Fort Myers Burn Injury Claims: Do You Have a Valid Case?

By David B. Pittman, Esq. — Founder, Pittman Law Firm, P.L. | Last updated May 12, 2026

People are not sure whether what happened to them counts as someone’s fault or just bad luck. That is the confusion behind most burn-injury calls we get. A grease flash at a Cleveland Avenue restaurant, a space heater that caught fire in a McGregor Boulevard rental, a defective battery pack that overheated in a back pocket on a job site off Six Mile Cypress Parkway. The pain is obvious. The legal question is whether someone else’s carelessness or wrongdoing produced that pain.

Most valid burn claims look messier than the textbook examples. The fire scene gets cleaned up before anyone thinks to photograph it. The product gets thrown away by a frustrated property manager. The witness moves out of the apartment complex two weeks later. The job of a personal injury lawyer in a burn case is, before anything else, to get to the evidence before the evidence is gone. Below is what Florida law actually says about these claims, the patterns we see, and what to do in the first week if you have been burned because of someone else’s conduct.

What Florida law actually says about burn injuries

Burn cases are not their own separate body of law in Florida. They run on the same negligence and product-liability rules as any other personal injury matter, with a handful of statutes that decide who can recover, how much, and how long they have.

§95.11(4)(a), Florida Statutes — two years to file. Florida’s statute of limitations for negligence was cut from four years to two years in the 2023 tort reform package. For any burn injury that happened on or after March 24, 2023, you have two years from the date of the injury to file suit. Plain English: if you wait until year three to call a lawyer, the case is almost certainly dead, no matter how strong the facts are. We have had to turn away clients on this point, and it is one of the most painful conversations in our office.

§768.81, Florida Statutes — modified comparative negligence. Under the same 2023 reform, Florida switched to a 50% bar. If a jury assigns you 50% or less of the fault, you recover, but your award is reduced by your percentage. If a jury puts you at 51% or higher, you take nothing. In a burn case this matters because the defense will almost always argue that you ignored a warning label, you turned the dial too high, you should not have been in that part of the property. Comparative-fault arguments are where these cases are won and lost.

§627.736, Florida Statutes — PIP. If your burn came out of a motor-vehicle event, such as a fuel-system fire after a crash on I-75 near Alico Road or a hot-fluid burn from a radiator failure, your own Personal Injury Protection pays the first $10,000 of medical and wage loss, no-fault. PIP is not a ceiling on what you can recover — it is the floor. Burn treatment blows past $10,000 quickly, and the rest comes from the at-fault party and any available uninsured-motorist coverage under §627.727.

§316.066, Florida Statutes — the crash report. If the burn is vehicle-related, the long-form crash report is a foundational document. We pull it the same week. Anything an officer documented at the scene becomes harder to dispute later.

Six burn-case patterns we see across Lee and Collier Counties

Across thirty years of practice, the burn matters that come through our office cluster into roughly six patterns. Knowing which one fits your situation tells you who the defendant is and what proof you need.

• Premises liability — unsafe property. Bad wiring in a rental off Pine Island Road. A water heater set sixty degrees too hot in a hotel on Summerlin Road. A grease trap that no one had cleaned in eighteen months at a strip-mall restaurant on Colonial Boulevard. The property owner had a duty to keep the place reasonably safe, and that duty was broken.
• Product liability — the product itself was dangerous. Lithium-ion battery packs in tools, e-bikes, and laptops are the modern version of this case. A pack that vents flame while charging on a kitchen counter is a design or manufacturing defect claim, and the manufacturer can be on the hook on strict-liability grounds — meaning we do not have to prove they knew about the defect, only that the defect existed and caused the burn.
• Workplace burns with a third-party angle. Workers’ comp usually covers the on-the-job injury itself. But if the burn came from a piece of equipment that a different company supplied, or a subcontractor’s mistake, that third party can be sued separately. We see this a lot on construction and roofing jobs along the Daniels Parkway corridor.
• Medical-care burns. Cautery burns, surgical-prep solution that ignited under a drape, electrical-pad burns under anesthesia. These are medical-negligence claims, and they have their own pre-suit notice requirements under Florida law that you have to get right.
• Intentional acts. Domestic violence, assault with a hot liquid, arson aimed at a person. Civil recovery here runs alongside the criminal case and uses a lower standard of proof — preponderance of the evidence — meaning we only have to show it was more likely than not. The criminal verdict does not control the civil case.

