It doesn\’t matter how much you love dogs the fact is that if you\’ve ever been a victim of or witness to a dog attack you know just how terrifying an incident like this can be. Even small dogs have powerful jaws and are capable of inflicting quite a serious bite if they chose to. Did you know, for example, that the CDC (Center for Disease Control) in the United States, estimates that more than 4 million (4,000,000) American citizens are bitten by dogs each year – 20% of these dog bites will also require medical attention. What\’s even more concerning is that the vast majority of these cases the victims are usually children under 9 years of age.
Now there is a certain amount of hysteria and misinformation surrounding specific dog breeds at the moment and this tends to be something which happens in cycles – one breed is treated as being vicious for a few years until another one is deemed to be more vicious instead. The fact remains though that if you, your child or a member of your family has been the victim of an attack by a dog then you need to be prepared to take action in dealing with the legal aspects of this matter almost immediately.
Your First Steps
The initial steps you take in cases like this are critical to how successful your legal action will be. Firstly you need to find the owner of the dog and then establish if they\’ve been negligent – was the dog securely tethered or in a gated garden or just roaming the street for example? If the owner can be proven to be negligent then it will make your case so much easier.
Once you\’ve located the owner of the dog you\’ll need their name, address and the name of their insurance company. What most dog owners don\’t realize is that incidents like this are usually covered under the homeowner\’s insurance policy – simply because there are millions of these cases each year.
You\’ll also need to immediately take photographs of any injuries and then keep that same set of photos updated using the same camera, angle and lighting if at all possible. It\’s critical that you show both how serious the initial bite injury was and the healing process afterwards too.
What Damages Can You Claim?
Once you\’ve gathered all of the above evidence and know who both the pet owner and their insurance company is you can begin to process your claim for damages through your attorney. The following is a non-exhaustive list of damages you can claim for:
- Emergency care
- Initial medical care
- Future scaring or scar reduction treatment
- Psychological counseling
- Loss of earnings
Are you Liable?
A very important question to ask both yourself and any child involved is whether or not the dog was provoked into biting or attacking in the first place. You can be 100% certain that the dog owner is going to claim the dog was provoked so you need to be certain that your child or family member wasn\’t poking at the dog with a stick or pulling its tail, causing the dog to react and bite as a result. If there\’s any doubt on your part that the dog may have been provoked then this could affect the outcome of your claim.
If you have any further questions on this matter please make sure that you seek professional legal counsel before taking any further steps.