If the case doesn’t settle, we are prepared to go the distance to make sure that our client gets everything that they deserve for their dog bite injuries.
Some of the initial work that we do is to make requests for prior veterinary records. We may take the deposition of all the family members to find out if anybody knew that the dog had a tendency to bite.
The homeowners insurance attorneys usually focus on trying to say that our client did something to provoke the attack or that they failed to do something to prevent it.
We have successfully represented dog bite victims where the insurance defense lawyers try to argue that it was the victim’s fault for running away, thereby suffering scarring on their thighs.
The Process of Making the Case Against the Dog Owner
Our focus tends to be on the history of the dog, who knew about it, and when they knew.
The insurance company’s focus is usually on trying to prove either that you were somehow at fault for provoking the dog, or that something else should have happened to prevent the event from occurring. For example, they might argue “You shouldn’t have walked through that gate,” or “You shouldn’t have knocked on that door..”
In terms of discovery of the medical evidence, dog bites tend to be fairly discrete injuries. In other words, it’s rarely contested that you had a pre-existing dog bite in a particular spot.
However, sometimes there can be allegations that, because of the dog, a person fell and injured their knee or back. In those cases, sometimes the insurance companies will look into your passed medical history to see if there were pre-existing problems with that part of your body.
