Dog Bite Settlement Timeline

Answer:

When we have clients who have been injured by dog bites, one of the first things they want to know is how long it’s going to take to resolve their case. This is very hard to know initially because all cases are different. However, dog bite cases usually tend to take longer than your general motor vehicle collision case because they are more fact-intensive and require a lot more discovery into what actually happened.During the discovery process, we will have to find out if the dog had a propensity or history of attacking people before, along with if the owner had taken any measures to stop it. Those things take time to learn and figure out, and these are not the types of cases that often settle before filing a lawsuit. If the lawsuit cannot be resolved by the two parties, then the case may need to be tried in front of a jury.

I think a reasonable amount of time to expect for a dog bite case is somewhere between one and three years after the lawsuit has been filed. In Georgia, the statute of limitations to file a personal injury lawsuit is two years from the date of the incident. Typically, injuries sustained in a dog bite case are not as significant as a motor vehicle collision, and so the treatment process if faster. We can often file a lawsuit well before the statute of limitations expires.