Dog Bite Law

What to do at the scene of the attack 

• Stay calm. Don't argue. Don't accuse. Be nice to the victim because he or she will have to make a decision about hiring a lawyer and pursuing you for damages. If you are nice, the victim may decide to go easy on both you and your dog.

• Make sure the victim gets medical attention. Take him or her to the hospital or to a doctor. Be considerate.

• Whether or not you have insurance, if you have any money or credit at all, you should offer to pay for the victim's medical bills. Be a hero. 

• Take steps to protect others from your dog.

• Obtain the name, address and phone number of every witness.

• Avoid making statements because there are possible criminal consequences when a dog bites or injures someone. See Dangerous and Vicious Dogs.

In the weeks after the attack 

What you say can hurt you later. You might have to face charges of some kind. There are three possible places where you and your dog might land:

• Civil court. In most states, dog owners are strictly responsible for injuries from bites. (See Legal Rights of Dog Bite Victims in the USA .)

• Criminal court. Usually you will not face criminal charges. However, if the present attack was serious or if the dog previously bit someone, you could be accused of a variety of crimes. (See Dangerous and vicious dogs and also Criminal penalties for dog bites.)

• "Dog court." The animal control authorities might take action against you, your dog or both, under state, county and/or municipal laws. (See Dangerous and vicious dogs.)

If you pay the victim's medical bills or insurance deductible and/or co-payment, you probably will favorably impress the victim and therefore will reduce the chances of a claim or lawsuit against you. However, do not expect your insurance company (if any) to reimburse you. Most policies state that the insurer will not be responsible for any "voluntary" payments that you make.

The local animal control authorities may require that your dog be quarantined. Sometimes the quarantine can be at your own home. Ask whether home quarantine might be agreeable in view of the circumstances that apply to your incident.

If the authorities cite you into "dog court," you need to prepare a defense. See Protect You and Your Dog. 

Locate and preserve your dog's medical records, including proof that it has received rabies shots. Make a copy of the rabies certificate and give it to the victim, to put his or her mind at ease. 

You generally are not required to submit your dog for tests unless the authorities or your insurance company request that you do so. If you suspect that your dog has rabies or some other disease, however, you voluntarily should take steps to warn the victim, and you should talk to your insurance company or an attorney.

Whether you need to seek legal advice depends on the circumstances and whether you were insured. If you have not ruled out criminal consequences in your city and state, contact an attorney who is familiar with dog bite criminal laws. (See Dangerous and Vicious Dogs.) If you are insured, see Report to your insurance company, below. If you do not know whether you are insured, read Insurance for the Dog Owner. If you definitely are not insured, talk to an attorney if:

• The victim asks for money
• You are paying a significant amount of money to the victim
• You receive a claim or suspect that the victim will make a claim in the future
• The bite was significant (for example, it drew blood)
• You suspect that your dog has rabies or another significant illness or disease
• You have a bad feeling about the situation or the intentions of the victim
• You hear from the police
• You suspect there may be criminal consequences in your city and state.

Report to your insurance company 

• The victim asks for money
• You are paying a significant amount of money to the victim
• You receive a claim or suspect that the victim will make a claim in the future
• The bite was significant (for example, it drew blood)
• You suspect that your dog has rabies or another significant illness or disease
• You have a bad feeling about the situation or the intentions of the victim
• You hear from the police

Every insurance policy has a "cooperation clause." It requires you (as the insured person) to make reports of incidents, and then cooperate fully with the insurance company. Obviously, give them the name, address and telephone number of every witness. 

