Damages in Tampa Dog Bite Cases
If you have suffered a dog bite injury, you may be entitled to receive financial compensation, called damages, for the injuries resulting from the experience. A Tampa dog bite lawyer can help you determine what damages you might be eligible to receive.
There are many kinds of economic and non-economic damages that can be collected in a dog bite case, including:
- Past medical bills
- Future medical bills
- Past lost wages
- Future lost wages
- Future earning capacity
- Pain and suffering
- Emotional distress
- Loss of enjoyment of life
Loss of Enjoyment
Trying to prove the monetary value of the loss of enjoyment of life is more art than a science.
The way a person proves it is through the testimony of the injured party or their friends and family members in front of a jury regarding activities, such as walking and playing with their dog, the injured individual used to enjoyed that they are no longer able to.
The injured individual and their attorney will then ask the jury what it is worth to not be able to enjoy the hobbies they have done their entire life.
Usually, when a person is in the negotiation process before the suit goes to court, the plaintiff’s attorney will try to argue that the person injured by a dog bite is risking a large amount of money that the jury could determine is owed as damages for the dog bite claim. The defense council will have to come to some sort of resolution on where they can compromise on what they think the loss of enjoyment damages in a Tampa dog bite injury case is worth.
There is no scientific or economic number to put on the loss of enjoyment of life, it is just something that a person argues to a jury and they have to decide what it is worth.
Injury Severity
We are talking economic damages with medical bills; it directly relates to how much treatment somebody had to go through as a result of that injury. So if somebody has to have a surgery or multiple surgeries, that compensation is going to be a lot greater than somebody that just had to have a few stitches and they just had to go through the suffering and the fear of being attacked by a dog.
The amount in medical bills is directly correlated with the amount of damages that a person receives for a Tampa dog bite claim. Additionally, if the person will have to have surgery in the next six months, that can also be taken into account when determining the economic damages of the claim.
Collecting Damages
The most important thing with compensation is trying to find someone to collect against. It is generally hard to collect from an individual party. As far as compensation goes, proving the large damages is usually not the difficult part in dog bite cases. Instead, it is trying to attach some type of insurance party that can actually pay for the damages.