How Do You Know If You Have a Propane Explosion Lawsuit?
A propane explosion lawyer can help you find out if you have a case.
Most propane explosion lawsuits involve a gas or tank leak. Because propane (also called LP gas) is highly combustible and odorless, a chemical odorant called “ethyl mercaptan” is added to the propane. The odorant gives the propane its signature rotten egg smell so people can detect a leak.
In order to have a propane explosion lawsuit, a person and/or company needs to be legally responsible for the explosion. When you hire our propane gas explosion lawyers, our legal team immediately starts a lawsuit investigation to determine who is responsible for the explosion.
Our clients have suffered burn injuries, loss of limbs, traumatic brain injury, smoke inhalation, and organ damage, among other serious injuries. Companies responsible for causing this kind of harm need to be held accountable.
How Can Our Lawyers Help You?
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$10 Million Propane Explosion Lawsuit Settlement
Our propane explosion lawyers recently won a $10 million propane explosion lawsuit for a man who was severely burned in a propane house explosion. We also won money for his wife, to whom he had been married for less than a year. Our attorneys uncovered that a propane gas company made careless mistakes while servicing the tank that caused the explosion.
Our client’s injuries were extreme. He suffered severe third-degree and second-degree burns on over 50-percent of his body, significant blast trauma that caused fractures in his arms, and a traumatic brain injury from the concussive blast.
5 Things Every Propane Explosion Lawyer Should Know
If you or a family member was injured or killed in a propane explosion, it is crucial to hire an experienced explosion lawyer with experience handling cases like yours. Here are five things every propane explosion lawyer should know:
- Propane (also referred to as LP gas), is transferred and stored as a compressed liquid and can leak out as a highly flammable gas
- Explosion lawsuits can involve the tank and its valves or a leak of the LP gas, which can be ignited by a simple spark
- Every propane explosion lawsuit investigation should determine if there was odor fade
- It may take an independent investigation by a burn injury lawyer to determine why there was odor fade and find enough evidence to sue the responsible company
- If someone is severely injured or burned, the propane explosion lawsuit may be worth millions
Pritzker Hageman Propane Explosion Lawyers
At Pritzker Hageman, our explosion lawyers help victims and their families file propane explosion lawsuits after an injury or death.
It starts the moment we are hired. We talk with your family and find out what your needs are. Did you lose your home? Is there less income? Are the medical bills getting paid? These are immediate needs that require attention. We have helped families by talking with banks, insurance companies, and employers. We help these businesses understand the struggles your family is facing and that a future settlement is probable. By doing this, we have helped our explosion clients get housing, loans, medical care, and medical equipment.
We keep in contact with our clients to make sure we know about a need when it comes up. Our clients know they can contact our law firm at any time to talk with their lawyer.
While we attend to our client’s needs, we work to build a winning case. Our primary job is to get our clients full and fair compensation.
How Much is My Propane Explosion Lawsuit Worth?
Your propane explosion lawsuit may be worth more money than you think. It takes experience for a lawyer to determine how much a propane explosion is worth. This is because many of these kinds of cases are worth millions of dollars. Our legal team just settled a case for over $40 million.
When our propane explosion lawyers are hired, we look at a number of factors to determine how much insurance money is available from policies owned by all companies that are legally responsible.
First, we determine what companies can be sued. Then we take legal steps to find out what insurance money is available under their insurance policies. For example, if there is a lawsuit against a propane company, we look at that company’s insurance policies to see what the maximum payout can be.
Compensation for Pain and Suffering
Our propane explosion lawyers work to get enough money to make sure your family will be financially secure. This means getting money to pay hospital bills, physical and occupational therapy bills, and any other costs related to patient care.
It also means getting compensation for pain and suffering, which can include amounts for physical pain, emotional suffering, disfigurement, and disability. Knowing how much money to pursue for pain and suffering takes experience with handling propane explosion lawsuits. Pain and suffering compensation alone can add up to millions of dollars.
Sue for a Propane Explosion at Work
If you were injured or burned in a propane explosion at work, worker’s compensation will not get you full compensation for your burn injuries. This is because those plans do not award any money for pain and suffering.
In order to get compensation for pain and suffering, you need to sue another company that is legally responsible for the explosion other than your employer, often referred to as a “third-party” company.
You need an experienced propane explosion lawyer to find out if there is a third-party company to sue. Never assume you don’t have a case. Contact our team of propane explosion lawyers to find out if you have a case.
Examples of Propane Tank Explosions at Work
- A propane heat exchanger ruptured
- A propane blow torch leaked and the vapors ignited
- A propane tank exploded and flew into the air, causing burn and crush injuries
- A propane tank exploded while forklift operators were changing it
- A spark from a forklift ignited leaked propane gas
- A tanker truck exploded
- LP gas cylinders were stored improperly
Propane House Explosions
You may be able to hold a propane company and/or landlord responsible for a propane house explosion. Many of these cases happen in a house, apartment, or other residential building. A propane company is responsible in most of these cases.
If the propane explosion happened at a rental property, there may be a case against the landlord. If an appliance was involved, there may be a case against the manufacturer, installer, or service company.
Legal Rights of Family in Propane Explosion Lawsuit
Families have legal rights when their loved one was injured or died in an explosion. If your family was impacted by a propane explosion, you may have the right to sue the company responsible.
If you are the spouse of the victim, you may have a legal claim to a propane explosion lawsuit based on loss of consortium and loss of companionship. Loss of consortium means the loss of or detrimental change to the marital relationship.
If you are the child or parent of a propane explosion victim, you may have a claim for loss of companionship, particularly in the case of a child whose parent is severely injured or killed.
Sue for Death of Family Member in Propane Explosion
When someone dies in a propane explosion, their family can file a wrongful death lawsuit, which forces a responsible propane company or other business to:
- Hand over relevant documents and other evidence to us so that we can find the truth
- Get money for your family as compensation for your tragic loss and hold the business responsible accountable
What Causes a Propane Explosion?
Propane is generally stored in a tank as a liquid and used as a gas. Because it is stored under pressure, there is a risk of a tank explosion. In addition, the gas that leaks out of the tank can ignite.
Possible causes of a propane explosion include the following:
- Failure to take the appropriate measures during refill, including failure to relight appliances for homeowners
- Improper installation of a gas stove, dryer, or other gas appliance
- Improper maintenance of a tank; for example, not replacing an old regulator or failing to maintain any part of the system
- Improper inspection of the tank by the gas supplier
- Tank leaks
- Grill fires and explosions
Why You Didn’t Smell Gas Before a Propane Explosion
You may be able to sue a company for odor fade if you didn’t smell gas before a propane explosion.
Because propane is an odorless gas, a chemical odorant is added to it to make sure people can smell it if there is a leak. If something happens to lessen or eliminate that smell, it is called “odor fade”.
If you could not smell gas before a propane leak explosion, there may have been odor fade. If we can prove it, you may be able to get a payout from the company responsible for the odor fade.
We won millions from a company for a client critically injured in a blast that happened when a spark ignited an invisible, odorless cloud of propane gas. We proved that the company that filled the tank prior to the blast was at fault.
Our lawyers found out that the tank, which was new, had only been filled 30%. This was a problem because the lining of the tank can react with the chemical odorant and remove the odor from the propane gas. For this reason, a new tank should be filled 100%, which prevents deodorization.
In this case, the propane gas leaked out of the tank and filled the air. No one smelled it.
For more information about odor fade, read “Why Didn’t We Smell Propane Gas before the Explosion?”