For further information about recovering compensation for injuries to pets and vet bills call our free legal helpline on 0333 888 0435
If you have been attacked by a dog and your own pet has been injured in the incident, then we can include the vet bills and other expenses within your personal injury compensation claim.
For example, in past cases we have successfully recovered:
- £4,000 in vet bills for a badly bitten cat;
- Cremation and funeral costs for a savaged Jack Russell; and
- £500 in vet bills for an injured Yorkshire Terrier
As these losses were included within the personal injury claim we were able to recover them at the same time as getting the dog bite victim compensation. In all these cases we acted on a No Win No Fee basis.
However, in cases where you have not suffered injury and it is only your pet that has been injured (or killed), then the claim has to be worth more than £10,000 before legal fees can be recovered from a defendant. In the vast majority of cases the financial value of the pet injury claim is less than £10,000. This means that legal costs can’t be recovered and therefore we cannot offer No Win, No Fee funding. So, if you want to instruct a lawyer it is unlikely that you will be able to recover the legal costs from the Defendant – even if the claim is successful. Quite often legal costs can be higher than the vet bills, so pet owners have to think very carefully before instructing a lawyer in these cases.
Our dog Bite Solicitors have experience of these cases and our knowledge of Dog Bite Law can be invaluable in the success or failure of these claims, but we can only act on a privately paying basis if there is no human injury. It is however worth bearing in mind that when considering human injury we can take into account psychological and mental injury as well as physical injury.