The personal injury attorneys at Peter Higgins Law were contacted by E. B. with the following case: during Memorial Day Weekend, E.B. was walking on the back porch deck of a friend’s house headed towards the steps leading to the back yard. Her friend owned a short, muscular, 60-pound pit bull that had been described like a “bowling ball with legs”. As she reached the top step and prepared to step down, the pit bull charged out the back door of the house, raced across the deck and ran directly into E.B. 's legs, knocking her into the air and causing her to tumble down the back steps. As a result of her fall, E.B. suffered a severe fracture of her left ankle which required surgery.
Peter Higgins Law filed a claim against the insurance company under the friend's homeowner’s policy. The insurance company denied the claim. We then filed suit under an Illinois law called the “Animal Control Act”. The Animal Control Act permits recovery in two types of situations. First, when an animal attacks and bites someone, or secondly, when an animal causes injury to someone in any way other than by attacking that person. In other words, if a dog or other animal jumps up on someone and knocks them over and causes an injury, that person may be able to recover under the Animal Control Act. All that is required under the Act is that the person who was injured has to be conducting herself peacefully in a place where she had a lawful right to be, and does not provoke the dog or animal in any way.
After Peter Higgins Law filed the lawsuit, we took depositions of witnesses to prove that E. B. was conducting herself peacefully in a place where she had a right to be, and that she had not provoked the pit bull into running into her. We also took depositions of our client’s physicians to establish the nature and severity of her ankle fracture. After the depositions had concluded we pushed for a pretrial conference with the judge in an effort to try to settle the case prior to trial. The judge made a settlement recommendation of $200,000.00, and the case finally ended up settling a few months before trial for $190,000.00.