Dog Owner Doesn’t Have Insurance

Answer:

A question that comes up sometimes in dog bite cases or dog attack cases is, “What if that dog owner does not have insurance? What do you do with a claim like that here in Mississippi?” The answer is, first of all, we’re going to assess that situation from top to bottom. Sometimes, people say they don’t have insurance, but they actually do.The first step in that situation is to make sure that you don’t just take them at their word, and that you’re actually exploring every option for available insurance coverage against the party who owns the dog who caused the injury. That’s not just true in dog bite and dog attack cases, that applies to a lot of personal injury cases. We all know insurance companies like to hang on to their money and if they can find a way to deny coverage or reduce the value of the claim, they’re going to do that. Sometimes that includes just denying the coverage exists or denying that coverage applies to a given situation, even though it may.In a situation where a dog owner is liable but does not have insurance, there are still a couple of avenues to look at in terms of the victim getting properly compensated and recovering. One avenue is looking at your own insurance. There are options and avenues where you potentially may have coverage available to you through your own homeowner’s policy, depending on where it happened, but also through other policies that may apply to that situation. Was the person who was injured on the job at the moment, for instance? Workers’ comp may come into play if that person attacked by the dog, for instance, was checking the water meters, or if they were there on the property for business purposes such as repairing a roof or doing some other type of work.The other option beyond your own insurance or other insurance coverage, that may come into play outside of that defendant, is to just proceed with the claim and obtain a judgment through trial or verdict, and then collect against that judgment on the responsible party. That could involve garnishing wages, attaching assets, and ongoing collection efforts against them. Once you have a judgment in place, there typically is, in most states, a time period for collecting on that judgment. In Mississippi, that is typically seven years. The good news is once you enroll that judgment, if you haven’t fully collected on it at the end of that seven years, as long as you don’t let it expire, you can oftentimes go back and renew that judgment to extend it for an additional seven years, and you just continue that process in order to collect on them.That’s where good investigative work really comes into these cases. Dog bite and dog attack cases are a great example of where investigation really matters. It involves looking for the insurance coverage and the ability to pay for the claim that has to be done on the front end. It’s not just coverage that that defendant has or says they have or don’t have, it’s actually digging a layer deeper under that of what’s available and looking to the next level to see if there’s other coverages out there that may apply to the situation. If there’s no insurance coverage, it’s looking to other assets that can be collected upon or collected against in the event of a judgment.All of that, though, really requires legal assistance. There’s just virtually no way that a person can do that on their own without legal help, and not just run-of-the-mill legal help. You’ve really got to have someone involved who does litigation regularly, someone who has some experience and a track record of success on these dog bite and dog attack claims, and experience collecting judgments and running down the insurance. Here at Brad Morris Law Firm, PLLC, that’s what we do. We have a record of success to show that. If you have any questions, just reach out to us through our website or give us a call. We’ll try to get you pointed in the right direction. Whether it’s a dog bite claim or some other type of personal injury, the main thing is we want to try to get you the help you need.