Areas of Practice
Pacoima Dog Attack Attorney
What to do after a Pacoima Dog Attack
If you have been seriously injured in a Pacoima Animal Bite, please call us now for a free, private assessment with a knowledgeable Pacoima Animal Attack attorney.
The initial things to do after being attacked
It is important to identify the dog that attacked you, because if it is a stray and you cannot identify it, you’re dealing with the potential of needing 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 probably are eligible to receive compensation from the animal’s owner, and you may possibly really need that compensation to cover your medical expenses, reimburse you for lost revenue, cover plastic surgery later on, as well as help you conquer the discomfort and being affected by your injuries.
After that, get medical assistance. You will undoubtedly be in very good company, because 1,000 Americans arrive in emergency rooms every single day of the entire year as a result of dog attacks alone! Should you be harmed around the face, demand treatment by a plastic surgeon because emergency room physicians are fantastic at keeping men and women alive but not necessarily one of the best at making stitches and injuries look nice.
After that, make sure to keep to the instructions from the doctor and take all the medications that are prescribed (except for the painkillers, which normally are usually your discretion). You might also be required to remain out of the sunshine, use sun block, use scar reduction ointment, change bandages, go in for follow up treatment, go in for removing of stitches, massage the healing zones, etc. If so, do it!
The final decision as to whether you need rabies shots must be left to your physician. Shots are not always required, because rabies may not be in your geographic location. Do not be alarmed if your physician tells you that you don’t need to have this unpleasant treatment.
If you have been injured in a Pacoima Dog Bite, please contact us now for a complimentary, confidential consultation with a skilled Pacoima Animal Attack lawyer.
If the animal owner is covered by insurance, you may get a phone call from an insurance provider representative.
Make sure you ask him or her for the following information:
- Name of insurance company
- Address of his or her business office
- Telephone number
- Claim number
- Name of the person who is covered by insurance
- The amount of money offered to pay medical expenses (not everything, just medical bills)
Do not do any of the following:
- Do not go over money, payment of money, settlement, damage value or anything else connected with money
- Do not set up a consultation
- Do not write a letter or a memo
- Do not permit yourself to be tape recorded
- Do not permit the sufferer to be photographed
- Do not discuss who is liable
- Do not accept any money
Actions to protect your rights
If you have been injured in a PacoimaAnimal Bite, please contact us today for your no cost, confidential assessment with a knowledgeable Pacoima Animal Bite attorney.
A dog bite victim must do the following things to protect his or her rights:
- Identify the dog. In an incredibly severe situation, this may entail getting and analyzing a DNA sample, which will require a lawyer’s involvement.
- Get the name and address of the owner of the dog, when possible. When you can, acquire the dog license details.
- Get the name, address and telephone number of any possible witnesses. You may need to return to the accident scene, and knock on the doors of nearby homes and companies. You also should revisit the scene of the accident several times at the same time at which the incident happened, because individuals might have a habit of coming to the same spots as part of their daily routine.
- Take photographs of all of your wounds, bruises and bloody clothing.
- If attainable, get insurance information from the dog owner.
- If skin was lacerated or worse, or in the event the injury was to the face, or if the victim is a child, you can and should consult with an attorney totally free.
- Get your attorney started while the facts are fresh! The facts of your claim have to be proven; the level of your traumas have to be recognized.
As apparent as the details and injuries might be to you, they are not going to be noticeable to an insurance adjuster sitting at a desk in an office building a few weeks or months following your attack. Furthermore, doctors are interested in treating you than proving the type and extent of your injuries to an insurer, so the proper paperwork needs to be requested from them at the suitable times.
Your lawyer will acquire the necessary facts and keep track of your medical treatment, so the insurance adjuster will understand exactly what occurred, and will provide you with a sufficient sum of money, when possible.
Because “dog court” procedures may unintentionally compromise the victim’s rights, she should never speak to animal control authorities until her lawyer reviews the city and county ordinances, gains the department’s commitment as to which laws and methods they will be following, and is happy that the problems addressed below will be settled fairly.
If the victim receives a subpoena, her testimony is required, making it even more significant to instantly speak with with a lawyer — because a subpoena must be followed, to its letter.
If you have been injured in a Pacoima Animal Attack, please give us a call today for a complimentary, confidential consultation with a skilled PacoimaAnimal Attack attorney.
The victim should never do the following:
- Do not sign anything! Yes, you generally can sign the medical center admission forms (given that you were not bitten in the medical center itself). However, sign nothing presented by any insurance company, the owner of the dog, or the landlord or other owner of the property where the assault took place. Do not write to, or make a report for, any insurance company, dog owner, or property manager or other property owner.
- Do not hesitate to consult an attorney! There are laws called “statutes of limitations.” They say that you eliminate all of your rights unless you report a court case within a specific timeframe after sustaining a bodily injury. For that reason, call a lawyer without delay.
