Our Pittsburgh lawyers take your dog bite claim very seriously. We make you fully aware of what we are doing every step of the way, from the very beginning.
So here goes…
First, we cannot do anything on your behalf until you retain us as your lawyer. Here are eight reasons to retain us.
An agreement for representation has to be in writing in PA. Until you retain us, it is your sole duty to timely advance your claim within the two year statute of limitations (from the date of the bite), or by the minor’s twentieth birthday, if the victim is a child.
If you are married, both you and your spouse must retain us as your spouse has a claim for “loss of consortium” for loss of your comfort and support from your injuries.
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How Do you Retain Us?
It’s easy.
We either come to your home with papers for you to sign — or, even more simply, we email you the terms of representation and you respond “OK.”
That’s it.
The terms are simple and basically: there is no risk to you, no fee unless we recover money for you. Our email describes the fair way that fees are calculated and how we advance money for the costs of your claim. Again, there is no risk to you.
Now, we are ready to advance your claim.
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What is a claim?
A claim is created when your dog bite injury attorney drafts a letter — a Notice of Representation, which is not a lawsuit — to the dog owner and other potentially responsible parties, such as a landlord, for them to forward the letter to the insurance carrier.
If you know the names and address of all responsible parties, great! If not, we have you sign an authorization so we can order the police / animal bite report, which will contain the contact information for the responsible parties.
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No Lawsuit, Most Likely
We start with just a letter for two reasons: first, we must determine whether the responsible parties have liability insurance, such as home owner or renter’s insurance. Why is this important? Insurance carriers have staff to investigate and settle your claim short of us filing suit. Plus, the insurance company will have money to pay a settlement to extent coverage exists.
Without insurance, you might get a judgment against the responsible party – after a year or more of litigation — but collecting on a judgment against someone without insurance can be problematic. Even if that person owns his home, there might be a mortgage — or two, or three — on it, so even if you force a sheriff sale of that person’s home, the mortgages will take priority. Plus, in a sheriff sale, a home is not sold for market value because there are no inspections. The potential buyers do not even see the inside of the home, so the money recovered in sheriff sale might be a small fraction of the home’s actual value.
Secondly, we start with a letter — and not a lawsuit — because a letter is a faster way to inform the responsible parties of the claim and their duty to preserve evidence.
A lawsuit takes time to both prepare and serve on the Defendant (via the sheriff handing the papers to each defendant), wasting valuable time, such that evidence might not be preserved, as there may be no duty to preserve it until the responsible parties get our Notice of Representation letter.
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What Happens Next?
If the responsible party forwards our letter to his insurance carrier, great! We’ll hear from the insurance carrier promptly. Then, we can start ordering your medical records and building your claim by make a persuasive case to the insurance carrier — based on our success in court in the past and knowledge of other court cases — as to why they should pay top dollar short of litigation.
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–What if We Do Not Hear From an Insurance Carrier?
If, on the other hand, we never hear about the existence of any insurance carrier in this matter, we are not done. We check the county records on that person’s real property, to see if there is a mortgage on the property owned by the responsible party. If so, the mortgage holder will required the existence of liability coverage. So we can file suit, to get a subpoena, to get the insurance information to turn in the claim ourselves.
Worst case scenario: If the responsible party does not own property and we do not hear from any insurance carrier after sending our notice of representation, then a decision has to be made whether we go forward. Either way, you will not owe us any money and we will help you as a courtesy in terms advising you about how to get your medical bills paid, etc.
But don’t worry: in most cases, we are able to find insurance of some sort.
Then, once the insurance carrier is notified, we we will work with you to help us gather all the information we need to prove your claim and justify our demand for money from the insurance carrier. We will have you fill out a form called in “impact statement” to help us gather all your information, plus we have you sign authorizations so we can get all of our medical, billing, lost wage or lost earning capacity from the dog bite, insurance you might have, and other records related to your claims.
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Don’t Talk About Your Case
Once retained, we speak for you. You should never speak about your case and let your lawyer do that. Anything you say can be used against you. So you should not say anything to the opposing party or that party’s insurance carrier unless your lawyer is present. Likewise, anything you post on social media can be used against to prove your physical ability (despite being bitten by a dog), your general happiness level (despite being traumatized by an attack), and details of how the dog bite happen, that can be twisted and used against you. Best to say nothing.
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Filing a Lawsuit
We are able to get most cases settled promptly and short of filing a lawsuit such that the odds of you having to actually testify is relatively low. However, you will want experienced counsel to negotiate the resolution of your case. You don’t want your lawyer to “accidentally” settle your case, by saying the wrong things during negotiations. Click here for more.
Even if we file suit, very few of those cases actually go to trial, so will end up relying on us to all the hard work to present your claim to insurance carrier for the responsible party, to lessen the impact of the claim on your time, energy, and enjoyment life. We also look at the effect of the attack on postal carriers and other delivery people.
Our Pittsburgh lawyers look forward to applying our decades of experience to make this process as easy for you as possible to get you the highest possible recovery based on the facts that you help us to discover.
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We look forward to working with you!
412.400.5476