Tell the truth about the dog and what happened 

When dog owners give statements, they often provide inaccurate information. The biggest problem defending a dog bite claim is not necessarily the dog attack or  the severity of the bite, but the untruthful statements made by the dog owner. Owners frequently misstate how the attack happened and the dog's history of biting. This ultimately can hurt you and your dog. Consider this scenario:

• The owner tells her insurance company that her dog has never bitten anyone

• The insurance company refuses to make an adequate settlement offer, thinking that the victim must have provoked the dog

• The victim retains an attorney who is knowledgeable about dog bite cases, and conducts a thorough investigation that reveals the dog's history of biting

• Instead of making a claim for simple negligence or violation of the dog bite statute, the attorney requests additional damages to punish the dog owner for keeping a dangerous dog

Keep in mind that you should not make statements about the incident until you know that there can be no criminal consequences. Generally, you should contact an attorney familiar with the criminal aspects of dog bites. 

Getting sued

If your dog bites a person, the odds are that you will not be sued. In fact, the victim probably won't even make a claim against you.

There are at least 4.7 million dog bites every year in the United States. (See Dog Bite Statistics.) About 800,000 victims receive medical attention, which is only 17% of the total victims. However, the liability segment of the insurance industry pays no more than 24,000 dog bite claims per year, which is only 0.005% of the total number of victims -- one-half of one-thousandth of one percent!

If you have a big dog or one that shows signs of aggression (whether because it likes to eat, likes to sleep, likes to hoard its toys, or likes to kill people -- the reason doesn't matter), you need to protect yourself by keeping the dog away from people, muzzling it when it is around people, and strictly following all animal control laws (like leash laws, anti-trespassing laws which apply to dogs, and anti-running at large laws).

If your dog bites someone or causes injury in other ways, you might find yourself on the receiving end of a dog bite claim. Before it escalates, there are measures you can take.

The best and easiest is to be very, very nice to the dog bite victim (and his family). Show concern without necessarily accepting blame, and take the other steps described above. Be sincere, don't be defensive, and don't blame anyone.

If you receive a letter from an attorney who represents the victim, respond to it. If you ignore it, the next person you will see will be a sheriff with a court subpoena! Be nice to the attorney and his or her staff. Give them your insurance information (homeowners or renters). Answer their questions about insurance -- but not about the dog and not about what happened.

If you receive a subpoena, either turn it over to your insurance company so that they can retain a lawyer to defend you, or, if you do not have insurance, retain the best attorney that you can possibly afford. There is no possible way that you can successfully defend yourself in a civil lawsuit. It is complicated, requires a law degree, and also requires experience with the particular court where suit is filed. Be prepared for a major shock when the attorney tells you what your defense is going to cost. You have no choice other than bankruptcy. If you actually are liable for the victim's damages, you should retain your lawyer and instruct him or her to get the case settled as quickly as possible so as to cut down the costs and fees of litigation.

You will find easy-to-understand explanations about all phases of a lawsuit at The Dog Bite Law Adviser.

People who are sued naturally worry whether they bought enough insurance coverage to pay for the claim. This is the subject of Insurance for Dog Owners. All that will be noted here is that the usual $100,000 limit found in homeowner insurance policies usually is enough for settlement. If the injuries are substantial, however, this may not be enough. In that event you will want to use your umbrella policy or excess policy. Umbrella and excess policies generally provide $1 million of coverage for about $100 per year.

The following is from an exchange of e-mail between Attorney Kenneth Phillips (the author of Dog Bite Law) and a dog owner who was being sued. The dog owner's message did not make clear whether she was facing a claim or an actual lawsuit, and her inquiry was focused on the $1 million claim being made against her. Here is how Attorney Phillips responded:

There is the case, and then there is the claim. Those are different things.

The claim itself can be for $800 trillion like the current bailout figures we are hearing about. The amount of the claim is meaningless.

The case is different from the claim. Your insurance company performs its own evaluation of the case. This evaluation is performed with an eye toward getting the case settled without having to litigate it with formal court proceedings.

The insurance company usually responds to a claim by making an offer of settlement that is a fraction of what the case is worth. That fraction ranges from 10 percent to 50%.

After that, the lawyer for the claimant attempts to negotiate a reasonable settlement.

All of the figures that get discussed are within the policy limits in 99% of the cases.

