Silver Spring Maryland Personal Injury Legal Blog

Many families in Maryland have dogs or other pets that are treated like children, and while most people believe their dogs will not bite anyone, the fact is that some do. Dog and animal bites can cause severe physical wounds that leave scars for life along with emotional trauma. Significant medical expenses can also be incurred in a dog attack, and if the victims are children, they might never outgrow their fear for dogs.

Learning to recognize warning signs of aggression in animals might help to avoid being attacked. The most common cause for dogs to become aggressive is fear. If a dog feels threatened, it might respond in defense by attacking the source of its anxiety. Many dogs are possessive, and they will protect toys, food and other objects -- even people -- with all their might. They will typically growl to warn people not to come closer and attack if the warning is ignored.

When loved ones enter a skilled care facility in Maryland or elsewhere in the nation, their family members expect a certain standard of care from the staff. Reasonable expectations would include proper medical care, cleanliness of the facility, professionalism of the staff and appropriate treatment of the patient. Unfortunately, not every facility meets these basic standards. Recently, a woman in another state filed a nursing home negligence and wrongful death lawsuit against a medical center for the actions of the facility in caring for her father.

The woman initially observed her father in pain from severe bedsores when the nursing staff was turning him. The bedsores, or pressure sores, result from patients not being turned frequently enough when they are bedridden. The sores can become septic, or severely infected, if not treated properly. The lawsuit states that the woman was not made aware of how serious her father's bedsores actually were. He had to be taken to the hospital numerous times for surgeries and intravenous antibiotics for sepsis care before his death.

It can be much harder in Maryland to recover compensation for the injuries you suffer in a car accident. This is because Maryland uses contributory negligence law, meaning if you are even slightly responsible for causing the accident, you might not be able to collect any compensation.

In comparison, many other states let injured parties collect compensation as long as their responsibility for the accident was under 50 percent. They receive reduced damages by the amount of fault. For example, in a $100,000 compensation case where the injured party is 30 percent responsible, the person would collect $70,000. In Maryland, that person could get nothing.

Most people think it takes a bite from a rabid animal to come down with rabies. What many people do not know is that dog and animal bites are not the only way to contract the disease. Scratches, abrasions or even saliva from an infected animal can transmit the virus. Since 2008 in Maryland and all other states, there have been only 23 confirmed cases of human rabies.

A spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America says after an animal bite, symptoms may take several days, weeks or even months to surface. Some people experience flu-like symptoms, while others may only have discomfort around the bite area. Once infected, humans can experience excessive salivation, anxiety, hallucinations and confusion. Rabies invades the central nervous system and brain and can be fatal if not treated immediately