It can be life changing if your child or you get bitten by a dog. Events cannot be reversed, and the victim would need to live through the trauma caused by the attack. Not only would there be injuries to deal with, but also the matter of long-term recovery to watch. In order to make sure the impact of that is minimized, it bears taking steps to protect your interests in that area, foremost by seeking the maximum compensation you are owed from the person responsible for the incident.
Understanding the Injuries
CDC has estimated the number of people in the country annually suffering dog bite wounds to be 4.5 million. Take any victim and injury, and each would have its own unique aspects. However, most injuries can be classified into the following categories.
- Injuries to the Child: If a child gets bitten by a dog, he or she could carry the effects of it through life. He or she would need to be given the immediate medical attention, and steps would need to be taken to protect his or her financial recovery.
- Facial Injuries: A facial injury caused by a dog bite can bring a lot of trauma, with children being more highly at-risk. Adults too can suffer such injuries, which can include scarring, infection, and injuries to particular senses such as hearing and sight. If any of these occurs, you should consult a doctor right away.
- Infections: It can be life threatening if you get bitten by a dog, and not just from a deep wound, which may cause you to bleed out before rescue and medical help arrives. Dog bites can cause infections, causing you to develop redness surrounding the wound, fever, or some other symptom, which needs to be discussed with a doctor. A care professional can diagnose the issue correctly and tell you how you can best recover from it.
- Amputations: If a dog bite significantly injures your nerves, bones, or tendons, or if the site of the wound develops an untreatable infection, an amputation may be the only way forward. The victim could lose a hand, finger, arm, leg, toe, or foot because of this.
- Scarring: Dog bite scars can disfigure you, disable you, or simply cause constant pain. Based on where exactly the causative damage lies, you would stand to benefit from specialized treatments such as dermabrasion surgery, skin grafts, or laser surgery.
- Nerve Damage: Dogs have sharp teeth, and these are capable of causing nerve damage in a bit victim. The person may end up with momentary loss of function in some part of their body, or it could be so bad that they are rendered permanently paralyzed.
- Death: The combined complications acting as a result of a dog bite can prove fatal, and does in many cases. Some of the time, prompt medical attention is enough to bring down the likelihood of this, but if that does not work, them the victim could die, leaving friends and family struggling under major emotional loss.
Working with a well-known medical doctor can prove a good thing during many stages of recovery, including diagnosis, treatment, and any further care that is needed. The main aim here is to make sure the injuries do not worsen or become fatal.
Protecting the Victim’s Rights
After diagnosing the injury, you can collaborate with the doctor and medical team to come up with a promising treatment plan that works for your child. This may kick off immediately and extend well over several months or even years, based on the specific injuries that the child suffered. The medical bills would no doubt rack up, and you would face losses in terms of not being able to work, as well as other expense related to recovery.
The bottom line is that you should not be the one paying for these things, since the damages were caused by the owner of the dog. As long as you believe your child was attacked and injured wrongfully, you can approach a dog attack lawyer and put them to work building a case on your behalf (assuming a dog bite settlement is not an option). An experience personal injury attorney can lay out the extent of your legally compensable damages, as well as the amount you stand to recover after proving negligence or recklessness on the dog owner’s part.
California has strict dog bite laws, which require owners to sufficiently restrain their animals, as well as take all precautions necessary to ensuring that people are safe from them. If your lawyer is able to prove in court that the defendant failed at either, and that this caused your child to be injured, then the dog owner can be ruled liable to compensate the victim for their losses with regard to suffering and recovery.
