struggling, getting that treatment is both right medically and what protects the claim.

How Burn Injuries Happen and Who Is Responsible

New York has no single burn injury statute. Liability depends on how the burn happened, and identifying the right theory determines who can be held responsible and how many sources of recovery exist. Most serious burn cases involve more than one responsible party.

Residential and Apartment Fires

Landlords and building owners in New York owe tenants and lawful visitors a duty to keep the property reasonably safe, and that duty is spelled out further by state and local fire and building codes. In practice it covers smoke and carbon monoxide alarms installed where required and actually working, electrical systems that are not overloaded or improvised, heating equipment that is maintained, exits and stairwells that are usable and unblocked, and fire doors that close and latch. When a tenant reported a dead smoke alarm, a burning smell from an outlet, or a faulty furnace, and management did nothing, the fire that followed is not an accident in any legal sense.

These claims are proven with paper. Prior tenant complaints, work orders, building department and fire inspection records, violation histories, management emails, and the fire department’s cause and origin determination usually settle the liability question. Landlord and building fire cases fall within our premises liability practice, and where the building is owned or run by a city, county, or public housing authority, a much shorter deadline applies, discussed below.

Workplace and Construction Burns

Burns on the job are common in construction, manufacturing, restaurants, utilities, and refining and processing work. Workers’ compensation is generally the exclusive remedy against your own employer, and it pays medical care and a portion of lost wages regardless of fault, but it does not pay for pain, disfigurement, or the full value of a career that ended.

The separate case is against everyone else. On a construction site that often means the property owner, the general contractor, another trade’s subcontractor, or the manufacturer of the equipment that failed. New York Labor Law 200 codifies the duty of owners and contractors to provide a safe place to work, and Labor Law 241 requires compliance with the specific safety regulations in the state Industrial Code, which include rules on flammable liquids and gases, welding and cutting operations, fire protection on site, and electrical safety. A violation of one of those specific rules gives an injured worker a claim that does not depend on proving general carelessness. Our construction accident practice covers these claims, and burns from energized equipment overlap with our electrocution accident page. The compensation carrier will assert a lien on any third-party recovery, so the two claims have to be coordinated from the start.

Electrical Burns and Arc Flash

Electrical injuries take two forms. Contact with an energized conductor drives current through the body, burning tissue along its path, and an arc flash releases a burst of heat and pressure that can cause deep burns without contact at all. Common causes include missing lockout and tagout procedures, energized panels left open, damaged or ungrounded tools, contact between equipment and overhead lines, and improvised wiring.

What makes electrical burns dangerous in a claim as well as in the body is that the visible wound understates the damage. Current destroys muscle and nerve deep along its route while leaving small entry and exit wounds. Cardiac rhythm disturbances, kidney injury from destroyed muscle tissue, and lasting neurological symptoms all follow serious electrical injury, and an early offer based on the size of the surface burn is almost always far too low.

Chemical Burns

Acids, strong alkalis, industrial solvents, and concentrated cleaning products destroy tissue on contact and keep destroying it until the chemical is fully removed. Alkali exposures are often the worst, because they penetrate deeper and longer than the initial appearance suggests. Eye exposures can end vision permanently.

Responsibility here usually turns on warnings, training, and protective equipment. Manufacturers must label hazards adequately and warn about foreseeable misuse, employers must supply the right protective gear and working emergency eyewash and shower stations, and property owners must control access to stored chemicals. Where the harmful effects of an exposure appear later rather than immediately, CPLR 214-c can measure the filing deadline from when the injury was discovered instead of from the date of exposure, which makes an early legal review important even when the initial burn seemed to resolve.

Scalding and Hot Liquid Burns

Scalds hit young children and older adults hardest, and they are among the most preventable burns. Water heaters in rental buildings delivering water far hotter than needed, failed or missing anti-scald mixing valves, uncovered radiators and steam pipes, and unsupervised bathing in a care facility all produce full-thickness burns within seconds on thin skin. In food service, unstable equipment, defective carafes and fryers, and improperly secured hot liquids injure workers and customers alike. Liability usually rests with the landlord, facility, or business that controlled the equipment, and sometimes with the manufacturer of a valve or appliance that failed.

Vehicle Fires

A crash a person would otherwise have survived becomes catastrophic when the vehicle catches fire. Fuel system components that rupture or leak on impact, fuel tanks placed or shielded poorly, wiring that shorts after a collision, and doors or restraints that jam and trap an occupant are all recognized design and manufacturing problems. Electric and hybrid vehicles add a distinct hazard, because a damaged lithium-ion battery can enter thermal runaway, burn extremely hot, and reignite hours or days after the crash.

