Personal Injury Cases Often Have Many Layers and Many Players

Let’s say you adopt a dog. She’s a big dog, and you have a young child, but the rescue group assured you that the dog is fabulous with children, just not so much with cats.

Things are going great, and the dog is growing more confident in her new home. One day, you’ve got your toddler on your hip playing the tickle game, when the toddler gleefully kicks his feet and the sweet dog suddenly becomes the dry land incarnation of Jaws and emerges from nowhere to take a bite out of your child’s foot. We’re talking a major bite that’s going to require at least one surgery, possibly more.

As most people do when big events happen, you post the incident on your Facebook page. The dog’s original foster mom sees your post and informs you that after fostering the dog for six months, she made it clear to the rescue group that the dog was not adoptable and should be humanely euthanized. (Funny … the rescue group only mentioned a danger to cats.) Upon further investigation, you find that the previous foster is a professional in the field of animal control and that she explained in great detail to the rescue group that the dog exhibited an extraordinarily strong prey drive making her a danger to small children, as well as small animals. The foster mom surrendered the dog back to the rescue group in good faith that appropriate action would be taken. After all, the dog was actually the “property” of the rescue group, not the foster, so she was not at liberty to make the decision to euthanize the dog. Or was she?

Let’s review: The rescue group had been told that the dog posed a threat to children and did not share that information with you. Consequently, your child was put at risk and seriously injured. Do you have a personal injury case? Personal injury cases arise when the negligence of one party causes undue harm to another party. In the case of the rescue group, they were informed by a professional that the dog was a danger, but they neglected to provide training to correct the problem, continued to promote the dog as adoptable, and neglected to notify you of potential danger to your child.

A personal injury attorney in Fort Lauderdale runs into odd sounding scenarios all the time. Not only is a personal injury attorney highly educated with regard to the law, they are also skillful investigators who can get to the root cause of an injury and determine who’s really responsible. Let’s add one more twist: Say that you and your personal injury attorney are preparing your case against the rescue group, and while interviewing the staff at the city animal shelter that originally impounded the dog as a stray, you learn that shelter staff neglected to tell the rescue group that a microchip was detected when the dog was impounded, but that shelter staff chose to offer the dog for rescue because the dog’s owner—identified by the microchip—was a known player in local dog fighting? If it can be determined that this owner trained the dog to fight, could he be responsible for the injury to your child, as well? Do you see how this unraveling can go on and on and on?

There’s an old saying that one who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, and as the above scenario illustrates, one can easily see why. There are numerous parties involved in this situation, and only an experienced personal injury attorney in Fort Lauderdale can investigate the details and sort them out, not only according to facts but according to the laws, and determine who’s really responsible for the injury to your child. Moral of the story? When in doubt, consult a personal injury in Fort Lauderdale.

Personal Injury Attorney Fort Lauderdale – Lawlor, Winston, White & Murphey are seasoned personal injury lawyers in Fort Lauderdale with a winning record of guiding accident victims through every detail of an accident. Please visit our website at / or call our offices at 954-525-2345 to schedule a free consultation to discuss your case. If you’re concerned that you can’t afford the services of a personal injury attorney in Fort Lauderdale, rest assured that we work on a contingency basis—you don’t pay us until you receive compensation.