The dog bite victim’s right to a lawyer
A dog bite victim may incur several different kinds of injuries and losses, from medical debts and emotional injury, to loss of the opportunity to gain income in the future because of disfigurement.
A victim may be eligible to get back these losses from another person and that individuals insurance company, given that the victim provides the necessary evidence, first to the insurance company and then possibly in a court of law.
There are two sets of laws the victim needs to abide by, namely those spelling out who is responsible for the injuries and losses, and those imposing tough rules of evidence and procedure to identify that liability.
If you have been injured in a Pacoima Animal Attack, please give us a call today for a no cost, confidential assessment with an experienced PacoimaDog Attack lawyer.
Parents have special things to consider if their children are hurt.
A wounded individual and his or her loved ones are not mentally in a position of intensely enforcing their rights. The most important task they deal with is ensuring that the victim heals. In death cases, the family members grieve; it is not going to obtain facts and put together legal briefs.
In cases short of death, the victim and his or her family have to be positive, so the tendency is to minimize the suffering, even ignore it wherever possible. Nevertheless, it is there, and it may be there for quite a while — permanently, if wounds turn into ugly scars. Therefore, a vigorous advocate is a necessity.
An attorney with expertise in defending persons with these injuries brings value to your claim. He or she has examined the effects of dog attack injuries, how to collect the evidence necessary to completely prove not only what took place in the past but also what the future outcomes will be, the methods and procedures of insurance agencies when dealing with major instances like these, and the best way to effectively evaluate these circumstances to make sure that the victims receive everything that they deserve.
An attorney with knowledge has the talent to objectively assess both the strengths and the weaknesses of a lawsuit. Furthermore, a lawyer is the only person who can turn a claim into a lawsuit if you are not being treated fairly. Without the presence of threat of a lawsuit, you are at the mercy of the insurance carrier.
Furthermore, the methods frequently followed by animal control departments in “dog court” hearings may inadvertently compromise the victim’s rights.
A victim and her relatives therefore shouldn’t speak with animal control authorities until her lawyer reviews the city and county ordinances, obtains the department’s dedication as to which laws and procedures they will be following, and is satisfied that the matters dealt with in other places in Dog Bite Law will be solved fairly.
If you have been seriously injured in a Pacoima Animal Attack, please contact us today for a no fee, private assessment with a skilled Pacoima Animal Bite attorney.
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 company isn’t – you can be assured of that.
Others with equivalent injuries have retained lawyers to present their lawsuits to that same insurance company. One issue that all those individuals have in common is an perspective of significance about what happened to them, and a driving wish to be sure they are cared for fairly.
The insurance company will pay the right amount to those individuals, but not the people who don’t take the initial step of safeguarding their rights by holding onto a lawyer.
The person at the insurance firm that you are doing business with (called the “adjuster”) may appear truthful and sympathetic – a very, very nice person, a caring person. However, he or she must report to other people you will never talk to: a supervisor, a lawsuits examiner, a regional supervisor, and eventually the corporate office.
The adjuster is paid a salary and has a family. He or she wants to carry on working for that business, and perhaps get a raise and a promotion. None of that will be risked for you.
Even if the adjuster would like to help you, because of some relationship which you believe has developed among the both of you, you will not always be taken care of fairly by the supervisor, claims examiner, regional manager, and corporate office. They are not familiar with you.
To them, you’re nothing but an individual with no a lawyer.
You aren’t working with the adjuster, you are dealing with a faceless corporation, and to that corporation you are nothing but a file, a liability, a person that wants money that otherwise might be distributed to the shareholders as profit.
If you do not retain an attorney, you’re on your own, against all those people at the insurance company, and all of its lawyers. When was the last time that you heard a happy ending to that story?
The fees of making a claim usually are somewhat small, compared to the amount of money which will be acquired. In an normal claim, they may come to between $1000 and $2000. However, cases which are being put together for trial become very expensive – tens of thousands of dollars. Fortunately only 2% of lawsuits actually go to trial, so there is no significant risk of the costs “consuming up” the recovery.
It should be noted that the contingency fee system is distinctively American and that it has been under attack in recent years. Because it enables ordinary individuals to obtain legal help, the corporate world — insurance agencies and other industries — have been trying to pass laws to abolish or cripple it.
These laws take a number of different forms, such as an arbitrary limit on the amount that a victim’s lawyer can charge. Note that only the victim’s lawyer will be subject to any constraint, while the insurance industry’s attorneys would proceed to not only charge their usual hourly rates but also rely upon the huge monetary coffers of their wealthy customers.
The tort system is available for the benefit of ordinary people rather than the interests of the business world, and therefore the program and its crucial players (the victims and their attorneys) continuously undergo attacks and regularly must fight for their rights.
If you have been injured in a Pacoima Animal Attack, please call us now for your no fee, private consultation with a skilled PacoimaDog Attack lawyer.
