Orange County Personal Injury Law Blog

Southern California is no pedestrian's paradise beyond the beaches, but there are many alternatives to driving. Millions of Californians rely on buses, trains and boats to get them to work or errands and back every day. Professional drivers and strict rules around mass transit keep these people safe as they thumb through their smartphones or books.

It is rare that people traveling by mass transit experience an injury during their journey, but it can be more than a simple inconvenience when it happens. A ferry with 53 passengers on board from Larkspur to San Francisco's Embarcadero caused a scare and two injuries when it struck a dock near the terminal in the early afternoon of a recent Friday.

If you've just had an accident, everything feels a little sideways. Lights are flashing, smoke is rising and the ring of steel on steel or broken glass can linger in your ears. It can be a fragile time, when emotions are running high at the same point that actions matter the most.

What should be my first move after an accident?

People may have heard that once a dog bites someone, it is likely to bite again. The truth is that there are different levels of biting dog behavior, according to the official scale adopted by The Association of Professional Dog Trainers. In some cases, a professional trainer can train or rehabilitate a dog that has bitten someone. In others, the owner may need to consider euthanizing the dog.

These are the six levels of dog bites:

1. The dog is aggressive or obnoxious and may snap, but its teeth do not come in contact with skin.
2. The dog's teeth touch the skin and may cause a little bleeding if there is a scrape, but there are no puncture wounds, or they are no deeper than one-tenth of an inch.
3. One or more of the dog's canine teeth puncture the skin, but the wounds are shallow: half or less the length of the teeth.
4. One or more canine teeth puncture the skin, and at least one of the wounds is deeper than half the length of the teeth. The victim could also suffer extensive bruising as a result of the dog bearing down while biting. The dog may cause lacerations by shaking its head as it bears down.
5. The dog bites the victim more than once, and two or more of the bites are level four or greater, or the dog has attacked more than one victim with at least one level four bite in each incident.
6. The dog kills the victim.

Accidents happen all the time in southern California. Most long-time veterans of freeway driving can recount an upside-down car after a collision or a truck laid low on the side of the road. Most motor vehicle crashes are minor events that are easily solved with insurance agents, but occasional accidents can cost thousands of dollars or even lives.

If an accident causes a serious injury or death, the first question is often "who is responsible?" This can be a legal matter, as the parties who caused an accident may be liable for financial damages to come as close to making things right as the law allows. Occasionally, the responsible party is not the first apparent one.