If you have been injured in a Lennox Dog Attack, please give us a call right now for your no cost, confidential consultation with a skilled Lennox Animal Bite attorney.
The first things to do after being bitten
It is important to identify the dog that attacked you, mainly because if it is a stray and you cannot identify it, you are dealing with the potential of needing to submit to treatment for rabies, which can be painful.
Also, if you were attacked by a dog or any wild animal being kept by a person, you most likely are eligible to receive compensation from the dog’s owner, and you may genuinely need that compensation to cover your medical expenses, reimburse you for lost revenue, pay for surgical treatment at some point, and allow you to overcome the discomfort and being affected by your injuries.
After that, get medical help. You are going to be in very good company, because 1,000 Americans arrive in emergency rooms every day of the year because of dog bites alone! If you are harmed on the face, demand treatment by a cosmetic surgeon because emergency room physicians are amazing at keeping individuals alive but not necessarily the best at making stitches and wounds look good.
After that, be sure to stick to the instructions of the doctor and take every one of the medications that are prescribed (except for the painkillers, which usually are usually your discretion).
You may also be directed to stay out of the sun, use sun block, use scar reduction lotion, change bandages, go in for follow up treatment, report for removal of stitches, massage the healing zones, etc. If so, do it!
The verdict as to whether or not you need rabies shots has to be left to your physician. Shots are not always needed, because rabies may not be in your geographic location. Do not be frightened if your doctor tells you that you do not need to have this uncomfortable treatment.
If the animal owner is covered by insurance, you may get a call from an insurance provider representative.
Make sure you ask him or her for the subsequent information:
Do not do any of the following:
Measures to protect your legal rights
A dog bite victim has to do the subsequent things to preserve his or her rights:
You should also revisit the scene of the accident several times at the same time when the accident occurred, because individuals may have a habit of going to the same places as section of their daily schedule.
As evident as the facts and injuries may be to you, they are not going to be evident to an insurance adjuster sitting at a desk in an office building a couple weeks or months after the attack.
On top of that, doctors are interested in healing you than proving the nature and level of your injuries to an insurer, so the proper paperwork has to be asked for from them at the suitable times.
Your attorney will obtain the essential facts and keep track of your medical treatment, so the insurance adjuster will comprehend exactly what occurred, and will ensure that you get an acceptable sum of money, if possible.
Because “dog court” procedures may accidentally compromise the victim’s legal rights, she should not communicate with animal control authorities until her lawyer reviews the city and county ordinances, gets the department’s commitment as to which laws and processes they will be following, and is fulfilled that the problems addressed below will be solved fairly.
If the victim gets a subpoena, her testimony is essential, making it even more significant to immediately talk to with an attorney — because a subpoena must be followed, to its letter.
The victim must never do the following:
The dog attack victim’s right to a lawyer
A dog attack victim may incur many distinct kinds of damages and losses, from medical debts and psychological destruction, to loss of the opportunity to gain income in the future because of disfigurement.
A victim may be eligible to recover these losses from someone else and that person’s insurance company, provided that the victim provides the necessary evidence, first to the insurance company and then perhaps in a court of law.
There are two sets of laws the victim needs to stick to, particularly those spelling out who is liable for the injuries and losses, and those imposing rigid guidelines of facts and process to establish that liability.
Parents have particular things to consider whenever their kids are wounded.
A wounded individual and his or her family are not mentally capable of intensely enforcing their privileges. The most crucial task they encounter is ensuring that the victim heals. In death cases, the loved ones grieve; it does not assemble proof and prepare legal briefs.
In cases short of death, the victim and his or her family need to be positive, so the tendency is to minimize the suffering, even disregard it as much as possible.
Nevertheless, it is there, and it may remain there for quite a while — forever, if wounds turn into ugly scars. Therefore, a vigorous advocate is a necessity.
A lawyer with experience in defending individuals with these injuries brings value to your claim. He or she has researched the results of dog attack injuries, how to gather the information critical to completely prove not only what occurred in the past but also what the future consequences will be, the techniques and processes of insurance providers when handling critical instances like these, and the best way to properly examine these circumstances to make sure that the victims receive everything that they deserve.
A lawyer with knowledge has the ability to objectively analyze both the strengths and the weaknesses of a claim.
Furthermore, an attorney is the only person that can turn a claim into a lawsuit if you are not being taken care of fairly. With no threat of a lawsuit, you are at the mercy of the insurance firm.
Furthermore, the treatments regularly followed by animal control departments in “dog court” hearings may unexpectedly compromise the victim’s rights.
A victim and her relatives consequently should not start conversations with animal control authorities until her lawyer reviews the city and county ordinances, gets the department’s dedication as to which laws and steps they will be following, and is satisfied that the challenges addressed somewhere else in Dog Bite Law will be solved reasonably.
The risks of not retaining a lawyer
If you are working with the insurance firm without an attorney, then, as seriously as you are taking your injuries, the insurance carrier isn’t — you can be assured of that.
People with related injuries have retained lawyers to show their claims to that very same insurance carrier. One point that all people have in common is a frame of mind of seriousness about what happened to them, and a driving desire to ensure they are dealt with fairly.
The insurance firm pays the proper amount to those people, but not the people who don’t take the preliminary step of preserving their rights by retaining an attorney.
The individual at the insurance firm that you are dealing with (called the “adjuster”) may seem to be genuine and sympathetic — a very, good individual, a caring person.
However, he or she has to report to other individuals you will not talk to: a supervisor, a lawsuits examiner, a local manager, and ultimately the corporate office.
The adjuster is paid an income and has a family. He or she wants to continue working for that company, and maybe get a raise and a promotion. None of that will be risked for you.
Even if the adjuster hopes to help you, because of some relationship which you think has developed among the two of you, you will not always be cared for fairly by the supervisor, claims examiner, regional manager, and corporate office. They don’t know you. To them, you’re nothing at all but a person without a lawyer.
You’re not working with the adjuster, you are dealing with a faceless corporation, and to that firm you are nothing but a file, a legal responsibility, someone that needs money that normally might be dispersed to the shareholders as profit.
If you do not retain a lawyer, you’re on your own, against all those people at the insurance firm, and all of its lawyers. When was the last time that you heard a happy ending to that story?
The costs of making a lawsuit usually are rather small, compared to the amount of money that is to be attained. In a typical claim, they might come to between $1000 and $2000. However, cases which are being put together for trial end up being very expensive — tens of thousands of dollars.
Fortunately only 2% of lawsuits actually go to trial, so there is no major risk of the prices “consuming up” the recovery.
It needs to be noted that the contingency fee system is exclusively American and that it has been under attack in recent years.
Because it enables ordinary individuals to acquire legal help, the corporate world — insurance providers and other industries — continues to be seeking to pass laws to abolish or cripple it.
These laws take many various forms, such as an arbitrary limit on the amount that a victim’s attorney can charge.
Note that only the victim’s attorney would be subject to any limitation, while the insurance industry’s attorneys would carry on to not just charge their usual hourly rates but also rely upon the huge monetary coffers of their successful customers.
The tort program exists for the advantage of common individuals rather than the interests of the business world, and therefore the program and its critical players (the victims and their lawyers) continuously experience attacks and constantly must fight for their rights.