Portland Attorneys- Animal Bites

Portland Attorneys- Animal Bites

Dog Bite Law is a unique combination of city and county ordinances, state statutory law, state case law and common law, legal principles resulting from specific lawsuits from throughout the United States.

All states hold a person responsible for their own negligence, intentional conduct, and reckless or outrageous behavior, keeping a dog that previously bit a person or exhibited a tendency to someday bite a person , and violating a public health and safety law such as a leash law or a prohibition against dogs running at large. In all, the dog owner will be held liable upon the additional ground that he was the owner of the dog that inflicted the bite, without regard to whether he was negligent or anything else. Some strict liability statutes include whoever had custody of the dog as well as its owner, non-bite injuries as well as bites, and provide for additional compensation if the dog previously bit a person. Many dog bite statutes combine concepts of negligence, common law strict liability, and violations of local law.

The usual defenses in dog bite claims are that the victim provoked the dog, was a trespasser, was negligent, consciously assumed the risk of being bitten, or was a canine professional who was deemed to assume the risk. When the victim is a child, another defense is that his parent negligently failed to supervise him, and therefore was a cause of the accident. These defenses might be based on state statutes or judicial decisions. The defenses are different from state to state, and any particular defense might not apply in a specific case.

Legal responsibility is determined by the following.

Whether the dog previously bit anyone. If so, then the dog owner or custodian is responsible.
Whether the dog previously did something that should have put the owner-custodian on notice that the dog was inclined to bite somebody in the future.
Whether the person having custody of the dog at the time of the incident had violated any law pertaining to public health or safety, which was intended to protect people like the victim. An example would be a leash law, but there could be regulations such as those that restrict dogs from being in day care centers are beauty parlors. The violation of such a law would be considered negligent .
We consider whether the accident was caused by negligence. A dog that is habitually mistreated, or sick, or suffering from a l disease is more likely to bite a person. Negligence is a ground for liability.
If the owner or custodian is not responsible, we consider could anyone else might be liable as a result of negligence or have the knowledge that the animal could bite.

When the owner does not have insurance.
If the owner is unable to compensate the victim because of lack of insurance or resources, attorneys consider whether anyone else might be responsible because of their own negligence.

Washington county, Clackamas County , Benton County , Deschutes County, Lane County, Multnomah County.

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