If the case is really worth more than the policy, the insurance company offers to pay the policy limits. Because bankruptcy is the next step, the claimant usually accepts the policy limits.

If the claimant does not accept the policy limits, the claimant has to prosecute a civil lawsuit. The insurance company will defend the insured even though the insurance company wanted to pay the policy limit. One of the things that an insured person "buys" from an insurance company is their agreement to defend the insured from the covered lawsuits.

In most places, the insurance company also has to pay for a private attorney to protect your personal interests. This is because it is essentially unfair, in the view of many courts, for the insurance company to pick one lawyer to defend the company and you, because your interests are not exactly the same at this point.

If there is a judgment for an amount in excess of the policy, the case usually is appealed. If the judgment survives the appeal and still is over the policy limit, the insured has to pay the excess or declare bankruptcy.

So, as you can see, the fact that a claim is being made for an amount that exceeds the policy limit of your policy does not mean you should worry. You have paid your insurance company to take care of this for you, and they most likely will do so.

Just make sure that you get rid of that dog, if you have not done so already. A dog that does this much damage can make you wind up in jail if there is another accident. You can't get out of that one by declaring bankruptcy. Worse, the victim could be your spouse, your children, or even you.

Blunt advice about your future

If this is the first time that your dog bit a person, and if you have homeowner's or renter's insurance, you have very little to worry about because criminal prosecutions are very rare, and "dog court" usually cannot do much to hurt you (although it can hurt your dog).

Nevertheless, your dog is dangerous from both a practical and legal standpoint. Yes, you may have an explanation for his behavior, but the fact is that he attacked a human. For whatever reason, at the present time your dog is dangerous.

The real problem in most cases is that, because he has bitten one person, your legal position has changed. You face immediate and long-term consequences. In the near future, you may find yourself in three courts, namely civil court, criminal court and "dog court." For now, you have the excuse that you didn't know that your dog would bite anyone because he never did it before. In the long range, however, you may find yourself without insurance and defending yourself in four courts instead of just three -- all of the above, plus bankruptcy court, because the owner of a dangerous dog may not be permitted to get a discharge of debt toward a victim of the dog. Furthermore, you will not be able to assert that you had no way of knowing that your dog would bite.

Keep in mind the fate of Marjorie Knoller of San Francisco, one of the defendants in the Diane Whipple murder trial. She spent a year in jail and two years in prison because her dog, which had never broken the skin of any human being, took it upon itself to kill a person. Although it is highly unlikely that your dog would ever do that, it must be noted that people who own dogs that bite other people no longer get the benefit of the doubt. The insurance industry, the government and the public are fed up with the dog bite epidemic, which has seen the number of serious dog bites go up by 33% while the number of dogs has risen only 2% (see Dog Bite Statistics). The insurance industry is limiting insurance, the government is tightening the laws and the public has become intolerant, as evidenced by the jury's guilty verdict in the Knoller case.

You need to see the dog as a dog, not as a beloved family member, and to protect your family and neighbors from it in the future. 

Consider taking your dog to an applied animal behaviorist certified by the ABS. The Animal Behavior Society (ABS) is a group of professionals (veterinarians and PhD's) who are concerned with the study and clinical practice of animal behavior. It has a credentialing program for an "Accredited Applied Animal Behaviorist." See the Directory of Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists.

You also could take your dog to a veterinarian, provided that he or she is certified by the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists (ACVB). See the Directory of Diplomats of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists.

www.dogbitelaw.com and each of its sections and products, including Dog Bite Law, The Dog Bite Law Adviser, Dog Bite Litigation Forms, What To Do If Your Dog Is Injured Or Killed, Avoiding Liability When You Train, Shelter or Adopt-Out, Anatomy of a Dog Bite Case, and the foregoing text, are (c) 1999-2008 Kenneth M. Phillips. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part prohibited except where advance permission is granted in writing. Please read the disclaimer and our rules for linking and quoting. Reporters seeking interviews are welcome to click here.