A case from our construction injury files

A Lehigh Acres man was electrocuted and suffered third-degree burns in a construction accident. Workers’ comp was in play, but a third-party piece of equipment was the source of the electrical failure. We pursued the equipment supplier on product-liability grounds. The case settled for $1.8 million.

What makes burn cases harder to win than they look

From the outside, a burn case looks like it should be easy. The injury is visible. The medical records are dramatic. Juries take burn cases seriously. So why do they get harder, not easier, the deeper you go?

Evidence vanishes. In a car crash, the cars sit there. In a burn case, the fire department puts the fire out, the cleanup crew clears the scene, and within forty-eight hours the most important physical proof — the wiring, the appliance, the chemical container — is in a dumpster. We send a preservation letter the day we are retained, and we still lose evidence we should have had.

Causation gets contested early. The defense will argue the fire would have happened anyway, or that the burn would have been minor without something the client did. Forensic-fire reconstruction engineers are not cheap, and they are often the difference between a settlement at policy limits and a settlement at twenty cents on the dollar.

Future-care numbers are huge and easy to underestimate. Severe burn patients can need surgical revisions for a decade. Compression garments, scar-release procedures, physical therapy, pain management. A first-pass demand that does not include life-care planning will leave six figures on the table.

Comparative fault arguments are aggressive. Defense counsel in burn cases will argue you smelled smoke and kept cooking, that you set the heater too close to the curtain, that you ignored a recall notice. Under §768.81 every percentage point of fault costs the client money, and at 51% the case is over.

Insurance coverage is layered. A serious burn matter can involve a homeowner’s policy, a commercial liability policy, an umbrella, a product manufacturer’s policy, and the client’s own UM/PIP. Figuring out which buckets are available — and in what order — is half the practical work.

What to do if you have just been burned

This is the practical list I give to clients who call us in the first week. None of it is fancy. All of it is based on cases where we wish the client had done it sooner.

1. Get the medical care first, full stop. Burns get worse before they get better, and a delayed treatment record gives the defense an opening to argue the injury would have been minor with prompt care. Go to the emergency department, then follow up with a burn unit if one is recommended. Lee Health’s burn referral pathway runs through Fort Myers and is the one we see most often.
2. Photograph everything before it changes. The burn itself, every day for the first two weeks, in the same light if you can. The scene if you can safely get back to it. The product, the appliance, the container, the packaging. Phones timestamp photos automatically — that is your friend.
3. Save the product. Do not throw it out. If a space heater caused the fire, the heater is now your most valuable piece of evidence. Bag it, label it, store it dry, and do not let the property manager or the fire department’s investigator walk off with it without giving you a chain-of-custody receipt.
4. Get names and numbers. Anyone who saw the fire, smelled the smoke, heard the alarm, watched the EMTs work. People move. Get the phone number while they are still in the room with you.
5. Request the fire report and any incident report. Public fire reports in Florida are available through the responding agency. If the incident was at a business, the business will have generated an internal incident report. Ask for it in writing.
6. Do not give a recorded statement to the other side’s insurer. Their adjuster’s job is to lock you into a story before you have all the medical information. Ours is to make sure you do not get pinned down on a fact you do not yet know.
7. Call a personal injury lawyer inside the first month if you can. The two-year statute is not the only clock. Evidence-preservation letters, public-records requests, and engineer site inspections all need to happen while the scene is still close to its original state.

