Strategies for Fire Injury Cases

00:00 Speaker 1 Welcome to the Effective Lawyer, a podcast for ambitious attorneys who want to improve their practice. My name is Jack Zinda and I'll be your host. Hey everybody. Today I want to talk about some quick tips on hiring a fire injury case. So to set the scene. A fire injury case is one where someone is hurt or killed due to a fire that started that is someone else's fault. Our firm has handled quite a few of these and I want to walk through some of the tips that you want to keep in mind when a case like this first comes in the door. Step number one, you want to get to the scene early. These cases, the evidence disappears very quickly. A lot of times the debris gets moved. We've handled several involving houses that burn down or trailers that burn down. 01:00 Speaker 1 And you want to get out there fast. Sometimes even when you get out there a week, a lot of evidence can already be gone. Okay. The second thing you want to know is don't necessarily rely on the government report that comes back on the cause of the fire. So a lot of times the fire marshal or sometimes some sort of agency related to the police department or state agency will come and investigate the fire and they may or may not do a thorough job. And so just because they say that this was the cause of the fire does not mean it actually is the cause of the fire. Third, do not send someone else to go to the scene. 01:38 Speaker 1 If you're going to take the case, either you or a really good lawyer on your team that's going to be working on it with you needs to go to the scene because you need to really get a sense of what it looks like. Who are the players? Who are potential witnesses? Where were things set up? We recently worked on a case involving a trailer that burned down. And by going to the scene, we identified eight or nine witnesses just by walking around and talking to people that lived in the complex. And that would have never happened if we hadn't been there. And some of them were great non economic damages witnesses because they heard what happened to the person who was killed. 02:17 Speaker 2 This podcast is presented by Zynda Law Group, a nationwide personal injury firm. For over 10 years, the experienced lawyers at ZLG have been partnering with outside counsel across the United States on all types of personal injury and wrongful death cases. With over 30 attorneys, Zynda Law Group has paid out millions in referral and joint venture fees since 2015. To learn more about partnering with Zynda Law Group, please email us@re referralsindalaw.com we'll schedule a Time for you to meet with Jack Zinda or one of our trial lawyers to discuss your case. 02:55 Speaker 1 The next tip is you want to make sure you find a fire cause origin expert. So this is someone that can say what was the cause of the fire and how did it start? Okay. You want to find a good one who can help figure that out. If you wait too long, the evidence is going to be gone and you'll have done a ton of work. And you may not have a valid case. And unfortunately, you have to spend money to probably pay for them to go out to the scene. Cause that's the only way you're going to really have them be able to give you any sort of opinion what happened next. You want to try to identify what is the next type of expert I'm going to need to figure out. All right. 03:33 Speaker 1 Know what caused the fire, so what malfunctioned or what should have been done differently to prevent that fire from starting. So you know where it started. But let's say it's from an electrical breaker. Okay. Why did the breaker overload? Let's say it's from an appliance. Why did the appliance catch fire? You need an origin expert. Then you need someone who can talk about the appliance being defective. And a lot of times the cause of the fire is going to involve some sort of device or the way something was set up. We had a case where a house exploded due to a propane tank being misinstalled. And then they didn't do a proper pressure test to measure if it was leaking in the house. 04:12 Speaker 1 The fire marshal said the fire's cause was due to lack of maintenance of the house and it having a leak in a pipe, which was true. But our fire origin experts said, well, the propane company is required to pressure test, and they should have discovered that this leak happened. If I'm just relying on the government report, I don't understand why it's still their fault for what occurred next. You want to make sure you identify all potential defendants, and then you want to get into litigation as soon as possible. A lot of times you're going to need to do a lot of written discovery. And you don't want to wait too long. Because if the statute of limitations runs and then it turns out that it wasn't the manufacturer of the dryer, it was the person that installed the dryer. 05:02 Speaker 1 And you didn't find that out until the fifth deposition, you're in deep trouble. You just lost the case on the statute of limitations issue. So you want to get these cases in the litigation early and then you want to make sure that you have a compelling story to tell about your client and what they went through and that the damages make sense to pursue this type of case. These aren't the types of cases where the damages can be, you know, maybe moderate or not as severe in other cases because they're going to take a lot of expense and money and you want to make sure that at the end of the day, you're able to give your client an outcome where they're going to be happy with the results. 05:36 Speaker 1 If you have questions about this or other types of fire injury cases, please feel free to reach out. We know a lot of the experts to work with and we love counseling with other firms and happy to help any way we can. Until next time, thanks. 05:54 Speaker 2 Thanks for listening today's episode of the Effective Lawyer. You can learn more about our team and find other episodes of our podcast at zindalaw.com as always, we'd appreciate that you subscribe, rate and review the pod. Thanks.