Two separate things get paid for, and people routinely claim only the first.
The cost of treating the scar — surgery, revision procedures, dermatological treatment, laser work.
The scar itself — that you have a permanent, visible mark you did not have before. This is its own head of damage, independent of what it cost to get it.
Claims that account for the first and not the second are the most common way a scarring case is under-settled.
What changes the value
Where it is. The dominant factor. Face, neck, hands and forearms are visible in ordinary life and cannot be covered without effort. The same scar on a thigh is a different claim. There is no rule that says so — it is simply what the injury actually means for the person carrying it.
How visible. Width, colour contrast against the surrounding skin, whether it is raised or depressed, and whether it is a clean line or an irregular tear. Puncture and tearing injuries from dog bites often heal more irregularly than a surgical incision.
Whether it is permanent. Most significant dog bite scars are. A surgeon’s opinion on what revision can realistically achieve is the document that establishes this.
Age and sex. Not as fairness, but as fact: a scar carried for seventy years is a different injury from one carried for twenty, and how a scar affects a particular person’s life is part of the claim.
Contracture. A scar crossing a joint or near a feature can tighten and restrict movement. That converts a cosmetic injury into a functional one and is assessed separately.
Why the first week matters more than any later week
A mature scar looks like a line. It is not evidence of what happened — it is evidence of what is left.
The photographs that establish the severity of the original wound can only be taken while the wound is open. Nobody can reconstruct them afterwards, and their absence is the single most common reason a serious scarring claim is valued as a minor one.
If you are reading this in the first days: photograph it now, and again tomorrow.
If the wound has already closed, the case is not lost — the medical record, the surgeon’s description, and the scar itself all remain. It is just harder, and the number is usually lower than it would have been.
Why early offers are aimed at this
An insurer resolving a claim before the scar has matured is buying it at the price of an unhealed wound and an unknown outcome. Scar maturation takes many months, and revision surgery is often not planned until it is complete.
An offer that arrives while the dressing is still on is not generous. Why early offers are priced short.
Getting it documented
- Photographs, from the first day onward, at consistent distance and lighting
- A treating surgeon’s opinion on permanence and on what revision can achieve
- A record of what you avoid or change because of it — clothing, swimming, photographs, social situations. Written down as it happens, not recalled later
- Any psychological treatment
Under Florida law liability itself is straightforward: § 767.04 makes the owner liable from the first bite. The fight in a scarring case is almost never about whether the dog bit you. It is about what the mark is worth.