Don't Sue Your Neighbour If His Dog Attacks Your Son

The Most Famous Cat In The World This Week

The title to this short post was inspired by the behaviour of Jeremy's father, Roger, who decided not to sue his neighbour aggressively for compensation when his neighbour's dog shockingly and without provocation attacked his son on the forecourt of his home.

Roger's cat, Tara, came to the rescue and with a mother cat's commitment and anger threw herself at the dog pushing him off the boy and then chasing him away. Tara and Jeremy are close.

Jeremy was injured quite badly on his left leg.  There are two nasty bite wounds, which I am sure required stitches and careful medical treatment but he is recovering well.

The post is about this, it is important to keep the peace with your neighbour as best you can. Obviously, if your neighbour is a complete monster and a sh*t then you cannot keep peace with him and you should move but if for some apparently inexplicable reason his dog attacks your boy then the answer is to find a practical solution while maintaining reasonable relations with your neighbour.

This is exactly what Roger did.  He made a claim on his insurance and his neighbour offered to make payment as well and the two sources of money adequately paid for his son's treatment together, I expect, with compensation for other issues such as loss of amenity and general aggravation and scaring on this boy's legs (a future, long term issue)

Roger could have made a claim against his neighbour's insurance company and, to be honest, his neighbour's insurance company are under an obligation to pay compensation in full but Roger did not want his neighbour to be vilified by the news media and he wanted to keep the peace, I suspect.

Wise behaviour, I would say but I wonder how his insurance company responded to this?  Perhaps they did a deal with the other insurance company.

You don't want to compound an already unfortunate but single-incident problem by creating another problem which might well be long-standing, namely, a dispute with your immediate neighbour.

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