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As any lawsuit makes its way through the legal system, the opposing lawyers will face specific challenges. During the scheduled hearings of a personal injury case, the lawyer for the plaintiff seems to face the most challenging problems. In sharp contrast to that situation, the personal injury lawyer in Sarnia for a dog owner seems to have the toughest hill to climb, when aiding that same defendant in a dog bite lawsuit.
Suppose that no one saw the accused canine bite the plaintiff? In that case, then the canine’s owner might be tempted to deny awareness of exactly what took place at the time of the biting incident. While that could be one approach, any lawyer that was planning to present a defense might have a good reason for pursuing one of at least one-half dozen alternative approaches.
Was the dog’s owner negligent?
Could evidence of the owner’s negligence be found in the fact that a pet with sharp teeth had not been tied up? If that same pet was tied up, how securely had one person’s four-legged friend been attached to a pole or similar object? An owner’s failure to secure a beloved pet could be used to support an accusation of negligence, one that would be pointed at that same dog-owner.
Was the dog provoked?
If there seems to be an affirmative answer to that question, then who made the provoking movement? Was it a friend of the defendant? If a defendant has demonstrated awareness of how to behave in a dog’s presence, then why would a dog-owner think that the defendant’s friend lacked that same awareness?
Had there been prior evidence of the dog’s aggressive behavior?
If the defendant has had the accused pet for quite some time, and has never before seen it bite a human, then that fact could work in the same defendant’s favor. That fact would suggest that the biting canine had indeed been provoked in some fashion.
Was the owner not there to control the dog?
Maybe the owner was out-of-town. Perhaps he or she had to go to a doctor’s appointment. It could be that the canine accused of biting the plaintiff was, at that time, under the care of a dog-sitter. If the same canine’s behavior had never copied that of an aggressive pet, then for what reason could any member of the jury reasonably think that the pet’s owner should be expected to hire a dog-sitter that knows how to control such an animal?
Those are examples of the type of argument that might be made by a lawyer for the defendant (the dog’s owner). Any such argument could be strengthened by showing that the defendant had no obligations to the person harmed by the canine’s teeth. In other words, a lawyer could show that his or her client owed no duty to the person that had chosen to get close to the suddenly aggressive pet.