Hello, my name is Robert Geller and I am an attorney in the Tampa Bay area. Our firm handles personal injury cases. I want to discuss what you should do if you're injured from a dog bite or animal injury. I want to talk about what you can do if you're injured as a result of a dog bite.
In Florida you are allowed to bring a claim against a owner of a dog if you're injured as a result of the dog biting you, or alternately, if the dog causes you some type of injury. What I mean by that is, let's say the dog jumps on you and knocks you down. You're still able to bring a claim against a owner of the dog. In Florida, we call that strict liability. As long as you can prove that that person owned the dog and that your injuries were caused by that dog either bite or attack, you can bring a claim against them.
Florida is a little different than some other states. In Florida, you do not have to prove that the owner of the dog had prior knowledge of the dog either attacking or biting you or biting another person. All you have to do is prove ownership and that you are injured. There are some examples of certain defenses that can be raised against you if you are attacked or bit.
First of all, if the owner of the dog has prominently displaced bad dog signs on the property and you then choose to enter the property even though they have those prominently displaced bad dog signs, the owner can raise that as the offense. Also, of course, if you go and provoked the animal. You go raise your fist to the animal are you trying to scare the animal or you do something to provoke the dog, then the owner also has a defense to your strict liability claim.
I have seen that in some of the cases I've handled. I once represented a lady who was injured, the dog jumped her, knocked her down, and severely hurt her spine. Unfortunately, the owner of the dog raised the fact that the lady should not have been on the property to start with. There were bad dog signs on the property.
What happens if you are injured by another animal in Florida? Let's say you're injured by- I'm going to use a cow or a bull. I'm gonna explain to you an example of a case that I once handled in Florida. You can still bring a claim against an owner of an animal like a cow, a bull, or even a horse as long as you can show that the owner did something wrong in maintaining or caring for the animal. That's a little different than the dog bite cases because you don't have to show the owner did anything wrong. You only have to show that the owner owned the dog and you can bring your claim. You don't have to show that they did something wrong.
Let's say for example you're injured you're driving down the highway. Tthis is a real example of a case that I once handled. It's in the middle of the night and you're driving carefully. You have your headlights on, but all of a sudden a cow jumps in the middle of the road. You crash into the cow. The cow is a very big animal. In my case, my client actually went through the windshield. She had some very severe injuries as a result of this crash.
What you can do, and in my case, we were able to show that the owner was not a causal bull but the owner of the bull did not keep cows in a pen. Somehow the cat the bull tried to get out of the pen and looked for a cow. It got on the road and caused my client injury. We were able to show that the farmer, the owner, of this particular bull did not act reasonably in maintaining this animal to cause my clients some severe serious injuries.
If you are injured at all- any kind of injury- automobile accidents, injured by a dog or injured by a cow or any kind of other animal, please feel free to call us. We'd be glad to help you with your case.
My name is Robert Geller and again I'm an attorney in Tampa Bay area thank you.
