Buckhead Dog Bite Lawyers
Dog bites can be severe enough that they impact every part of your life. At a minimum, people who suffer these injuries should seek out care from a medical professional. Those who experience severe attacks can be left with injuries that require follow-up care, forcing them to miss time at work and endure severe emotional trauma.
In many situations, it is possible to hold a dog’s owner responsible for these losses and a Buckhead dog bite lawyer is available to help you to pursue your case. Our trustworthy personal injury attorneys are ready to provide our legal services to you to seek justice for the attack.
Cases that Center Around Strict Liability
The concept called strict liability can be a powerful tool for injured individuals. A defendant who is strictly liable is considered responsible for all of a person’s losses that arise out of their conduct, even if the defendant did not take any affirmative actions or failed to act to prevent harm.
Dog bite cases are a clear example of this dynamic. State law establishes a version of a one-bite rule that holds owners strictly liable if the animal had a “vicious propensity.” In short, a vicious propensity is a past incident of violent behavior. Even with this rule, it falls to an injured person to prove that a dog’s owner had knowledge of this vicious propensity. The Official Code of Georgia Annotated § 51-2-7 states that injured people who can demonstrate this concept deserve full compensation for their losses. A Buckhead dog bite attorney could better explain the concept of strict liability and determine if it applies in this particular case.
Negligence in Dog Bite Lawsuits
In some cases, it may be impossible to prove that an owner has prior knowledge of their dog’s vicious propensity. This appears to leave them immune from any liability that arises out of a bite but a Buckhead dog bite lawyer could still provide help in these situations. Even if a dog owner had no reason to suspect that their animal was dangerous, they still had a duty to keep that animal under control. As a result, it is possible to prevail in a dog bite case that centers around the concept of negligence.
A party is negligent when they allow an accident to occur through carelessness. A person who owns a dog implicitly accepts a duty to keep their animal under control and to prevent harm from affecting others. Dog owners can be negligent in several ways, including:
- Failing to keep the animal on a leash when in public;
- Poor fencing that separates private property from sidewalks; and
- Allowing the animal to enter someone else’s private property.
Proving negligence often requires an extensive investigation into the events that led up to an injury. At the same time, injured individuals have a limited time to pursue their cases because O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33 gives people a narrow window of just two years from the date of an attack to demand compensation. This means you should retain the services of an animal attack lawyer in Buckhead soon after the incident so you do not run out the clock.
Reach Out to a Buckhead Dog Bite Lawyer Today
If you have suffered an injury after a dog bite, you likely have built up a significant amount of debt through medical treatment. Dog bites can require extensive medical care, have a negative impact on your emotional health, and force you to take days off work. A dog owner that allows these incidents to occur is liable to provide you with fair compensation, though success will be difficult. Let a Buckhead dog bite lawyer take the lead in your case – call us for further information.
