Roughly 1 million people are attacked and bitten by a dog in the United States on an annual basis and require some level of medical treatment. Of those, more than 300,000 require a visit to the emergency room with a substantial percentage of the victims being children. For victims and parents of victims, one of the first and most common questions that they ask is whether or not they should report the attack. Although it may be difficult to believe, three out of every four dog attacks in the United States goes unreported. This should not be the case since the law takes dog attacks and bites very seriously.
Dog bites are one of the most common forms of personal injury in Atlanta and around the country and as such there are many attorneys who specialize in dog bite law and practice it exclusively. This being the case, instances of dog bites should never go unreported and yet some victims fail to do so because they don’t think they will be taken seriously; they think that a dog bite is not serious enough to warrant legal action. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Another reason victims don’t report a dog attack is because they don’t know who is really responsible for the attack. In the vast majority of cases, however, it is the owner of the dog who is responsible for the attack. Whether the attack occurred on private property or in a public location, the onus of the attack and all of its ramifications fall on the dog’s owner. Many owners claim that they were unaware that their dog was capable of such an attack but this claim is moot in the eyes of the law and anyone who suffers an injury as a result of a vicious dog attack should seek medical treatment and legal counsel as soon as possible.