These cases frequently support two claims at once, negligence against the driver who caused the collision and a product claim against the vehicle or component manufacturer for the fire itself. The two claims are no longer judged by the same fault rule. For actions commenced on or after May 26, 2026, New York’s 2026 tort reform (CPLR 1411(b)) bars the claim against the driver entirely where your share of fault is greater than the combined fault of everyone you are suing, while the product claim against the manufacturer remains governed by pure comparative fault, which reduces a recovery in proportion to your share of responsibility without barring it. Preserving the vehicle is urgent, because insurers move wrecks to salvage yards and sell them within weeks.

Defective and Dangerous Products

New York allows a claim against a manufacturer, distributor, or seller when a product was defectively designed, defectively manufactured, or sold without adequate warnings. You do not have to prove the manufacturer was careless, only that the product was defective when it left their hands and that the defect caused the injury.

Products that cause burns are familiar household items: space heaters that tip or overheat, lithium-ion batteries and chargers in e-bikes, scooters, and tools that ignite while charging, pressure cookers that release under pressure, gas grills and regulators, fuel gels and lighters, extension cords, and flammable clothing and furnishings. Our product liability practice handles these claims, and our page on defective household products covers the appliances and consumer goods we see most often. Keep the product, the charger, the packaging, the manual, and the receipt, and do not return the item to the retailer or ship it back to the manufacturer before an attorney has seen it.

When a Fire Causes a Death

Where a fire, explosion, or burn injury kills someone, the family has two related claims. A wrongful death action brought by the personal representative of the estate recovers the financial losses the surviving family suffered, and a survival claim recovers for the conscious pain and suffering the person endured before death. Our wrongful death practice handles both, and because that deadline is shorter, these cases should be reviewed quickly.

What to Do After a Burn Injury in New York

Get to a Burn Center, Not Just the Nearest Emergency Room

Call 911 for any life-threatening burn. For serious but stable burns, where you are treated changes the outcome. Burn centers have surgeons, nurses, therapists, and infection control built around this one injury, and general emergency departments transfer patients to them for that reason. In Central New York that center is at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, and comparable regional centers serve other parts of the state. Asking about a transfer, or having a family member ask, is a reasonable thing to do.

Preserve Whatever Caused the Burn

If a product, appliance, battery, tool, or chemical container was involved and it still exists, keep it exactly as it is. Do not repair it, clean it, test it, or send it back, however reasonable those requests sound coming from a customer service representative. The same goes for a vehicle after a fire, for damaged clothing, and for the burned area of a building the landlord’s insurer may want to gut and rebuild. We send written preservation demands, and evidence destroyed after such a demand carries consequences for the party that destroyed it.

Document the Injury as It Changes

Burns look completely different at week one, month three, and year two, and no one can reconstruct that sequence later from memory. Have someone photograph the wounds regularly, in consistent light and from the same angles, throughout treatment and scar maturation. Keep a dated journal covering pain, itching, sleep, dressing changes, therapy, what you cannot do yet, and how you are coping. Save every bill, explanation of benefits, prescription receipt, and mileage record.

Be Careful With Insurers and Social Media

Report the fire to your own insurer and report a workplace burn to your employer in writing, promptly, because both carry their own notice requirements. Beyond that, do not give a recorded statement to any adjuster before speaking with an attorney, do not sign a broad medical authorization, and do not accept a settlement while you are still in treatment. Stay off social media about the injury as well. Defense counsel review public profiles routinely, and an ordinary photograph of you at a family gathering becomes an exhibit arguing you are fine.

Evidence That Strengthens a Burn Injury Claim

Bring whatever you have to your consultation, even if it is incomplete. We obtain the rest.

Medical documentation

• Ambulance, emergency department, burn center, and operative records describing depth, surface area, and every procedure.
• Records from plastic surgery, physical and occupational therapy, pulmonology, pain management, and mental health providers.
• Dated photographs from the first days through scar maturation, plus any clinical photography the hospital took.
• Every bill and explanation of benefits, and receipts for garments, dressings, and equipment. See our guide on obtaining medical records in New York.

The scene, the product, and the cause

• The product itself with its charger, packaging, manual, model and serial numbers, and proof of purchase.
• Photographs and video of the scene, the damaged equipment, the wiring, the alarms, and the exits.
• Any recall notice, safety bulletin, or prior complaint about the same product or model.

