Electrical Injury Lawyer

Defective consumer products, improperly installed wiring, and power tools that have been tampered with can all be sources of serious injuries or even death when they cause burns or internal organ damage. When such accidents happen, an experienced electrical injury lawyer can be vital to securing proper compensation for those injured.

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health), about 1,000 people die each year in the U.S. due to electrical injuries, and more than 30,000 experience non-fatal electrical injuries. Although some of these are naturally occurring, with about 50 deaths per year due to lightning, nearly all are preventable -- even most lightning deaths can be avoided by simply remaining indoors during thunderstorms.

From a personal injury standpoint, most electrical injuries in adults occur on the job, where they are the fourth most frequent cause of workplace deaths. In a workplace setting, personal injuries from electrical incidents may involve workers' compensation claims in most instances, as well as product liability and strict liability claims if the injuries were caused by defective equipment or tools, or even negligence claims directly against employers who may have tampered with or removed safety features from the equipment.

Most electrical injuries in children happen in the home and typically involve strict liability claims against product manufacturers for basic design defects, against manufacturers and retailers for product liability claims, and sometimes premises liability claims where the owners or renters of the injury site negligently caused the injury. About one in five electrical injuries occur in children.

Personal injury claims that result from electrical injuries cover two broad types of physical trauma -- burn injuries and true electrical injuries.

Burn injuries -- and the personal injury lawsuits based upon them -- typically stem from incidents when an electrical arc flash directly causes a burn to the personal injury person's body or ignites clothing or other material they're in contact with, which then causes burns.

True electrical injuries occur when someone "receives a shock" from defective wiring, defective electrical appliances or power tools, or unsafe power lines. In these instances, the injury sufferer's body becomes part of the electrical circuit, with current passing through their body from one point to another. Although this may include burn injuries at the points where the current enters and leaves the body, these occurrences also can produce significant internal injuries (or death) as the current passes through the body's organs and tissues.

The types of legal claims, lawsuits, causes of action, and theories of liability for personal injuries resulting from electricity are just as varied as the injuries' sources and mechanisms. These can include:

• Strict Liability
• Product Liability
• General Negligence
• Workers Compensation
• Premises Liability

Defective consumer products, for example, are one common source of both electrical injury burns and "true" electrical internal injuries. However, electrocutions from consumer products have been significantly reduced in frequency over the past decades. One research report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, for example, found that the number of fatal electrocutions annually in the United States decreased by as much as two-thirds from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

Even with these significant strides forward in the safety of consumer electrical products, there are still multiple dangerous products recalled every year due to the threat of electrical injury, from products as simple and old-fashioned as extension cords to new and complicated as electric hoverboards.

Personal injury lawsuits related to these types of cases are generally based on legal theories of "strict liability" related to the products being unsafe as designed -- that is, even when used properly, they are inherently dangerous in their fundamental design. There may also be associated claims of negligence if, for example, the product is designed correctly but was manufactured in a way that made the product defective, or if the manufacturers and retailers provided inadequate (or even missing) instructions on how the product should be safely used.

Electrical injuries in the workplace may also be related to defective products such as power tools but will usually also have workers' compensation coverage available for the injured workers. In some instances, however, where there are significant safety procedure failures at the workplace or where the employer has intentionally tampered with safety guards on the electrical equipment, the injured worker may also be able to sue the employer directly.

Personal injury claims from electrical injuries come in many varieties and can be very complicated. See the Additional Resources below to read more on this topic.

View this video describing many common electrical hazards and safety practices in workplace settings:

Hello, I'm Ed Smith, a Sacramento Electrical Injury Lawyer. If you or a member of your family have been seriously injured in an accident involving an electrical injury, please call us for free and friendly advice at (916) 921-6400 or (800) 404-5400, or reach out to us by using our online contact form.

We are proud to be among the injury attorneys of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum.

Member of National Association of Distinguished Counsel.

You can see many of our prior case results on our past verdicts and settlements page.

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Editor's Note: This page has been updated for accuracy and relevancy [cha 5.3.22]

Photo by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

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Additional Resources: