Dog Bite Lawsuits: Owner Liability, Damages & Suing for Recovery

The Ins and Outs of Dog Attack Liability and Lawsuits

If you've been attacked by a dog and suffered a serious injury, you may have a personal injury claim against the owner.

Most states hold owners liable when their dog bites someone who didn't provoke it, and the owner's homeowners or renters insurance is usually what pays.

About one in 70 Americans is bitten by a dog each year, according to the CDC, and of the millions of incidents reported annually, roughly one in five requires medical attention. A small number of attacks each year turn fatal.

Two steps matter most after a bite.

First, seek medical attention for the wound.

Afterwards, speak with a personal injury lawyer experienced in dog bite lawsuits to discuss your rights.

You shouldn't be paying out of your pocket for a bite that a leash or a latched gate would have prevented.

 

 

Dog Owner Liability

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Dog Bite Injury Claims

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Strength Of Dog Bites

While dogs are no crocodiles, never underestimate how strong their bite can be. Depending on the breed, a dog's bite can exert between 200 and 750 pounds of force per square inch.

If considering only the most common dog breeds in U.S. households (according to the American Kennel Club): ^[1]

• Labrador Retriever: 230 psi
• German Shepherd: 238 psi
• American Bulldog: 305 psi
• Rottweiler: 328 psi

These numbers may seem on the low end, but they can increase depending on many factors. A dog that's young and healthy enough will exert more force on an aging victim whose bones have lost most of their strength. Furthermore, not all bones in your body are as strong and well-protected as the femur.

Most dog bite cases end up as serious injuries and they can be fatal, especially to children, the most common bite victims. In one widely reported New Jersey attack, a pair of pit bulls got loose and mauled a three-year-old to death and injured the mother. Police responding to the scene had to gun down the dogs before they could cause any further harm.

Pit bulls have earned notoriety for causing the most dog bite deaths in the country, accounting for over 60% of fatalities from 2005 to 2017. With an average bite strength of 235 psi, pit bulls don't bite as strong as the more common breeds yet cause a lot of damage.

 

 

All states have either or both forms of determining liability, but 13 states currently have no specific statutes for them. If the incident occurred in any of these states, it would be treated as a negligence case. If the attack results in a fatality, the owner can face criminal charges such as manslaughter.

But proving strict liability alone is already a challenge. Dogs, by nature, can be unpredictable; a dog with no history of aggression can still bite without warning, before the owner has any reason to expect it. The law puts responsibility on the owner all the same, because the animal is theirs to control.

More importantly, dog owners have several legal defenses at their disposal.

Potential Legal Defenses of Dog Owners

• Provocation: As mentioned earlier, a dog bite victim can't invoke liability if the dog had been provoked, intentional or otherwise. The latter includes stepping on its tail by accident or petting it when it doesn't want to.
• Trespassing: Some statutes require the incident to occur on the owner's private property, implying that the victim had trespassed. Court rulings are a mixed bag on the matter. With the one-bite rule, however, trespassing is largely moot.
• Criminal Intent: Somewhat related to trespassing, the victim might have entered the dog owner's premises with intent to commit a crime. In some states, dog-bite statutes wouldn't apply in such situations.
• Assumption of Risk: Owners would argue that the victim had a duty to know the risk of getting involved with their dogs. The victim ignoring signs pointing to the potential danger can be grounds for dismissal of the case.
• Comparative Negligence: Often used in car crashes, comparative negligence determines fault based on how much each party contributed to the incident. If any of the above checks out, the owner can reduce the claim of the victim.

Going back to the New Jersey dog bite, the incident happened on the victim's property. The owner wasn't there when it occurred, but the pit bulls managed to slip in through the backyard fence. The county prosecutor's investigation concluded that there had been no criminal conduct; thus, the dog owner couldn't be held criminally responsible, to the chagrin of the victim's family. However, according to a former prosecutor, the family can still bring a civil claim.

Rented homes raise one more question: whether the landlord shares liability for an attack that prior complaints and the lease gave them the power to prevent.

Dog Bite Injury Lawsuit Claims

Success in a dog bite lawsuit depends on the amount of information your side of the story contains. Did the dog attack you from out of nowhere? Were you on the owner's property when it happened? How bad were the injuries you sustained? There's a lot the court will have to consider, and the following steps should be taken after the biting incident:

What these cases resolve for depends heavily on scarring and disfigurement, the victim's age, and the homeowner's insurance available; our guide to the average dog bite settlement covers each driver.

 

• 1. Seek Medical Attention    Patching up your wound or injury takes priority over everything else. If it happened near your home, administer some first aid to slow the bleeding before getting complete care at your local hospital or clinic. Whether minor or severe, it pays to get a thorough checkup; the dog that bit you might be carrying an infectious disease, especially rabies, and a bite that becomes infected can turn into a far more serious injury than the wound itself.
• 2. Gather Details    Once the dust settles, start gathering information to build up your case. Severe dog bite injuries warrant reporting the incident to the police and the local health department. From there, these agencies can launch an investigation, obtaining the names of everyone involved.
  If the injury is minor, you should still get the dog owner's name and any witnesses. Having others vouch for your version of the story goes a long way in a tricky case. Any photos of the injuries you sustained can also help.
• 3. Collect Insurance Info    Some homeowners and renters carry insurance policies that cover dog bite liability, usually up to USD$ 300,000 in legal expenses. Ask the owner if they have such a policy, as it'll save you the trouble of going through due process.
  Such coverage, however, isn't as standard as you might think. Some insurance companies don't insure dangerous dog breeds like pit bulls or exclude the owner's pet from the policy after one too many incidents; our guide to homeowners insurance dog bite claims covers the exclusions to watch for. In such cases, due process may still be your best course of action.
• 4. Seek Legal Help    Ask a lawyer who handles dog bite lawsuits about your options moving forward. Like many civil cases, a dog bite lawsuit can only end in one of two ways: out-of-court settlement or court judgment. Each has its pros and cons.
  An out-of-court settlement avoids a lengthy and costly legal undertaking for both you and the dog owner. However, since there's no court to oversee the process, so you might not get as much compensation as you deserve. Meanwhile, a court judgment can get you more, but the process can take months or even years. You'll need your lawyer to talk you through these two options.