A contact burn may cause a severe burn injury due to prolonged exposure and transfer of heat from an object to the skin – simply, contact burns are caused by touching hot objects. Usually, these burns occur with the use of household appliances and fixtures during routine activities of daily living. However, defective products often lend a hand in causing contact burns.
A subset of defective product cases are guarding cases. Many severe, foreseeable burns occur when the individual comes in contact with a hot surface. Often, these contact burns could be prevented if a product was designed with a simple, cheap guard.
For example, a sauna heater manufacturer designed a safe, insulated sauna heater and sold it in the market for twenty years. At the same time, they continued selling an older product designed in the 1970’s with no insulation and no guarding, for those customers that wanted to save a couple of hundred dollars per heater.
A national health and fitness chain purchased the older, unguarded model and placed it in their sauna. A client of the Arizona contact burn injury lawyers became light headed in the sauna and tried to leave, but passed out and went face down on the heater grill, suffering massive facial burns. This would have been impossible if the chain had bought the heater which had a guard but was otherwise identical, for a couple of hundred dollars more. We settled this case for a large, confidential sum.
If you have been the victim of a contact burn injury, especially if a faulty product or lack of a safety guard was responsible, call the Arizona burn injury attorneys at 602-52-BURNS for a free and confidential case evaluation.
