Peoria Illinois Personal Injury Law Blog

Vehicle collisions on Illinois highways can be deadly and can change the course of Peoria residents' lives. They may deprive individuals of their loved ones, cause serious physical injuries, and inflict emotional trauma and pain and those who survive their ordeals. When a collision occurs between a personal vehicle and a large commercial truck, the damages imparted on the victims can be even more significant due to the massive size of the truck.

Trucks take longer to stop than smaller vehicles, are harder to move around on the roads, and require extra licensing to legally drive. Their more challenging operations and inherent dangers can make them difficult to control and prone to accidents when in the hands of drivers who are not prepared to maintain them.

Just as most people choose to stay up to date on their vaccinations, so too do most pet owners take care of their animals' required shots. In Illinois, domestic dogs are required to have rabies vaccinations to prevent them from developing the dangerous and life-threatening disease. Unlike some illnesses that canines carry, rabies can be transmitted from dogs to humans through saliva and bites.

Rabies is a virus that affects the nervous systems of its victims. A person who contracts rabies may not know they have it, but, according to WebMD, more than 99 percent of people left untreated who experience symptoms of rabies will die.

Readers of this Illinois personal injury legal blog may know that when they elect to sue another party for their damages, they must first build a case that provides evidence of their included claims. That evidence must support the various legal elements of the claims the individual wishes to use as their means of collecting their damages. This post will look at what is required of a slip-and-fall victim to prove in order to demonstrate the veracity of their claims.

One of the first elements that must be satisfied in a is the need for the victim to show that the responsible party owed them a duty. Prior posts have discussed what can happen when individuals with different legal statuses (such as trespassers, visitors, and invitees) are on other people's land. A victim may been to have permission to be on the responsible party's land in order to be owed a duty of care by them.

Illinois courts apply a strict liability standard in almost all dog bite and animal attack cases. That means that a dog owner is liable for any harm that their dog causes, regardless of whether the owner had any reason to know that the dog was potentially dangerous or prone to biting. However, there are two exceptions that may derail a victim's path to recovery under this theory of law: provocation and trespassing.

Provocation happens when a person teases or antagonizes a dog into behaving violently. They may hurt the dog by hitting it, pulling its tail, getting in its face, or engaging in other hostile or aggressive behaviors. If a dog bites a person only after being subjected to provocation, then the owner may be released from their liability and requirement to provide for the victim's damages.