Fort Lauderdale Dog Bite Lawyer

A dog bite can turn an ordinary walk through Victoria Park or an evening on Las Olas into months of wound care and surgery. Fort Lauderdale’s dense residential neighborhoods and its dog-friendly restaurant patios put people and animals in close contact every day, and not every owner keeps their dog under control. When a bite happens here, Florida law sides strongly with the injured person. A Fort Lauderdale dog bite lawyer who understands how insurers defend these claims is the difference between a fast lowball offer and full payment for what the injury cost you.

Florida’s Strict Liability Dog Bite Law

Most states make a bite victim prove the owner knew the dog was dangerous. Florida does not. Under Fla. Stat. § 767.04, a dog owner is strictly liable for a bite when the victim was in a public place or was lawfully on private property, including the owner’s own yard. Liability attaches whether or not the owner had any reason to think the dog would bite.

That difference matters in practice. In states that follow the so-called one bite rule, an owner gets a pass the first time because the dog had no record of aggression. Florida rejected that idea. A golden retriever that has never so much as growled creates the same exposure for its owner as a dog with a bite history, the moment it breaks skin on someone who had a right to be there.

Strict liability does not mean automatic payment, though. The 2023 comparative fault rule still applies to dog bite claims. If the owner can show you provoked the animal, your recovery may be reduced, and if a jury finds you more than 50 percent responsible, Fla. Stat. § 768.81 bars recovery altogether. Provocation is the defense homeowner’s insurers reach for most often, which is why how the bite happened gets examined so closely. Because many bites occur on the owner’s property, these claims also overlap with the premises liability lawyer principles that govern any injury caused by an unsafe condition someone allowed to exist.

Common Dog Bite Injuries

Dog bites cause damage that runs well past the puncture marks visible at the scene.

Puncture Wounds and Tissue Damage

A dog’s teeth crush and tear as much as they pierce. A bite to the hand, forearm, or leg can sever tendons and nerves and leave wounds that require surgical repair rather than a few stitches. The clamping force of a large dog’s jaw can fracture bone, and deep punctures often have to be left open and irrigated to keep infection from taking hold.

Facial Injuries

Children are bitten on the face and head far more often than adults, for the simple reason that their faces sit at a dog’s level. Facial bites carry a high risk of permanent scarring and frequently require reconstructive surgery, sometimes performed in stages as a child grows. Both the disfigurement and the emotional weight of carrying it are compensable under Florida law.

Infection Risk

A dog’s mouth carries bacteria that a bite drives deep into tissue, where it can multiply for hours before symptoms appear. Capnocytophaga infections and, in unvaccinated animals, rabies are the serious concerns, and a puncture that looks minor can progress to cellulitis or sepsis if it goes untreated. That is the reason medical care after a bite is never optional, even when the wound seems small at first.

Psychological Trauma

The fear that follows a serious bite is real and lasting, especially for children. Post-traumatic stress, a new fear of dogs, and disrupted sleep all show up regularly in these cases. Florida treats the cost of psychological treatment and the suffering itself as recoverable losses, not as a footnote to the physical wound.

What Compensation Can Bite Victims Recover?

A dog bite claim in Florida is built to make the injured person whole. Recovery covers medical bills, both the emergency treatment and the follow-up care such as wound revision or reconstructive surgery. Lost wages are recoverable when the injury kept you out of work, along with reduced earning capacity if the bite affects your ability to do your job going forward.

Beyond those economic losses, you can recover for pain and suffering, for the scarring and disfigurement a bite so often leaves behind, and for psychological treatment. Scarring carries real weight here, particularly with facial injuries and injuries to children, because the harm is visible and does not fade. In the worst cases, where an attack is fatal, the claim becomes a wrongful death lawyer matter brought by the surviving family.

One point surprises many people: the no-fault PIP system that governs Florida car crashes under Fla. Stat. § 627.736 has nothing to do with a dog bite. There is no 14-day treatment deadline for your claim to survive the way there is after an auto accident, and your own car insurance does not pay. A dog bite claim runs against the owner’s liability coverage instead, which is usually a homeowner’s or renter’s policy.

What to Do After a Dog Bite in Fort Lauderdale

Get medical treatment first. Bites that look minor are often the ones that turn septic, and a same-day medical record documents the injury while it is fresh and ties it cleanly to the attack.

Report the bite next. Broward County Animal Care handles animal bite reports for the county, and Fort Lauderdale Code Enforcement deals with local animal control violations. A report creates an official record and can show whether the dog has a history. If the animal is loose or dangerous and there is an immediate threat, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office or the Fort Lauderdale Police Department will respond.

Identify the owner and their insurance. Write down the owner’s name and contact information, and find out whether they rent or own. Dog bite liability is generally carried by a homeowner’s or renter’s policy, so knowing which carrier is involved early shapes how the claim moves. Photograph the wound and the location, get the dog’s description, and collect contact information for anyone who saw what happened. The same evidence discipline that decides a slip and fall lawyer case decides a bite case too.

Why Hire Elstein Legal

Brian Elstein handles every case himself. A client who calls Elstein Legal works with the attorney directly, not a rotating group of paralegals and case managers, and the person who evaluates your bite claim at the start is the person who carries it through to resolution.

Before he represented injured people, Brian Elstein worked as an insurance defense lawyer. He spent that stretch of his career on the other side of cases like yours, learning how carriers value bite claims, where they hunt for provocation arguments, and how they push to settle low before a victim grasps the full extent of scarring or the real cost of future treatment. He uses that experience to anticipate the defense and answer it before it gains traction.

The firm works on contingency, so there is no fee unless we win your case, and the first consultation costs nothing. Dog bite claims in the county are filed in Broward County Circuit Court, part of the 17th Judicial Circuit, at 201 SE 6th Street in Fort Lauderdale.

Florida consistently ranks among the top five states in the country for dog bite insurance claims, according to the Insurance Information Institute, which tells you how ready the insurers already are to defend against them. Call Elstein Legal at (305) 299-2835 for a free review of your dog bite claim.

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Meet Brian L. Elstein, Florida Personal Injury Lawyer

Personal injury lawyer Brian L. Elstein, Esq. has helped recover millions of dollars on behalf of his clients, and understands the importance of aggressively advocating for injured victim’s and their families.

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(305) 299-2835