South Bay Dog Bite Lawyer

What to do after a South Bay Dog Attack

If you have been injured in a South Bay Animal Attack, please call us right now for your free, private consultation with an experienced South Bay Animal Bite attorney.

The first things to do after being bitten

It is very important identify the animal that bit you, mainly because if it is a stray and you cannot identify it, you are dealing with the potential of having to submit to treatment for rabies, which can be unpleasant.

Also, if you were bitten by a dog or any wild animal being kept by a person, you most likely are entitled to receive compensation from the dog’s owner, and you also might genuinely need that compensation to repay your medical expenses, reimburse you for lost income, cover cosmetic surgery later on, as well as allow you to rise above the pain and being affected by your injuries.

After that, get medical assistance. You will be in good company, because 1,000 Americans show up in emergency rooms every day of the year as a result of animal attacks alone! If you are harmed on the face, insist on treatment by a plastic surgeon because emergency room doctors are amazing at keeping individuals alive but not always the best at making stitches and wounds look great.

After that, you’ll want to keep to the instructions of the physician and take all the medications which are prescribed (except for the painkillers, which often are at your discretion).

You might also be required to stay out of the sunlight, use sun block, use scar tissue reduction lotion, change bandages, report for follow up treatment, go in for removal of stitches, massage the healing zones, etc. If so, do it!

The final decision as to whether or not you will need rabies shots needs to be left to your doctor. Shots are not always needed, because rabies may not be within your geographic area. Don’t be alarmed if your physician tells you that you don’t need this unpleasant treatment.

If you have been seriously injured in a South Bay Animal Attack, please give us a call today for a no cost, confidential assessment with an experienced South Bay Animal Attack lawyer.

If the dog owner is insured, you may get a phone call from an insurance provider representative.

Make sure you ask him or her for the subsequent information:

• Name of insurance carrier
• Address of his or her business office
• Telephone number
• Claim number
• Name of the person who is covered
• The amount of money available to compensate medical charges (not everything, just medical charges)

Do not do any of the following:

• Do not discuss money, payment of money, repayment, injury value or anything else relating to money
• Do not set up a meeting
• Do not write a letter or a memo
• Do not permit yourself to be tape recorded
• Do not allow the victim to be photographed
• Do not talk about who is accountable
• Do not accept money

Ways to protect your legal rights

If you have been seriously injured in a South Bay Animal Attack, please contact us today for your complimentary, private consultation with an experienced South Bay Animal Bite lawyer.

A dog bite victim must do the following things to protect his or her legal rights:

• Identify the dog. In an incredibly severe scenario, this could entail obtaining and analyzing a DNA sample that will require a lawyer’s involvement.
• Get the name and address of the owner of the dog, if possible. When you can, acquire the dog license details.
• Get the name, address and telephone number of any potential witnesses. You may have to go back to the accident scene, and knock on the doors of neighborhood residences and businesses.

You also should revisit the scene of the accident a couple of times at the same time when the accident occurred, because people may have a habit of coming to the same places as part of their daily schedule.

• Take photos of all of your wounds, bruises and bloody garments.
• If feasible, attain insurance information from the dog owner.
• If skin was lacerated or worse, or in the event the injury was to the facial area, or if the victim was a child, you can and really should seek the advice of a lawyer for free.
• Get your attorney started while the info is new! The details of your claim need to be proved; the degree of your wounds needs to be established.

As apparent as the details and wounds might be to you, they will not likely be noticeable to an insurance adjuster sitting at a desk in an office building a couple weeks or months following your attack.

Furthermore, physicians are more interested in healing you than proving the nature and severity of your injuries to an insurance carrier, so the proper paperwork must be asked for from them at the proper times.

Your lawyer will get the necessary evidence and keep track of your medical treatment, so the insurance adjuster will understand exactly what occurred, and will give you an acceptable amount of money, when possible.

• Retain your lawyer prior to doing any kind of proceeding relating to the dog! The laws of most cities, counties and states allow local authorities to decide whether a dog is unsafe and, if so, the fate of the dog. Often this is referred to as a “dangerous dog hearing,” but it goes by other names as well.

Because “dog court” procedures may accidentally compromise the victim’s rights, she should never speak with animal control authorities until her lawyer compares the city and county ordinances, gets the department’s commitment as to which laws and processes they will be following, and is pleased that the issues addressed below will be settled fairly.

If the victim receives a subpoena, her testimony is essential, making it even more important to immediately talk to with a lawyer — because a subpoena must be obeyed, to its letter.

If you have been seriously injured in a South Bay Animal Attack, please give us a call right now for a no cost, confidential assessment with an experienced South Bay Animal Bite lawyer.

The victim must never do the following:

• Do not sign anything! Yes, you normally can sign the hospital entry files (provided that you were not bitten in the clinic itself). However, sign nothing offered by any insurance company, the owner of the dog, or the property manager or other owner of the property where the assault happened.

Do not write to, or make a report for, any insurance company, dog owner, or property manager or other property owner.

