Kaydence Jakubowski is fighting for her life after the little girl suffered life threatening injuries from a vicious dog attack.
According to reports, the 4-year-old girl from Wilkes-Barre Twp. has a blood clot near her brainstem and a carotid artery aneurysm. Her parents state that her right side is paralyzed and she may never have the ability to speak again after her vocal cord was punctured by the dog’s teeth in the vicious dog attack.
She was a perfect, healthy little girl. One freak accident and it changed her for the rest of her life. the girl’s mother, Casey Iorio, 27, said Wednesday.
The family has retained a Philadelphia attorney after the vicious dog attack, and the attorneys are now investigating why Kaydence suffered an apparent stroke after being treated and released from Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center.
Dog bites and tragedies like this are fairly common. Dog bite law in Pennsylvania is fairly complex. There’s a good deal to know. Let’s take a look.
The first thing to understand is strict liability, which means the owner is liable for all damage caused by his dog, irrespective of fault or whether the dog has attacked in the past. There is no strict liability in Pennsylvania.
Here, the standard is negligence: that is to say, the injured party has to prove that the dog owner committed some sort of negligence: for example, failing to keep a dog restrained, not warning people of a dog’s known dangerous tendency, or not taking care to keep a dog known to be dangerous away from others.
In order to prove negligence, one need not prove that the owner or person responsible for the dog had knowledge of a prior attack. A jury may determine negligence where the dog had a known prior history of acting aggressively though without biting: for example, jumping up on people excessively, or acting in some other unruly manner that may prompt a reasonable dog owner to believe the dog might constitute a danger to people.
It is crucial to know that a dog owner is liable for all serious injuries caused by his dog, irrespective of negligence or whether the dog has attacked before. The exception here is cases in which the dog was provoked—which you might think of like human self-defense law. (Man understandably allows his best friend to defend himself.)
There is no “one-free-bite” in Pennsylvania, as there is in certain other States. If there is a dog bite, then it is true by definition that you have a legal matter on your hands.
There are certain statutes that regulate pet ownership. For instance, a dog owner must have his dog restrained, which need not be on a leash; the dog must simply be restrained: say, by a belt, or harness, or whatever suffices to the purpose.
Now one common way to prove negligence is found in instances where the owner violated one of these statutes which exists to prevent animal attacks. So, for example, according to Pennsylvania dog law, a dog owner must at all times to keep his dog either: (1) confined within the premises of the owner; (2) firmly secured by means of a collar and chain or other device so that it cannot stray beyond the premises on which it is secured; or (3) under the reasonable control of some person.