Luật sư chuyên về các vụ cắn người do chó gây ra tại Milwaukee

In the City of Milwaukee, report the bite to the Department of Neighborhood Services at (414) 286-2268, or to Milwaukee Police at (414) 933-4444 after business hours. An inspector then visits the owner and the dog is quarantined for 10 to 14 days. A private conversation with the dog owner leaves you with no paper trail. Without an official bite report, an insurance adjuster later has room to dispute whether the bite happened, how it happened, and whether the dog had earlier attacks on file. MADACC, at (414) 649-8640, provides animal control for all of Milwaukee County.

Three prongs have to line up. First, the current bite must have broken your skin AND caused permanent physical scarring or disfigurement. Second, the same dog must have previously, without provocation, bitten another person hard enough to break skin and leave permanent scarring or disfigurement. Third, the owner must have been notified of, or actually known about, that prior scarring bite before your attack. If all three are proven, the jury's damages award is DOUBLED. That is why the Milwaukee case workup starts with records requests to the city, the police, and MADACC about the dog.

Under Chapter 78 of the Milwaukee Code of Ordinances, every dog kept in the City of Milwaukee must be licensed through MADACC with proof of a current rabies vaccination. Dogs off the owner's property must be on a leash no longer than 6 feet, held by a handler capable of controlling them. Off-leash time is limited to designated dog parks such as the Milwaukee County dog parks at Estabrook, Currie, Granville, Roverwest, and Warnimont. Suburban cities including Wauwatosa, West Allis, Greenfield, Oak Creek, and Franklin have their own layered local ordinances.

Children's Wisconsin is the region's ACS-verified Level I pediatric trauma center and is where the most serious pediatric dog attacks in metro Milwaukee should be evaluated. Main line (414) 266-2000, Emergency Department open 24 hours. Facial scarring in a child is one of the strongest damages categories in a Wisconsin dog bite case and directly affects whether section 174.02(1)(b) double damages apply.

For adults, three years from the date of the bite under Wisconsin Statute 893.54. For minors, the deadline is tolled under Wisconsin Statute 893.16 and runs until two years after the child's 18th birthday, so the practical deadline for a minor victim is the 20th birthday. If the dog belongs to a Wisconsin municipality or a state agency, a notice of injury also has to be filed within 120 days under section 893.80 or section 893.82, which is much sooner than three years.

Two things happen. First, the carrier may deny liability coverage under the animal-liability exclusion or breed schedule, in which case the owner is personally on the hook for the full judgment. Second, under the Pawlowski harborer rule, you may also have a second homeowner policy to pursue: the household co-resident who was housing the dog is also a statutory owner under Wisconsin Statute 174.02. That means we identify every adult who lived at the address and pull every homeowner and renter declarations page before we accept that there is only one policy on the case.

In most cases, yes. Wisconsin uses a modified comparative negligence rule under section 895.045, sometimes called the 51 percent bar. Your recovery is reduced by your share of fault, and you are only barred if your fault is greater than the defendants' combined fault. A jury that finds you 20 percent at fault on $80,000 in damages still awards $64,000. What insurance adjusters call provocation, such as reaching to pet a dog whose owner said it was friendly or walking past a leashed dog, is often not provocation at all under Wisconsin law.