Some random thoughts. Note that I am not an attorney or a professional, these are just notions that run through my mind when considering your situation. Others may be able to offer more specific guidance.

The damage to the "portable luminaire" (lamp) and the tripped breaker that wouldn't reset cast pretty strong suspicion on that appliance, whether you can presently measure leakage current or not.

A "volt tick" is not an appropriate instrument for these tests. It's prone to falsing and as a crude "go/no-go" device makes no documentable measurements. You need to measure the appliance's actual leakage current with a sensitive multimeter.

If legal action is contemplated or threatened, the homeowner is probably not the person to be performing these tests. I recommend that you consult an attorney and, with his or her guidance, engage a qualified electrical professional to evaluate the situation.

Hope this helps.

does the lamp have 2 wire cord or a 3 wire cord? If only a 2 wire cord, it is possible for the metal base to become energized and not trip the breaker as there is no path for the fault current to flow and cause the breaker to trip. If the child touched the energized metal and was grounded, it then could allow a fault current to flow, shock the child and trip the breaker.

The only part I am having trouble fitting into this scenario is what would have happened to cause the short to become great enough to cause the short within the lamp to then cause the breaker to trip still.

Don;t really have an explanation for that other than the short to the base may have exacerbated the meltdown to the point it then became a hot to neutral short. When looking at the lamp, maybe you could attempt to determine if that is a possibility.

or maybe the meltdown had already occured but cause a hot to metal short and the child moving the lamp caused the socket to move enough to cause the hot to neutral short.

btw; a friend of mine was electrocuted (and thankfully rescusitated) from just such a situation as I have described.

OK, we ruled out the lamp. The breaker had tripped the day before due to a fluorescent bulb being put into the lamp, which is a 3 way lamp and warns of potential fire if anything but a 3-way 100W max type A bulb is used. The bulb base had melted causing the dead short in the socket that tripped the breaker. The lamp is only 2-wire, and tested the lamp socket for proper wiring, which it was. Also ensured the lamp shell wasn't shorting to ground (via the neutral in the fixture) and it wasn't.

Tested the affected circuit with a circuit analyzer and all items were within proper ranges for the circuit itself. The perplexing thing is where the little guy contacted a ground. The only thing that tested as being able to function as a ground for the exit wound was the fireplace gas valve in the floor, but with the orientation of the exit wound and the entrance wound on the mouth, no electrical supply was in the range to allow that to be the cause.

Any other ideas? The docs said it was a definite entrance and exit wound, indicating he had a hot in his mouth and a good ground against his ankle.

How old is the child? Was he found unconscious? If so, that would help locate the problem. Is he of the age he would be putting things in his mouth? Thank God the little guy is still with us.

Has anyone here seen a case of 120V causing an entrance and an exit wound? I've been bit several times in my life...seen others who have been bit. Not once has there been "wounds" where current has both entered AND exited. I've only seen wounds from higher voltages and lightning. But I'm by no means a medical expert.

He's 20 months. No, he was not unconscious. Exit wounds like this happen when there is a good contact to ground. Typically when we get bit, there isn't a good contact with ground (thankfully). Burn unit was adamant that this was an entrance and exit wound.

Wow. If there were burns, it sounds like some kind of arc flash was involved. Don't see that often with 120V branch circuits.

The only two times I've ever seen a light bulb melted into a socket both involved substantial over-voltages. One was due to a lightning hit, the other was a primary-to-secondary short in a pole xformer. One thing that might be worth checking: Pull the outlet that the lamp was plugged into, and check for any signs of arcing around the terminals. If you find signs of arcing and there's no obvious cause (all the connections are tight and there's no physical damage), that would indicate that there was an over-voltage on the circuit for some reason. It's not as uncommon as you might think.

Once you get past the dry skin resistance humans are actually pretty good conductors.
We have a lot of water in us and various ions to carry current.

While mouth burns are common in pets (and people) that bite into a cord, the exit wound is rather odd.
Intact skin is a high enough impedance to prevent this unless the voltage is higher than 120 V, and the contact area would typically be large enough to prevent the localized heating needed to burn or form an actual arc.
The only tool for checking these kinds of things is really an analog meter.
Digital meters have to high an impedance and can read voltage when the current is so small as to be harmless.
A 'volt tic' is ion the same class.
Analog meters are not nearly as 'good' and will not respond to high impedance voltage sources.
While this is a DISadvantage in many cases, in searching for faults it is an ADvantage.
The metal of almost any light on a 2 prong plug will have detectable voltage from simple capacitive coupling.
The source impedance is so high it is NOT a hazard.
A volt-tic or digital meter can often read voltage right through wire insulation, yet NO hazard is present.

