FLORIDA -- After an attack by a pit bull four years ago, a week and a half in the hospital, $100,000 in medical bills and a four-day trial this week, Vicki Bentley says she wants to finally get on with her life.
“It’s been a long four years, and I just want to get things behind me and move on,” said Bentley, 55, of Pensacola.
A Santa Rosa County jury awarded her $643,257 to cover her medical bills and pain and suffering after she was attacked by the pit bull in 2008.
“Everything turned out perfectly, and I’m glad it’s over,” Bentley said.
She declined to talk about the incident, but one of her lawyers, Timothy O’Brien of the Levin Papantonio law firm, explained the sequence of events.
On March 14, 2008, Bentley was visiting a sister-in-law who lived with an unrelated family on Greenfield Street in Milton. The only way to enter the house was to go through the gate in the fence surrounding the front yard.
Bentley knew there were dachshunds at the house, but she wasn’t aware that a pit bull was a new addition, O’Brien said.
The pit bull attacked Bentley when she entered the fenced yard. She still bears extensive scarring on her arms and legs.
The crux of the court case came down to whether there was a sign that warned people about the dog when the attack happened, O’Brien said.
The dog’s owner, Gregory Zane Gray, 30, and homeowner George Wetherbee Jr. said the sign had always been visible.
But the neighbor who helped Bentley escape from the dog said Gray posted the sign after the dog attacked.
The pit bull was euthanized, but it wasn’t because of the attack involving Bentley, O’Brien said.
Rather, Gray put the dog down after it attacked one of the family’s dachshunds, he said.
Jacksonville lawyer Kristen Van der Linde of the Boyd & Jenerette firm, who represented Gray and Wetherbee, said she and her clients are sorry that Bentley was attacked.
“Of course, this is something that nobody wanted to have happen,” she said. “But we are disappointed by the verdict, and we’re looking into what our post-trial appeal options are.”
(PNJ - May 26, 2012)
