What you can sue for in a dog bite case through a lawsuit depends on the nature and severity of the injuries and the negotiation or litigation skills of the law firm that represents you. The average dog bite claim ranges from $55,000 to $65,000, but you may sue for more or less depending on the factors involved in your case.The experienced personal injury lawyers at Stone Rose Law have handled many dog bite injury claims for our clients. To learn about your legal options after a dog-related injury, call us at (480) 498-8998 or use our contact form.
We cover the general topic of dog bite claims on our website, including how dog bites happen, the kinds of injuries they cause, and how to make a legal claim. In this post, we focus on those considerations that influence the amount of your possible recovery.
Estimates vary depending on the source, but overall, the average dog bite claim in Arizona is in the five-figure range, from $55,000 to $65,000. However, these numbers can vary substantially, so you should not take them as expectations.
For example, if a large dog breaks away from its owner’s control and runs up to you, knocking you down in the process, which isn’t a “bite” but yet in violation of Arizona’s “Dog-At-Large” statute, if you are young and healthy, you might suffer as little as a few scrapes and bruises or a sprained wrist from reaching out to break your fall. This case might be worth only a few hundred or a few thousand dollars.
On the other extreme, if the same scenario were to happen to an elderly person, the fall might result in broken bones and complications that can require surgery or even something as significant as a knee or hip replacement that can cost $100,000 or more.
In between, you can experience a variety of serious injuries in dog bite cases, like puncture wounds, the risk of infectious diseases that can require anything from a tetanus shot to rabies vaccination, intense physical pain, or nerve damage.
Cases involving a dog biting you, the amount of recovery will again vary on the severity of the injuries sustained, permanent physical scars, and/or permanent lifelong injuries, etc. while also considering the age of the victim and diminution in quality of life due to the dog bite injuries, are just a few things to consider.
In a worst-case situation, a dog can cause fatal injuries. This kind of wrongful death claim can result in damages in the high six figures or even a million dollars or more.
One of the most important considerations in setting the value of a dog injury case is to investigate the accident itself thoroughly: what caused it, the exact nature of your immediate injuries, and any potential long-term effects those injuries can have on your ability to live your life.
Your attorney will need to investigate the facts to establish what Arizona law refers to as economic damages, non-economic damages, and possibly even punitive damages to determine how much compensation to pursue.
The investigation will focus on gathering evidence to support your claim because you will only recover monies for damages you can prove in negotiations or at trial that you sustained as a result of the dog owner’s negligence.
Economic damages are those that can be calculated with a high degree of certainty.
Examples of economic damages are your medical expenses to treat your injuries you can prove with medical bills, property loss or damage that you can prove with repair or replacement estimates, or lost wages that you can prove by calculating time lost at work based on your expected income that you normally receive but did not because of the injury.
Economic damages can include long-term anticipated costs and out-of-pocket expenses. For example, if your injuries are serious and require long-term physical therapy to heal fully, this can be factored into your economic damages calculations.
Arizona has no legal restriction on how much you can recover in economic damages. You are only limited by your ability to prove with evidence the value of the harm done to you.
Not all damages are easily proven by gathering evidence from bills and financial estimates, but they still have a value that can be calculated as part of your overall compensation.
These kinds of non-economic damages include harm like pain and suffering, emotional injuries like mental anguish, ongoing fear and anxiety, loss of companionship, loss of consortium, and post-traumatic stress, to name a few.
In a personal injury court case, a jury or judge, if no jury, decides the value of non-economic damages. In a negotiated settlement, non-economic damages are often calculated by agreeing on a multiplication factor to apply based on the economic damages you can prove.
In some particularly serious cases of dog injuries, such as when the owner deliberately set his or her dog upon you or was so reckless or grossly negligent in allowing a dangerous dog loose that the owner’s behavior was egregious in causing the harm done to you, punitive damages may be possible to recover.
Similar to non-economic damages, if your attorney can establish your entitlement to punitive damages based on a dog attack, the jury sets the value in a court case. In a negotiated settlement amount, punitive damages are negotiated as a stipulated amount.
Two additional considerations can also influence the final value of a settlement payout or a judgment award for a dog-related injury. These are the defendant’s ability to pay and whether the defendant can shift some of the blame for the injuries back onto you.
Even if your personal injury attorney can successfully prove that your claim is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the ability of the defendant to compensate you can be subject to practical limitations based on the defendant’s insurance coverage and/or the net worth of any assets of the defendant that can be liquidated to satisfy a judgment amount.
Most settlements for dog bite injuries, for example, will come from the defendant’s homeowner’s insurance policy or personal or business liability insurance.
Once you reach the policy limits of the insurance company coverage, you can still pursue the dog owner personally to pay for any additional damages that the insurance settlement amount does not pay for. This requires more factual investigation by your personal injury attorney, who will need to uncover how much the defendant can reasonably afford to pay from savings accounts, contributions from income, and net value of assets that can be liquidated.
If, for example, the defendant is wealthy, you might recover considerable sums beyond insurance coverage limits. But if the defendant has no insurance, is unemployed, and has little in the way of any assets that can be reached, then even though the value of your claim may be considerable, it could be difficult, if even possible at all, to recover the entire amount(s) of your damages.
If the dog is owned by the government, like a police dog, making a dog bite claim against the government can also pose challenges under Arizona dog bite laws and might even be precluded, again depending on the factual circumstances of how the injury happened.
Everyone, including dog bite victims, is subject to a duty of reasonable care to avoid being bitten. In any personal injury claim, under Arizona law, the value of your compensation is subject to being reduced if the defendant can prove that you at least partly contributed to the accident occurring or the injuries you suffered from it.
For example, if the owner can establish facts like you were taunting or otherwise provoking the dog before it attacked you, you were trespassing on the owner’s property when the dog bit you, or you were attacking the dog and the dog acted in self-defense, these are examples of comparative negligence defense claims.
In a court case, if the defense can establish comparative negligence on your part, then the court or jury in jury trial cases, will establish your degree of relative fault on a percentage basis. For example, if the court finds that you were 10% at fault, and the jury awards you $50,000, then you will see your judgment award reduced to $45,000.
Comparative fault in Arizona is not an absolute defense for a dog owner; it simply reduces the value of what dog bite victims can recover but is not a bar to recovery. What this means is that even if the owner can establish that you were 99% to blame for your dog bite injury, you can still at least theoretically recover that remaining 1% of what your assessed damages were.
You can help increase the possible value of your dog bite settlement or strict liability claim in court by taking some actions of your own. Here are some pointers on what you can do after a dog-related injury to help your lawyer present the strongest possible case in settlement or in a lawsuit.
Also, do not forget that Arizona law gives you as little as one year to file your legal claim for an animal bite injury. Even the highest-value claim is worth nothing if you wait too long to take action.
If you or a loved one has been bitten or otherwise hurt by a dog, you can turn to us at Stone Rose Law for the representation you need to establish and pursue a legal claim and receive a fair settlement.
Call Stone Rose Law at (480) 498-8998 or use our contact form to get more information or schedule a free case evaluation with one of our experienced dog bite attorneys.
