As wonderful as dogs can be, they are also unpredictable, and the sad reality is that not all dog owners are responsible enough to keep their dogs under control. Dog bites are always painful, but they can also be dangerous. They also carry the risk of infection, including rabies in some cases. It’s only reasonable to hold the owner of an aggressive dog accountable for their animal.
If you’ve been bitten by a dog in Mansfield, Ohio, contact award-winning personal injury lawyer Jami S. Oliver of Oliver Law Office. As Columbus, Ohio’s Lawyer of the Year for 2024, Jami has the experience and the successful track record to pursue fair compensation for your injuries.
We’d be happy to meet you at our Columbus office, if you’d prefer, via video call or at your home—wherever is convenient to you. Just contact us today and schedule your free case evaluation right away.
Ohio treats dog bites a little differently than many other types of personal injury. In a typical personal injury case based on negligence, you can only recover compensation if you can show that another party’s careless behavior led to your injury. That’s not the case with dog bites, which are governed by the principle of strict liability.
Under the strict liability principle, the dog owner is liable for damages regardless of whether they were negligent. Their dog might never have bitten anyone or behaved aggressively in any way, and they would still be liable.
This makes collecting damages in your case much easier because your lawyer doesn’t need to convince a jury that the dog owner did something wrong. Damages you can collect include:
All your medical bills for the dog bite injury
Compensation for lost wages and other income
Compensation for your pain and suffering
The only disadvantage of Ohio’s strict liability law is that the law does not provide for punitive damages. If the dog has bitten someone else, you might consider including an action based on negligence in your complaint.
Any dog might bite a person under certain circumstances, but some dogs are aggressive by nature or training and have a history of biting people. In this situation, the county or the municipality can designate a dog as a nuisance or a dangerous or vicious dog. The owner of a designated dog must follow additional rules to keep the animal.
Designating a dog as a nuisance is the least restrictive of these categories. A nuisance dog is one that menaces or chases people without provocation but has not yet bitten anyone.
A dangerous dog is one that has injured a person, killed another dog, or escaped its owner at least three times. A vicious dog is one that has killed a person or injured a person severely.
Ohio law requires the owner of a dangerous or vicious dog to keep it contained and to carry liability insurance for the dog. If you’re attacked by a designated dog, your lawyer can file a claim against this liability insurance and ask the court to award punitive damages. After all, the dog owner knew that the dog had a history of attacking people yet failed to control the animal. If a jury agrees that this meets the threshold for awarding punitive damages, you may be able to recover a larger award than you would through a strict liability theory. A skilled dog bite attorney can help you make the case that punitive damages would be appropriate.
In Mansfield, Ohio, you should report a dog bite Richland Public Health at 419-774-4520 or 419-774-4500 after hours. Tell them you need to speak with an Environmental Health Specialist for a rabies investigation. They will advise you to seek medical care right away, and they will make Richland Public Health available to you if you do not have a physician you can call.
You should also clean and dress the bite to protect yourself from infection, and you should try to get the name, address, and phone number of the dog’s owner. The county Environmental Health Specialist will conduct a rabies investigation.
If you’re worried that reporting the dog bite will result in getting the dog euthanized, that is not necessarily the case. This is what will happen when you report the bite:
The dog will be quarantined for 10 days in case of rabies
Richland County officials will decide if the dog should be designated as a nuisance, a dangerous dog, or a vicious dog
Depending on the designation, the dog owner may be required to keep the dog contained
The dog owner may be required to carry liability insurance
These steps will help protect other people from being bitten by a dangerous or vicious dog, so reporting a dog bite is the right thing to do.
In Ohio, you may not be able to recover damages if the dog was defending itself, its owner, its owner’s property, or another person when it bit you, in which case the law does not hold the owner liable for the dog’s actions. Moreover, a court would likely find against you if:
You were teasing or abusing the dog, thus provoking the attack.
You were trespassing at the time of the attack.
You were committing a crime against another person when the dog bit you.
You were committing any crime on the owner’s property other than a petty misdemeanor.
These are all situations in which people would often want a dog to protect them, so a dog biting a person in that situation is not out of control. However, this exception does not apply to door-to-door salespeople, even if the salesperson does not have a permit or license to be in the area for that purpose.
If you’ve been hurt by a dog in Mansfield, Ohio, contact an experienced dog bite lawyer today to pursue compensation for your losses. Oliver Law Office serves Mansfield from our offices in the Columbus and Dublin areas. We are happy to meet you anywhere you would find convenient, or we can simply do a video call if you prefer. If you want to come to our offices, we’re located just 62 minutes from Mansfield. Contact us today for your free case evaluation.
From the North:
Take I-71 S towards Columbus
Take exit 108A for Main St
Turn right onto E Main St
Turn right onto S 4th St
Turn left onto E Town St
Destination will be on the left
From the South:
Take US-23 N towards Columbus
Turn right onto E Main St
Turn left onto S 4th St
Turn left onto E Town St
Destination will be on the left
From the East:
Take I-70 W towards Columbus
Take exit 102 to Cole St
Turn right onto Kelton Ave
Turn left onto Main St
Turn right onto 4th St
Turn left onto Town St
Destination will be on the right
From the West:
Take I-70 E towards Columbus
Take exit 100 B to W Livingston Ave
Turn left onto S. 4th Street
Turn left onto E Town St
Destination will be on the left
