Burn Injury – Summer Home Fire

Walkup lawyers recovered this amount on behalf of a 19-year-old who sustained second- and third-degree burns over 85 percent of his body and endured dozens of surgeries following a fire and explosion in a vacation home in the Sierra foothills. The property owners (who were also the sole shareholders of a contracting corporation that had built homes on properties purchased by them) had only $300,000 in liability coverage and had declared personal bankruptcy. We brought suit against the contracting corporation under the theory that the bankrupt shareholders and their closed corporation were a joint venture, which, if proved, would render the company vicariously liable for the acts of the individual defendants.