What to Do if You Suffer From a Dog Bite
Get Help and Call Your Personal Injury Attorney Orange Park FL
Dogs may be man’s best friend, but unfortunately, there are occasional issues where canines wind up causing harm to humans. If you, or someone you no comes to harm because of a dog bite or related injury, what should you do? Here are a few suggestions from your personal injury attorney Orange Park FL.
- Obtain Emergency Medical Care – First and foremost, make certain you take care of yourself from a medical standpoint. Dog bites can be very dangerous. Even if you don’t think the bite is particularly severe, you will want to have it checked out by a doctor or at the emergency room. You could have some muscle damage that you don’t know about or an infection you can’t see. By getting this medical care right away you can have any problems documented which can help you now–and may benefit you later too.
- Identify the Dog (and Owner) – As you are getting emergency medical treatment, you want to obtain identification of the dog that bit you. With this information, you’ll be able to minimize your own treatment, because if the dog has received its rabies vaccine you will not need to receive preventive treatment for the disease. Additionally, information about the dog and owner will help when it comes time for your personal injury attorney Orange Park FL to put together your legal case. If you don’t have precise information to identify the dog, gather as much information as possible, such as a good description of the animal and notations about where the incident occurred.
- Photograph the Wounds – Make sure to take photographs of the wounds as soon as possible. These photos can be useful if there is a legal case later on or if the case is picked up by the owner’s insurance carrier. In addition to taking photos the day of the accident, you will likely want to take additional photographs as the wounds begin healing–to show further progress in your case for your personal injury attorney Orange Park FL.
- Contact Law Enforcement – Contact the law enforcement agency in your city or state that handles dog complaints. This may be the local police force or it may be an animal control office. The local police station should be able to put you in touch with the correct party. By reporting it to law enforcement you will make sure it is properly recorded for legal purposes, and you may help protect someone else from becoming a victim in the future as well.
No matter how minor a dog bite may seem, the long-term effects can be quite severe. Don’t accept any type of settlement or discuss the case with an insurance company without first calling your personal injury attorney Orange Park FL. When you have a good personal injury lawyer on your side, you can feel confident that you’ll get the best possible results from your dog bite case. Give us a call at our personal injury attorney Orange Park FL office today–we look forward to working with you.
