Join us to hear about some of the dog bite and dog attack cases we are currently handling at Hill Law Firm. Both involve our San Antonio neighbors being attacked and injured by dogs that were not properly restrained or handled.

Transcript:

Dog Bite Attorney Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real world cases handled by Justin Hill, and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.

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Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing what we have going on at our firm, safety information, general information about our cases, and really just whatever I think will be helpful for our listeners, helpful for our industry, and helpful for you and your family just from a safety perspective. If you keep up with our law firm, either on social media or through this podcast, you know that I love dogs. We have Winston, he's been my dog for 12 years, we even have a Meet-the-Team episode on this podcast with Winston. It was done as a joke, but also he's part of the team. He's in the office quite a bit.

He's my best friend and it's great that I have an office where I can bring him in. When we bring him in, we're careful with him. He's a nice dog, we know he's a nice dog, but when he's outside, he's on leash. I make sure that I monitor him around people. If I'd ever seen him show any sign of aggression, I would not let him be around people, he would just be sitting in my office with the door closed with me and probably leashed or something. Luckily, he is not one of those dogs, he's a good dog, goes around and gets belly rubs.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have dogs that aren't like him. My personal views aside on why people keep dangerous or aggressive dogs is neither here nor there, but people do have them. For many reasons, there are duties under the law by which they have to keep them leashed, safe, away from people. Texas actually has causes of action by which you can file a lawsuit against somebody who doesn't maintain their dog in the correct way. For example, Texas has a cause of action, which is a way to sue somebody, there's a cause of action for negligent handling of animals.

If you can prove the defendant was the owner or the possessor of an animal, and we've seen that before, we've had people that say, "Well, I didn't own it, I was just babysitting the dog." Well, Texas doesn't care. If you're a owner or possessor of an animal, you owe a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent that animal from injuring others. If you can prove they breached that duty of reasonable care, you can hold them responsible for any injuries that they caused. You see this often, for example, where somebody has a dog that, has either been aggressive or bit somebody before, they have house guests over and the dog bites somebody.

They weren't reasonable on allowing a dog that had a history to be around people and injure them. Or you have instances in which a dog has a history of getting out of the yard and attacking people. Well, the fact that it got out the 10th time is enough for us to hold them responsible, not because they knew it was going to attack but because they knew it could get out of the yard and then all bets are off if it was going to attack. There's also causes of action under the law for what's called negligent per se. If you can show that the dog owner violated a law or city ordinance or municipal code related to a dog, you may be able to hold them responsible under those provisions.

For example, in Texas, in San Antonio, there's a leash law that if you have a dog it needs to be on a leash, and we've sued many people