Key Takeaways

• Burns count as a real legal case when someone else’s carelessness, defective product, or intentional act caused the injury. The harder question is usually proof, not law.
• Florida gives you two years from the date of the injury to file under §95.11(4)(a). That window is shorter than most people think.
• Under §768.81, partial fault does not bar a claim until it crosses 50%. Below that line, the case is still worth pursuing.
• Burn evidence disappears fast. Get photographs, save the product, request the fire report, and write down witness numbers in the first week.
• Future-care numbers are where settlements live or die. A burn demand without a real life-care projection will leave money behind.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. How do I know if my Fort Myers burn injury is a real legal case and not just a bad accident?
A burn becomes a legal case when someone else’s carelessness or wrongful conduct is the reason you got hurt. A landlord who ignored bad wiring, a restaurant that left a fryer line untrained, a manufacturer whose battery pack overheated in a closed pocket. If we can connect the burn back to a duty that someone owed you and broke, there is a claim worth investigating.

Q2. Florida changed its statute of limitations in 2023. How long do I really have to file?
Under §95.11(4)(a), Florida Statutes, you have two years from the date of the injury for a negligence claim. The old four-year window is gone for incidents after March 24, 2023. We tell clients to call us inside the first month if they can, because evidence in a burn case disappears fast.

Q3. I think I might be partly at fault for the fire. Can I still recover anything?
Under §768.81, Florida’s modified comparative negligence rule, you can recover as long as a jury puts you at 50% or less. Your share gets subtracted from the verdict. At 51% or higher, recovery is barred. We see partial-fault situations all the time, and they are still worth pursuing in most cases.

Q4. What kinds of compensation are typically on the table in a burn case?
Medical bills past and future, lost wages and lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, scarring and disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life. Severe burns drive future-care numbers up quickly because revisions, grafts, and physical therapy can run for years.

Q5. Do I have to pay anything up front to hire your firm?
No. We handle personal injury cases on a contingency basis, which means there is no fee unless we recover for you. The first consultation is free, and we will tell you straight whether we think you have a case worth filing.

Talk to a Fort Myers burn injury lawyer

If you or a family member has been burned because of someone else’s conduct in Fort Myers, Bonita Springs, Naples, Estero, Cape Coral, or Lehigh Acres, call our office. The first conversation is free and you will speak with our team, not a screening service. We will tell you straight whether we think you have a case, what the two-year clock looks like for you, and what evidence needs to be locked down this week.

Call 239-992-8259 for a free consultation. There is no fee unless we recover for you.

About the Author

Founded by David B. Pittman, Esq., Pittman Law Firm, P.L. has handled personal injury work in Fort Myers and across Lee County for more than thirty years, representing injured clients across Lee and Collier Counties, with a particular focus on commercial-vehicle, complex-liability, and serious-injury cases. The firm’s Fort Myers presence handles a steady stream of serious-injury work along the Daniels Parkway, Six Mile Cypress, McGregor Boulevard, Cleveland Avenue, and Summerlin Road corridors, and along I-75 between Estero and Bell Tower.

David’s undergraduate years were at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina; his legal education at the University of South Carolina School of Law. He is AV-Preeminent at Martindale-Hubbell and a member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum.

David has held a Florida real estate broker license for twenty-five years alongside his personal injury practice — a perspective that shapes how the firm reads property-related burn and premises claims. The firm handles personal injury cases across Lee and Collier Counties, serving Fort Myers, Bonita Springs, Naples, Cape Coral, Estero, and Lehigh Acres, with offices at Windsor Place in Bonita Springs (main) and Fort Myers (satellite). Call 239-992-8259 for a free consultation.

This article is for general information about Florida law and is not legal advice for any individual situation. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Pittman Law Firm, P.L. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any future case. The hiring of a lawyer is an important decision that should not be based solely on advertising. Attorney advertising.