Kentucky Injury Attorney Tate Meagher here. Thanks for joining me and watching my video. I’m here today to talk about the number one question I get from my clients, and that is, how much is my dog bite injury claim worth? Well, there are a variety of factors you have to look at.
Strict Liability in Kentucky Law
Start off with looking at Kentucky law that says dog owners are strictly liable for any injuries their dog causes to you. This makes dog owners automatically liable for injuries caused by their dog. There are some defenses they can raise to this, and we’ll talk about the main one a little bit later in this video. But again, if their dog bites you, they are strictly liable for your injuries.
Landlord Liability
Also, keep in mind that if the dog owner was a tenant, the landlord could also be liable, but you’ll have to prove negligence against the landlord. It’s not a strict liability standard; it’s negligence, which is going to be harder to prove, but it’s possible under the facts of your case. I would highly encourage you to reach out to an attorney to evaluate that type of claim for you if you’re faced with those circumstances.
Insurance Coverage
Next, you have to look at how much insurance coverage is available to you. If it’s a dog owner, and we are pursuing their insurance, you want to see if they have renter’s insurance or homeowner’s insurance that you might be able to pursue. A lot of times, there are exclusions in those policies that say they won’t cover, for instance, an incident where their dog causes injury to another person. I highly recommend you reach out to an attorney to see what types of insurance coverage might be available to you in your case.
Assessing Damages
Next, you want to look at what are your damages caused by the dog bite. The main types of damages that you can recover for include medical bills lost wages, and pain and suffering.
Pain and Suffering
For pain and suffering damages, the way we evaluate how much you can recover is by looking at the local jurisdiction. We examine past verdicts in similar cases for people who had similar injuries to yours and what the results were in those cases. We also look at past settlements for similar cases and what was awarded to the injured person. We compare those results from past cases to your case to try to come up with a range of what your pain and suffering award might be.
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