4 Kinds of Dog Bite Damages You May Pursue
A dog bite can leave you both physically and emotionally damaged. If you suffered a sufficiently serious injury from the dog bite, you may also find yourself struggling to earn an income, pay the associated medical bills, or restore your former quality of life. These and other issues may compel you to sue for damages.
California's strict liability stance means that you don't need to prove the owner's negligence to receive compensation for your injury. However, if you plan to file a personal injury lawsuit over your dog bite, understand what kinds of damages you might want to pursue. Take a look at four examples worth considering.
1. Medical Expenses
Your most immediate concern in the aftermath of a dog bite injury may involve the costs of evaluating and treating the injury itself. Approximately one out of every five dog bites requires professional medical care. Even after performing first aid on your injury at home, you may still need to seek medical treatment.
Dog bites can cause a wide range of potentially disabling injuries, including factures, nerve damage, muscle damage, and permanent scarring. You may need to receive rabies shots, antibiotics, or major surgery. Your medical expenses may extend to necessary follow-up care such as physical therapy.
Keep careful records of all your medical expenses related to your dog bite injury. Your attorney can use them to calculate the total medical compensation you'll request as part of your personal injury claim
2. Loss of Past or Future Income
A sufficiently devastating dog bite injury can rob you of the ability to work in your current occupation — at least temporarily. If you must spend all your accumulated medical leave and can't perform another job for the same employer, you might even lose your employment and, therefore, your means of supporting your family.
You may sue the owner of the dog both for any income you lost during your recuperation and any projected future earnings you've lost because you can no longer work. Your attorney will include these damages alongside the other economic damages related to your medical costs.
3. Pain and Suffering
Pain and suffering covers more intangible financial ground than the cut-and-dried world of economic damages. Even so, you may still find that you can and should sue for damages in this category. Examples of pain and suffering include both physical pain from the injury and its treatment but also anxiety, depression, and emotional trauma.
Pain and suffering compensation can prove more difficult to calculate and win than straight economic damages. Your attorney may need to support your claim with testimony from reliable witnesses who can explain how such an injury can cause pain and suffering, along with eyewitness accounts of your poor quality of life.
The length of your recovery time may also serve either to support or undermine your pain and suffering claim. The more time and effort your recuperation takes, the more frequent and intensive your treatment or therapy, and the more discomfort your doctor records in your documentation, the more solid your claim.
4. Extra Damages Involving Dangerous Dogs
All of the damages mentioned above may apply to a dog bite injury even from a dog normally considered safe and well behaved. However, if the dog shows signs of current or previous dangerous behavior, your attorney may use this information to pursue additional damages.
Under certain circumstances, a court may award punitive damages based on a multiple of your original dog bite injury claim. However, your attorney must first convince the court that the owner either knowingly let a dangerous dog roam free or actually prompted the dog to attack you.
Strong legal representation makes a big difference when you seek damages from a dog bite injury. Contact the Law Office of Robert P Karwin to discuss your case and figure out what kinds of damages you should pursue.