• Do not be reluctant to consult a lawyer! There are laws called “statutes of limitations.” They say that you lose all of your rights unless you report a court case within a specific amount of time after sustaining a bodily injury. For that reason, contact an attorney as soon as possible.

The dog attack victim’s right to a lawyer

A dog bite victim may incur many various kinds of injuries and losses, from medical expenses and emotional harm, to loss of the possibility to generate income in the future because of disfigurement.

A victim may be entitled to get back these losses from someone else and that person’s insurance company, given that the victim presents the required resistant, first to the insurance company and then possibly in a court of law.

There are two sets of laws the victim must adhere to, particularly those spelling out who is liable for the injuries and losses, and those imposing rigid guidelines of data and process to set up that liability.

If you have been seriously injured in a South Bay Dog Attack, please contact us now for your free, private assessment with a knowledgeable South Bay Animal Bite lawyer.

Parents have special criteria any time their children are hurt.

An injured person and his or her loved ones are not emotionally capable of vigorously enforcing their privileges. The biggest task they confront is making certain the victim heals. In death cases, the family members grieve; it is not going to collect proof and prepare legal briefs.

In cases short of death, the victim and his or her family need to be hopeful, so the tendency is to reduce the suffering, even disregard it as much as possible.

Nevertheless, it is there, and it may stay there for quite a while — for good, if wounds turn into ugly scars. Therefore, a vigorous advocate is a necessity.

An attorney with experience in representing persons with these types of injuries brings value to your claim.

He or she has analyzed the results of dog attack injuries, how to accumulate the data crucial to completely prove not only what happened in the past but also what the long term outcomes will be, the strategies and processes of insurance agencies when dealing with major instances like these, and the best way to properly assess these situations to make sure that the victims receive what they deserve.

An attorney with expertise has the capacity to objectively assess both the strengths and the weaknesses of a lawsuit.

Furthermore, an attorney is the only person who can turn a claim into a lawsuit if you are not being treated fairly. Without the threat of a lawsuit, you’re at the mercy of the insurance carrier.

Furthermore, the treatments usually followed by animal control departments in “dog court” hearings could unintentionally compromise the victim’s rights.

A victim and her family consequently should not speak with animal control authorities until her lawyer reviews the city and county ordinances, gains the department’s determination as to which laws and techniques they will be following, and is content that the matters dealt with in other places in Dog Bite Law will be managed reasonably.

If you have been seriously injured in a South Bay Animal Attack, please give us a call right now for a complimentary, confidential consultation with a knowledgeable South Bay Animal Bite lawyer.

The hazards of not retaining a lawyer

If you are working with the insurance firm without a lawyer, then, as seriously as you are taking your injuries, the insurance company isn’t — there is no doubt of that.

Others with comparable injuries have retained lawyers to show their claims to that very same insurance carrier. One point that all those people have in common is an attitude of seriousness about what happened to them, and a driving desire to make sure they are treated fairly.

The insurance company pays the right amount to the individuals, but not people who don’t take the preliminary step of protecting their privileges by maintaining a lawyer.

The individual at the insurance company that you are working with (called the “adjuster”) might well look honest and sympathetic — a very, very nice individual, a nurturing person.

However, he or she needs to report to others you will never talk to: a supervisor, a lawsuits examiner, a local supervisor, and ultimately the corporate office.

The adjuster is paid an income and has a family. He or she wants to precede working for that business, and perhaps get a raise and a promotion. None of that will be risked for you.

Even if the adjuster hopes to aid you, because of some bond that you feel has developed among the both of you, you will not necessarily be treated fairly by the supervisor, claims examiner, regional manager, and corporate office. These people don’t know you. To them, you’re nothing at all but an individual with no an attorney.

You aren’t working with the adjuster, you are dealing with a faceless corporation, and to that firm you are nothing but a file, a liability, somebody who needs money that normally might be dispersed to the shareholders as profit.

If you don’t retain a lawyer, you are on your own, against all individuals at the insurance company, and all of its attorneys. When was the last time that you heard a happy ending to that story?

The fees of making a law suit usually are rather small, when compared to the amount of money that is to be acquired. In a normal lawsuit, they may come to between $1000 and $2000.

However, cases which are being arranged for trial become very expensive — tens of thousands of dollars. Fortunately only 2% of lawsuits actually go to trial, so there is no substantial threat of the costs “eating up” the recovery.

It should be noted that the contingency fee system is exclusively American and that it has been under attack in recent years.

Because it enables normal citizens to get legal help, the corporate world — insurance companies and other industries — have been attempting to pass laws to abolish or cripple it.

These laws take numerous diverse forms, such as an arbitrary limit on the quantity that a victim’s lawyer may charge.

Note that only the victim’s attorney will be subject to any restriction, while the insurance industry’s lawyers would carry on to not only charge their usual hourly rates but also rely upon the vast monetary coffers of their wealthy customers.

The tort program exists for the advantage of everyday individuals as opposed to the interests of the business world, and consequently the system and its key players (the victims and their attorneys) regularly experience attacks and continually need to fight for their rights.

If you have been injured in a South Bay Dog Bite, please call us today for your free, private assessment with an experienced South Bay Dog Bite lawyer.