Official records

• The fire department incident report and the cause and origin determination, plus any fire marshal file.
• Building department and fire inspection records, code violation history, and prior tenant complaints.
• Workplace injury reports, safety data sheets, training records, and any regulatory citation issued after the incident.

Witnesses and life impact

• Names and contact details for anyone who saw the fire, smelled gas, reported a hazard, or helped you escape.
• Proof of lost wages, missed school, childcare, home care, and travel to appointments.
• Photographs and video of you before the injury, which is often the clearest evidence of what was lost.

Damages in a New York Burn Injury Case

What a burn claim is worth depends entirely on the facts, and no honest lawyer will quote a figure before reviewing the medical records. What can be described is which categories of loss New York allows and what proof each requires.

Economic Damages

Economic damages cover the documented financial consequences. In burn cases the future portion usually dwarfs the past portion, which is why a life care plan prepared by a qualified professional matters so much. It accounts for reconstructive surgeries still to come, pressure garments and dressings replaced on a schedule, therapy, medication, mental health treatment, home and vehicle modifications, attendant care, lost wages, reduced earning capacity, and retraining where a person can no longer do the work they were trained for.

Non-Economic Damages and Disfigurement

Non-economic damages compensate the human consequences: the pain of the burn and of the treatment that followed, permanent scarring and disfigurement, disability and loss of function, embarrassment and altered appearance, anxiety and post-traumatic stress, sleep disruption, chronic itch and nerve pain, and the activities, work, and relationships the injury took away. New York law treats permanent scarring and disfigurement as separately compensable harms, and there is no statutory cap on these damages. A spouse may also bring a derivative claim for loss of services and companionship. This category is proven through photographs, treatment records, and testimony from the people who see you every day, which is why the journal and photographic record described above do so much work.

Shared Fault and Punitive Damages

Defendants in burn cases routinely argue the victim caused it, by misusing the product, ignoring a warning, or acting carelessly around the hazard. Under CPLR 1411, New York applies pure comparative fault to product, premises, and workplace burn claims, which reduces a recovery by the injured person’s share of responsibility rather than eliminating the claim. Being partly at fault is not a reason to walk away. The exception is a burn claim arising from a motor vehicle crash: for actions commenced on or after May 26, 2026, CPLR 1411(b) bars recovery against a driver where your fault is greater than the combined fault of the people you are suing. Separately, where a defendant’s conduct went beyond carelessness into recklessness or conscious disregard for safety, such as concealing a known fire risk in a product or ignoring repeated warnings about a hazardous condition, punitive damages may be available.

How Long You Have to File a Burn Injury Claim

In New York, the general deadline for a personal injury action, including a burn claim, is three years from the date of injury under CPLR 214. Miss it and the claim is barred no matter how strong the evidence is. Several qualifications change that arithmetic, and most shorten the window rather than extend it.

• Claims against a public entity. Where a city, county, town, village, school district, public hospital, or housing authority is responsible, a notice of claim generally must be served within 90 days of the incident, and the period to sue afterward is much shorter than three years. Public housing fires and burns on municipal property fall here.
• Injured children. The limitations period is generally tolled during childhood, so a child’s own claim typically remains available until three years after their eighteenth birthday. A parent’s separate claim for the child’s medical expenses is not tolled the same way.
• Wrongful death. Where a fire or explosion causes a death, the estate’s wrongful death claim under EPTL 5-4.1 is generally subject to a two-year period, shorter than the personal injury deadline, and someone must first be appointed to represent the estate.
• Latent chemical exposure. For injuries caused by the latent effects of exposure to a substance, CPLR 214-c can start the three years from the date the injury was discovered rather than the date of exposure.
• Workplace injuries. Workers’ compensation carries its own notice and filing requirements that run well ahead of the three-year deadline, and missing them can cost benefits even where the third-party lawsuit is still timely.
• Practical deadlines. Fire scenes are cleared, vehicles are salvaged, security video is overwritten, and products are thrown out, usually within weeks. The legal deadline is rarely the one that decides a burn case.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a New York burn injury lawyer cost?

Porter Law Group handles burn injury cases on a contingency fee basis. You pay nothing upfront and nothing unless we win your case, and the initial consultation is always free. Having a lawyer review what happened before you decide anything costs you nothing.

How long do I have to file a burn injury lawsuit in New York?

Generally three years from the date of the injury under CPLR 214. If a city, county, school district, public hospital, or housing authority is responsible, a notice of claim usually must be served within 90 days and the time to sue is much shorter. A wrongful death claim under EPTL 5-4.1 is generally limited to two years, and workplace burns carry separate workers’ compensation deadlines. Because fire scenes and products disappear quickly, the practical deadline is almost always sooner than the legal one.

