A properly-socialized dog provides a sense of security and companionship to their family. Unfortunately, many families lack the resources or patience to help a dog acclimate to its new home. Untrained and mistreated dogs can subsequently develop violent behavior patterns that make them dangerous to be around.
Even the best of dogs can react inappropriately to their surroundings and cause someone else harm. It’s difficult, though, to know how to react to these circumstances. Fortunately, Texas state law gives you the right to take legal action and subsequently secure damages based on your losses with the help of a Texas dog bite lawyer.
Zinda Law Group’s dog bite lawyers in Houston, TX, can help you assess your losses, assign liability for a dog’s behavior, and act on the evidence relevant to your case. You can contact the group today for a free case consultation.
How to Classify Your Houston Dog Bite Accident
When people think of a dog bite accident, they might think of a large, aggressive canine breaking free from its leash and chasing down its victim. That said, there are many different situations in which a dog bite victim can end up with serious injuries. Our personal injury lawyers can help you classify your dog bite and react to it accordingly.
Some of the most common dog bite cases address:
Instinctual Dog Bites
Dogs are born with certain instincts that can sometimes lead to biting, whether or not the dog is behaving aggressively. For example, certain breeds of herding dogs may tend to nip at people, including children, when it is trying to lead them in a certain direction.
A dog’s instincts might alternatively lead it to bite when it has recently given birth to puppies and feels that someone is getting too close. None of these instances have to involve aggression to result in an injury. Even so, you can still hold a dog’s owner liable for the dog’s instinctive misconduct, particularly if that misconduct results in bodily harm.
Aggressive Territorialism
Dogs are territorial creatures, and they sometimes may bite when they feel that they need to defend their turf. This can occur if you visit the house of a friend and their dog feels that you are an unwelcome intruder. A dog owner who knows that their dog is prone to biting visitors in their home who fails to warn or stop their dog could be liable for any injuries they cause.
Provoked Dog Bites
There are many situations that could provoke even the friendliest of dogs to bite a victim. For example, riding your bike past a house with a dog in the front could trigger a chase reflex. Walking your own dog past another dog who has not been properly socialized could trigger an aggressive reaction in that dog. You, in turn, may end up bitten while trying to protect your dog.
Assigning Liability For a Dog Bite in Houston, Texas
If you want to take legal action against a party after a dog bite, you need to have evidence to prove your point. You must specifically use hard data, including bystander testimony or footage of the bite, to name a particular party legally responsible for your recovery.
In dog bite cases specifically, this means that you must take steps to investigate why you were bitten and what party bore you a duty of care at the time of your accident. More often than not, blame for a dog bite falls on the dog’s owner.
That said, you still need to bring forward evidence to prove that the owner violated the duty of care owed to you. The evidence you can use to support your case can include the aforementioned statements from bystanders and accident footage, as well as:
- Expert witness input, including statements from animal control or veterinarians
- Physical signs of violence, including damaged fences and/or broken dog leashes
- Bills from your medical practitioner elaborating on the extent of your losses
You can request that Houston, TX, dog bite attorneys help you gather the evidence most relevant to your case.
Texas’s One Bite Rule
Texas allows its dog owners to operate on a “one bite rule” established by Marshall v. Ranne, 511 SW 2d 255 (Tex: Supreme Court 1974. This rule dictates that only dog owners who know that their dog may behave inappropriately toward another person can be liable for that dog’s misconduct.
In other words, dog owners may not be liable for their dog’s first instance of violence. A dog owner who doesn’t know that their dog’s temperament, breed, or anxiety might lead to biting can subsequently waive their liability in a dog bite case once.
After that one instance, dog bite owners must assume responsibility for their dog’s dangerous behavior, as there is a precedent for it.
CASE RESULTS
Additional Dog Laws in Texas
Texas has additional dog-related laws that dictate how owners and other parties should interact with animals with which they come into contact. You and your Houston, TX, dog bite lawyer can refer to these laws if they’re relevant to your understanding of your dog bite case.
The laws in question include:
Stray Dog Responsibility
A dog owner does not need to have bought or officially adopted a dog to be considered its owner. According to the Houston city code, a person is considered to be the owner of a stray dog if they provide food, water, and other care to a dog on their property for at least three days. If the stray injures another person, the owner may be held liable for the injuries that it causes.
Dogs at Large
Houston has codified what is commonly known as a “leash law” in section 6.3 of the city code. Essentially, a dog owner breaks the rules if they allow their dog off their property without a leash or some other form of direct physical control. There may be exceptions, like at an off-leash area of a dog park, but the dog owner still needs to supervise their pet.
Reacting to a Dog Bite
Dog bites can result in nasty, jagged wounds in the skin of their victims that can prove prone to infection. As such, get medical attention as soon after an accident as you can. The longer you delay, the worse your injury can get.
What’s more, going to the doctor shortly after an accident helps solidify the severity of the case you intend to bring against an offending party. If you wait too long to go to the doctor, the liable party may attempt to argue that your wounds aren’t as severe as your complaint claims they are.
