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Dog bite

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O'Reilly | 12:37 Sun 10th Jun 2007 | Law
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Can I ask you wonderful people how an insurance company ascertains the price of a dog bite injury? Do they take the size or the location and do they take into consideration if you are in a family or you live alone and the incapacity depending on your own personal circumstances or is it purely based on the size/location of the bite and is valued irrespective of your personal circumstances? Like a leg bite may be worth �25 and an arm bite worth �30 - but living alone and devoid of help then that leg bite might be worth �30 and the arm bite might be worth �35?? I don't wan't to milk my problem at all but I do want recompense for the additional costs I live alone and being totally one handed. I'll give you a link to a pic of my arm taken 2 weeks after my friends german Shepherd attacked me. Still not healing and can't use my arm so can't wash up or prepare meals so am living in a dirty environment as i can't clean and certainly can't cook (or even use a can opener) I don't want the dog destroyed but as I am not a wage earner I would really like my extra costs back. Does anyone know the rates of insurance payouts for dog injuries and is it depending on the location of the injury or whether or not an individuals circumstances is also taken into account?
Pics of my arm is here http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/album_contact. html?c_album=5781714
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Can't see your pics - you have to allow people to see it.

Claiming compensation for dog bites is not easy - does your friend have pet insurance? You will have to claim against your friend, and unless they have some sort of insurance, you will be claiming directly from them.

To make a successful claim you have to prove the owner was negligent in some way. That he was aware the dog has a history of biting people and did not restrain him properly.
If the owner can honestly say, for example, that the dog has never before bitten anybody and you were engaging in rough play with the dog, then you are unlikely to succeed.

Your claim would be based on compensation for pain and suffering, loss of earnings and expenses directly incurred - you must keep receipts of prescriptions costs, travel to doctors and hospital, additional spending on food, cleaning help and so on.

You should ideally have reported the attack to the police.

As this is the dog of a friend, it would be better to ask your friend directly for compensation rather than start action against him.
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Oh sorry - this link might work http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/5781714

no my friend does not have pet insurance but has house insurance. The dog has bitten his human family and I did report it to the police but as the dog bit me on their property and not in public the police say there's nothing that they can do. thank you for your advice. I guess not only will I be scarred for life but I'll end up out of pocket too - such a shame.
i think the police have a duty to see this dog put down
Ouch - that is one nasty bite.

If the dog has bitten before, then it should be investigated - I don't care if it is in his own home.

Go to Citizens Advice Bureau and see what they say. Household insurance should cover your friend for this sort of thing, so it may be worth claiming.

What concerns me is a biting dog will carry on biting. You're a grown man, next time it could be a child.

I assume you and your friend weren't fighting, or provoking the dog in any way.

Follow it up! Back to the police, and go to CAB.
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Just to finalise this email and thank you Ethel so much for your advice. My friends have dog insurance and after my treatment at the hospital finished I asked them for the insurance details and told them that I was looking to claim the extra costs in take away meals and a new jacket. I had an email back from my friends husband saying that if I dared take matters further he would fight me every inch of the way and he stated that 3 of them were in the home at the time their dog bit me (only one was in the home) that I was warned about the dog (I was not) that I refused to go to a hospital (I drove myself to a hospital) and that I verbally admitted liability - which I did not......so it seems like as there are no witnesses on my side that visiting one person has ended up in visiting three people so rather than visit one friend they are saying I visited a whole family and they are all witnesses and I myself have no witness to back up my truthful story. Get my drift? I can't prove anything and I can't prove that they are inventing situations that did not exist. CAB ask me if I was alone and as I was I cannot prove that only one person was in the home that I visited and not three people as the email from these friends now state.
I am left badly maimed and out of pocket and can't do a thing about it because its now "three" people's word against "one" - thanks so much for your advice anyway and I hope nobody else has the same problem as I have had.

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