What if I was burned in an apartment fire caused by my landlord?

Landlords and building owners must keep a property reasonably safe, which includes working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms where required, safe electrical and heating systems, and usable exits. When management knew about a hazard, or should have known, and a fire followed, you may have a premises liability claim against the owner and the manager. Prior complaints, work orders, inspection records, and violation history are usually the evidence that proves it. Our overview of the defenses property owners raise in these cases explains what to expect.

Can I sue the manufacturer of a product that caught fire or exploded?

Yes. Under New York product liability law, a manufacturer, distributor, or retailer can be responsible when a product was defectively designed, defectively made, or sold without adequate warnings. You do not have to prove the company was careless, only that the product was defective and caused your injury. The single most important thing you can do is keep the product and everything that came with it, and refuse any request to return it for inspection or replacement before your attorney has arranged an examination.

What if my burn happened at work?

Workers’ compensation covers medical treatment and part of your lost wages regardless of who was at fault, and it is generally your only claim against your own employer. It does not compensate you for pain, scarring, or disfigurement. If a property owner, general contractor, another subcontractor, or an equipment manufacturer contributed to the burn, you can pursue a separate lawsuit against that party while receiving compensation benefits. On construction sites, Labor Law 200 and Labor Law 241 often supply the strongest theory. The compensation carrier will claim a lien on any recovery, so the two claims should be coordinated from the start.

Does scarring by itself have legal value in New York?

Yes. New York law treats permanent scarring and disfigurement as compensable harms in their own right, separate from physical pain, and there is no statutory cap on non-economic damages. What makes the difference is proof. Consistent dated photographs across the full arc of healing, a plastic surgeon’s opinion on permanence and on what further procedures will be needed, and testimony about how the scarring affects daily life carry far more weight than a description of the injury alone.

Should I settle before my reconstructive surgery is finished?

Almost never. A burn scar takes a year or more to mature, and until it does, no surgeon can say how many revisions, releases, or grafts it will require. A settlement signed before that point is final and cannot be reopened when the next surgery becomes necessary. There are situations where an early resolution makes sense, usually when insurance coverage is limited and clearly identified, but that is a decision to make with a lawyer who has reviewed the medical picture, not one to make from a hospital bed under pressure from an adjuster.

What if the fire was partly my fault?

You can still bring a claim in most burn cases. In product, premises, and workplace claims New York applies pure comparative fault under CPLR 1411, which reduces a recovery in proportion to the injured person’s share of responsibility rather than barring it. A burn claim arising from a motor vehicle crash is different: for actions commenced on or after May 26, 2026, CPLR 1411(b) bars recovery against a driver whose share of fault is smaller than yours, measured against the combined fault of everyone you are suing. Defendants argue misuse, inattention, and ignored warnings in nearly every burn case, and those arguments are often overstated once the actual instructions, warnings, and conditions are examined. Do not assume you have no case because someone told you it was your own doing.

Where We Serve Burn Injury Clients in New York

Porter Law Group is based in Syracuse and represents burn victims throughout Onondaga County, including Liverpool, Cicero, DeWitt, Camillus, Manlius, North Syracuse, Baldwinsville, Fayetteville, East Syracuse, Solvay, Salina, and Clay, as well as Auburn, Cortland, Oswego, Ithaca, Utica, and Rome across Central New York. Our Syracuse burn injury lawyers coordinate with the burn care specialists at Upstate Medical University.

We maintain offices across New York State and take burn cases statewide, including Buffalo and Western New York, Rochester and the Finger Lakes, Albany, Saratoga Springs, and the Capital Region, and New York City and the surrounding counties. Visit our location pages for Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, and New York City, browse all of our New York offices, or read the latest updates on the Porter Law Group blog.

Contact a New York Burn Injury Lawyer

If you or someone in your family was seriously burned anywhere in New York, the evidence that proves how it happened is already on a clock. Fire scenes get cleared, appliances get thrown away, and vehicles get sold for salvage. Insurers begin working the file the day it is reported, and there is no reason for you to start later than they do.

Our Syracuse office is at 100 Madison Street, Suite 1500, Syracuse, NY 13202. If you are still in a burn unit or cannot travel, we will come to you at the hospital or at home. We also meet clients at our Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, Saratoga Springs, and New York City offices.

Call 833-PORTER9 or email info@porterlawteam.com for a free, no-obligation consultation. We handle burn injury cases on a contingency fee basis, so you pay nothing unless we win.

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