Did You Know About Compensation In A Dog Bite Case?

If you are the owner of a dog and the animal causes damages to someone, you might be responsible for recovering some of the following damages:

·         Medical bills

·         Pain and suffering

·         Property damage

·         Loss of income

What is more, if the dog has actually attacked someone else before that or the behavior of the owner was tremendously outrageous (if he lets it loose even though he knows that it’s incredibly vicious, for example) could also cause the owner to be responsible for:

·         Punitive damages

·         Double or triple damages in certain situations

It is important that you talk with your injury lawyer before filing the claim. Let’s have a look at some of those damages and how are they regarded by the Ontario law.

Medical bills

The first thing that you need to do after you have been involved in a dog bite case and you’ve incurred damages is to seek medical attention and care. You need to get your damages taken care of as soon as it’s possible. All the expenses that you make in relation – medical care; medicament and basically everything related to your treatment is claimable. You can get compensated for it as per the law. These are the special damages.

Pain and suffering

Pain and suffering are commonly regarded as general damages and they can’t be established with documents like medical bills. They are left to the discretion of the judge or the jury and are highly individual in every single case. However, they are usually a lot more substantial in comparison and this is something that you need to take into consideration when it comes to it

Property damage

The owner of the dog is liable for any damage that his animal does. This follows as per the Dog Owner’s Liability Act from 1990 in Ontario. Therefore, if your dog has cause structural or any other type of property damage to a third party, you will have to reimburse that third party as per the law.

Loss of income

That’s right – if the injured party has lost income that he would generally get as a result of his usual day-to-day working affairs, you could be found liable for it and you might have to pay it as well. The reason might be too many injuries or poor health or maybe limited mobility which has led to the individual losing the job or wages.

As you can see, there are quite a lot of things which need to be taken into account when it comes to dog bite cases. As unfortunate as it may sound, Ontario is a province which knows quite a lot of cases of the kind and they are fairly regular. This is the main reason for which finding a lawyer with the designated experience shouldn’t be overly challenging. It’s also important to make sure that everything is handled as per the highest legal standards.