There are other steps you can take to make your life simpler after a dog bite accident, including the following:
Document the Accident Scene
After addressing your medical needs, it is important to gather all the information that you can about the attack. This may include:
- The information of the dog owner and any witnesses
- Pictures of the dog, your injuries, and the location where the attack happened,
- Medical records and receipts for costs that you have had to incur as a result of the dog bite
If you’re not in a position to document the scene after an accident, have a friend or loved one do it for you. You may have the opportunity to work with an insurance adjuster during this period, as well, but do not rely on these parties to accurately document all of the information relevant to your possible personal injury case.
Get in Touch With an Attorney
Working with an attorney can make it significantly easier to recover from a dog bite than trying to handle the process alone. For starters, attorneys can return to the accident scene on your behalf while you’re working with emergency responders or otherwise having bite-related injuries treated.
An attorney can specifically gather contact information from a liable party and surrounding bystanders that you can use at a later date. Zinda Law Group even connects you with a medical team, an investigative team, and up to two attorneys, all of whom can help guide you through your recovery.
In other words, the Houston dog bite attorneys with Zinda Law Group bring big law resources to your dog bite case. You can contact the team within hours of your accident to gather fresh evidence, assess your losses, and make the most out of the time you have to file your case.
Our team can negotiate for the dog bite settlement you deserve. If the situation calls for it, though, you can count on our attorneys to take your claim before a judge. We have courtroom experience and aren’t afraid to move your case to trial if a liable party proves uncooperative.
Dog Bite Attorneys in Houston Help Calculate the Value of Your Upcoming Case
The money you stand to receive from a dog bite claim enables you to pay any bills related to your post-accident care. Determining how much your case could be worth requires investigation and math on our part, though.
We break the support you deserve down into two categories, find the value of each, then add those values together to find your case’s total sum value. Our team starts with your economic losses. Your economic losses leave a paper trail, thus making it easier to determine their total value. These losses can include your medical bills, lost wages, and property damage.
Non-economic damages, comparatively, don’t base their value on a measurable or objective standard. Instead, these damages compensate you for intangible losses like pain and suffering, mental anguish, and long-term dog bite trauma.
Negotiating a Dog Bite Settlement
Your civil claim may settle before our team takes your losses before a judge. That said, don’t take the first settlement offer you receive without considering it in more detail. Some liable parties may try to undervalue your dog bite losses in an attempt to save themselves money.
If you want to go into settlement negotiations with a comprehensive understanding of your case’s value, you should discuss what your case is worth with a Houston dog bite attorney. Our team can both calculate the total value of your case and assess any settlement offers that come your way before you go to court.
If we believe that a settlement offer undervalues your dog bite losses, we can negotiate with the offering party for more coverage during the negotiation and settlement stage. Should negotiations fail, Zinda Law Group knows how to move your case forward in civil court. We’re not afraid to go to trial to get you the dog bite compensation you deserve.
Dog Bite Lawsuit Statute of Limitations
You have to act quickly if you want to bring a dog bite lawsuit before a civil judge. Texas assigns you a statute of limitations that caps the amount of time in which you may investigate your accident and bring a comparable complaint forward. Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code section 16.003 allows personal injury survivors like you to investigate for two years.
If you don’t bring your dog bite complaint forward within that two-year period, you waive your right to civil action. This means not getting the compensation you deserve for your losses, even if you have the evidence you need to prove liability.
Fortunately, you can work with a Houston, TX, dog bite lawyer to make the most out of that two-year period. Our team can bring forward evidence of a dog owner’s negligence long before your statute of limitations expires. You, in turn, can keep going to doctors’ appointments or get back to work without worrying about your use of your investigative deadline.
Let Zinda Law Group Helm an Investigation Into Your Losses
Dog bites can leave you with more than short-term injuries. The physical effects of a dog bite can impact your health for weeks or months after the accident. What’s more, the psychological effects of an attack may make it difficult for you to trust animals again. Complicate both of these factors with the economic stress of your recovery, and a dog bite can upend your entire life.
That, however, is where Zinda Law Group steps in. At Zinda Law Group, we believe that victims should have to worry about their ability to afford legal representation. That’s why we offer a No Win, No Fee Guarantee. You don’t pay us anything unless we win your case.
You don’t have to work through the aftermath of a dog bite alone. Contact Zinda Law Group today to schedule a case consultation with the dog bite lawyers in Houston.
Our Awards
AWARDED TO JOHN C. (JACK) ZINDA BY THE NATIONAL TRIAL LAWYERS ASSOCIATION (2016-2020)
AWARDED TO JOHN C. (JACK) ZINDA (2009, 2011-2012, 2014-2021), & NEIL SOLOMON (2020-2021)
AWARDED TO JACK ZINDA (2016-2020)
LIFETIME MEMBERS JOHN C. (JACK) ZINDA
John (Jack) Zinda
Founder / CEO
Over 100 years of combined experience representing injured victims across the country.
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Neil Solomon
Partner
Real results matter. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
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