There is no hazard created by installing a fluorescent bulb in a light fixture.
The warning is there in case some dimwit tries to screw in a 150 W incandescent bulb. The extra heat can damage the fixture or even cause a fire.

I used a Suretest circuit analyzer and everything was within normal ranges. No signs of any arcing on the outlet or any other problems in the circuit. Still baffled.

Lightning in the area?

Brickeye, the thought was that the 3 way switch in the lamp damaged the built-in ballast in the bulb since the fluorescents aren't supposed to be used on dimmers (reduced juice to the bulb in the lower settings on the lamp would be similar to a dimmer?).

Regardless on the lamp, there was no ground anywhere near where the other burn could have occured. In order to have the exit burn, there had to be a solid contact to a good ground.

Gzex, No lightning when this occured.

I still say this involved more than 120V. Since the entrance appears to be in the little guy's mouth, there has to be something around he could put in his mouth that would show damage. If you can't find anything, then I would start thinking along the lines of more than 120V for one of the reasons suggested here. I just can't imagine 120V jumping far enough to cause something like this.

In the rooms he was in, there is nothing with more than 120V. There are plenty of options for him to get the electrical in his mouth, but the ground source is the biggest mystery, since that was required for the second wound on his foot (unless it just happened to be two separate isolated shock burns, though the burn unit said that's not so).

Dad's going to check the two lamp cords in the room again for any hair line cracks in the insulation that slobber might have gotten in and created the path for the supply, although there is no physical damage to the cords visible.

Also trying to think of other causes, like a brown recluse bite to the foot, and injuring his mouth at the same time (grasping at a lot of straws here). Thanks for all the input.

A 3-way Lamp does NOT have a dimmer......It has two filaments
.......OFF...ON #1...ON #2...ON Both #1 & #2...OFF

The 3-way Bulb contacts the socket in three places......the Neutral Shell......
The #1 center button contact and #2 concentric ring around the center contact.......

This whole thing sounds a bit odd. I would presume the child made some sounds that alerted the parent to the injury or the child was found on the floor crying from the injury.

So, the basic question would be: what was he near, touching, etc. when found? Unless the injuries were simply observed later as the reason of discovery, the child's placement at the time of injury should be somewhat defined and therefore, limit the possibilities.

So, maybe explaining how the injury was discovered may help.

btw: in my previous post, I most definitely did not intend to infer the short had anything to do with the neutral. As a matter of fact, a short from hot to neutral would have caused the breaker to trip unless it was a very high impedance short.

I was speaking of a contact of the metal with the hot conductor with NO grounding (neutral is essentially a ground in this case) contact what-so-ever. If the metal of the lamp base were energized by, say a chafed hot conductor where it enters the lamp, and the metal was not grounded (or connected to neutral in any way) the metal would be energized and if touched while grounded, a shock would occur. This would be a very hard hit due to the fact that the touch and subsequent grounding of the injured would be the only flow of electricity and the only thing that would stop the continued shocking would be either loss of contact or the breaker tripping. A breaker will allow a lot of current (instantaneous) before tripping. It will allow many times rated current for a short period of time before tripping (that is why the use of GFCI's are required where they are. They do NOT allow much current at all to trip)

The other thing that comes into play is a childs skin is much less resistive than an adults due to the lack of thickness (callouses and the like) and a childs skin contains more moisture than an adults. It is still fairly resistive but less so than an adults (typically).

Now, I have not seen burns from 120 but I have seen some very bad burns from 277 volts (actual entrance and exit burns, not flash burns for those that might suggest it). It does not take that much voltage to cause a burn. This, and the childs thinner less resistive skin may possibly have allowed such burns with a lesser voltage.

Where the child was has no indication of anything other than the items I listed above. He was in a gated off area and simply started crying and stood at the gate for pickup. Both lamps referenced above were outside that gate, but he has climbed it before, so it is "possible" he climbed it, got shocked, climbed back in, then cryed and was taken out (highly unlikely, which is why we were trying to find other things.

Wasn't initially known what had occured because the foot was covered by a sock, and the lip didn't show up for several minutes, then initially presented as a fat lip.

Still looking at everything so if anything is discovered I'll pass it on. Thanks for all the help.