Protect Your Child's Rights After a Dog Attack

Attorney Mark Bernstein Discusses Ways to Protect Your Child from Dangerous Dogs and What to Do If Your Child Becomes a Dog Bite Victim

Behind the Badge - JTV TV - Jackson
May 5, 2008

I’m Attorney Mark Bernstein. I’m an attorney with the Bernstein Law Firm.

We’re a personal injury law firm, the Bernstein Law Firm, with my brother Richard Bernstein, my sister Beth Bernstein, and of course my father Sam Bernstein.

We are thrilled to be supporters and sponsors of Behind the Badge. We’re looking forward to bringing information to the Jackson community about legal issues that is useful and helpful to you and to your family.

This particular issue, this particular episode rather, focuses on school safety and safety of children. As we enter spring, hopefully, kids are outside, animals are outside, and unfortunately, from time to time a dog bite may occur.

Our law firm handles these types of cases, and they frequently involve very traumatic, very serious injuries. One in six dog bite attacks result in some form of medical treatment. Often times these attacks can be very serious, sometimes resulting in death. .

There have been a number of very high profile instances in this area and across the state involving savage attacks that ended up in death. But thankfully, frequently, they don’t. That’s a very infrequent occurrence. But they do result in permanent, serious, lasting residual injuries for the child or anybody that’s involved in this.

One-half of all dog bites involve a child. So, this is an issue that we should be focusing on in this show.
Michigan law, with regard to dog bites, is relatively straightforward. It’s called the strict liability law. And what that means is that if a dog attacks anybody, in this case we’re talking about a child, the owner of that dog is liable to the person that was injured.

The defenses to it include provocation or trespassing. Often times the insurance industry will try to spin an event that a child was involved in as being provocative, and thereby say that they are not liable.

Our office has tremendous experience and expertise, and a good track record in these types of cases. So I urge you, if God forbid, one of your children, or a family member has been injured by a dog and wants to protect their legal rights, or at least get a feel for what their options are I encourage you to call our office at 1-800-CALL-SAM, or check out our website at www.callsam.com.

Looking forward to bringing these issues to you on this show. Thank you very much for your time.