Dog Bite Scarring Lawyer in Los Angeles, CA Disfigurement and Future Cost

The measure the law actually uses

Civil Code section 3333 provides that for a breach of an obligation not arising from contract, the measure of damages, except where otherwise expressly provided, is the amount which will compensate for all the detriment proximately caused, whether it could have been anticipated or not. Nothing in that sentence is limited to bills already paid. It is the statutory basis on which future surgical cost, permanent appearance change and the consequences that follow from it are discussed at all, and it is why a file closed at the end of wound care is frequently closed too early.

Two damage categories, split two different ways

Civil Code section 1431.2 defines economic damages as objectively verifiable monetary losses including medical expenses, loss of earnings, costs of obtaining substitute domestic services, and loss of employment or business opportunities, and defines non-economic damages as subjective, non-monetary losses including pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental suffering, emotional distress, loss of society and companionship, injury to reputation and humiliation. The same section makes liability for non-economic damages several only, so each defendant answers in direct proportion to that defendant's own percentage of fault. Disfigurement claims live substantially in the second category, which is exactly the category that gets divided when more than one person is blamed.

The statutory description of a serious wound

State law already has language for the kinds of injuries reconstructive work addresses. Food and Agricultural Code section 31604 defines severe injury as physical injury resulting in muscle tears or disfiguring lacerations, or requiring multiple sutures or corrective or cosmetic surgery. That definition exists for the dangerous-dog chapter rather than for compensation, but it is useful vocabulary: it shows that the distinction between a wound that closes and a wound that requires revision is one the Legislature has already drawn in writing.

Why an early number is usually a partial number

Insurance regulation puts dates on an adjuster's file, and those dates arrive well before a surgical plan is settled. Under title 10, section 2695.7 of the California Code of Regulations, an insurer must accept or deny a claim immediately but in no event more than forty calendar days after receiving proof of claim, must give written notice of the need for additional time within that period and then every thirty calendar days until a determination is made, and, upon acceptance and where necessary receipt of an executed release, must tender payment within thirty calendar days. Subdivision (g) states that no insurer shall attempt to settle a claim by making a settlement offer that is unreasonably low, and lists factors the Commissioner considers, among them the extent to which the insurer considered evidence submitted by the claimant to support the value of the claim and the advice of its own claims adjuster as to the amount of damages. A claimant who has not yet obtained the specialist's written plan has not yet submitted the evidence that provision contemplates.

The record that carries a disfigurement discussion

Operative reports rather than discharge instructions. Clinic notes describing contracture, pigmentation change, sensation and function. A written plan naming the procedures under consideration, their sequence, and the interval between them. Cost estimates on facility letterhead. Photographs taken at fixed intervals from the same distance and angle, in similar light, beginning as early as possible and continuing after each stage. Where scarring affects work, documentation of the work itself: shift records, customer-facing duties, and any accommodation requested or refused.

Children are on a different schedule again

Where the injured person is a minor, Code of Civil Procedure section 352 excludes the period of minority from the limitations period of section 335.1, with subdivision (b) withholding that tolling from claims that must be presented to a public entity. Resolution also requires court involvement: Code of Civil Procedure section 372 requires appearance by a guardian or guardian ad litem with power to compromise only with court approval, and Probate Code section 3611 governs where the balance is deposited afterward, including blocked accounts subject to withdrawal only on court authorization.

Local records that fix the incident in place

A scarring claim still rests on an identified animal and an identified location. County Veterinary Public Health records the bite, the animal and the quarantine, and states that the current location of the biting animal is one of the most important parts of a report (Reporting Animal Bites). Inside the City, Municipal Code section 53.06.2 supplies the six-foot restraint rule that often frames how the encounter happened, and section 53.34.4 supplies the dangerous-animal procedure that may generate a further file.

Scope

This page is a general explanation of California damages provisions, claim-handling regulations and Los Angeles records, not legal or medical advice about any injury. Specific questions belong with the attorney who advertises on this site.