Six months ago I was attacked by a dog, which required me to get stiches for a large gash
in my leg—I’ll show you the gash, taken right after the bite, later in this video.
Today I will discuss my story and the law regarding when you can sue the owner of a
domestic animal for harm caused by the animal. And in case you are wondering, cats are legally
considered domestic animals, though as a former cat owner I wonder whether that’s really true.
Hello lawlings, this is Professor Beau Baez. Six months ago I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains on
a beautiful Fall day, when I was attacked by a dog. I was about three miles / five kilometers,
from the trailhead, which was only about one hour into my planned four hour hike—I usually go hiking
for 12 miles / 20 kilometers. On the trail, ahead of me, I saw a couple walking their dog
on a leash. Because this dog was leashed, I really wasn’t worried about an attack, especially as most
dogs I’ve encountered on the mountain trails are unleashed and they've all been friendly.
As I walked past this dog, it suddenly turned around and bit me.
At first, I didn’t think much about it as it felt like a bee sting—a minor irritation.
There wasn’t even a visible hole in my pants. But when I pulled up my pant leg,
I saw the gash, which was about 2 inches to 4 centimeters wide.
Also, lots of blood was coming out. I suspect it didn’t hurt much because the dog bit into muscle.
The first words out of my mouth were: “are your dog’s shots up-to-date,” with the owner
assuring me that they were. The owner then told me his dog had never attacked anyone before—don’t
forget this fact, as it becomes extremely important for legal liability purposes.
The owner—a first responder from a local town—looked shocked by his dog’s
attack and he was extremely apologetic. Thankfully, I had a medical kit with me.
I began carrying one after a risky winter hike a year earlier, on a day I realized I could die as
I was not prepared to spend a night in a narrow mountain canyon. Another story for another time,
though suffice it to say that I now hike prepared to spend one night in severe winter conditions.
For an interesting read on surviving, I recommend the book Deep Survival:
Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonzales. From that book I learned that the
person who prepares, generally survives.
So the dog’s owner helped clean up the wound and wrapped gauze around it, to slow down the bleeding.
After we parted ways,
I continued my hike for another two, three, four minutes, when it dawned on me that my pants were bloody.
Though I wasn’t in pain, I knew there were wolves in these mountains—I had seen their
tracks in the snow and their scat on the ground. I decided at this point to head back to the car
as I did not want the wolves to catch my scent and begin tracking me. When I was back home,
the first thing I did was record a video of the open wound, which I will show you now.
Again, I didn’t feel anything other than a minor stinging sensation.
I took a quick shower to remove any lingering bacteria. And just in case, I then went to the doctor,
where she stitched it up and gave me some antibiotics for the bacteria in the dog’s mouth.
Oddly enough, the most difficult part of the injury were the antibiotics.
I don’t use medicine very often
unless absolutely necessary, so it had been decades since I had last used any antibiotics.
Well, they completely destroyed all my gut health, leading to weeks of gastro-intestinal pain.
The wound itself healed quickly, although any dreams I had of becoming a leg model were shattered.
Now, for the law. After seeing the wound and realizing I was fine, my second thought
turned to the law: could I sue this man for my injuries?
I literally thought about the law within moments after asking the man the question about the dog shots.
Now you may have heard the old adage,
every dog gets one free bite. While this is often true, it’s not always true. Here is the rule:
owners of domestic animals are liable when they know of their animal’s aggressive propensity
to cause harm or should have known about it. The first sub-issue is: what's a domestic animal?
This is a legal question, with courts finding that domestic animals include dogs, cats, horses,
birds, and even bees. Keep in mind that this is an objective legal inquiry, by which I mean that courts
will look at what society considers a domestic animal, not how the owner has treated the animal.
In one early 20th century case, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that mules were domestic
animals, though keep in mind that each state will have different rules for mules and any other animal.
Suppose, for example, someone has a pet tiger. Even though the tiger is a pet and has been,
colloquially speaking, “domesticated,” the courts will find that they are wild animals.
This is important, as owners of wild animals are always liable for any harm they cause.
The second sub-issue revolves around what qualifies as a dangerous propensity that an
owner knows about. This is a subjective inquiry that looks into what the owner actually knew.
Animals that have bitten before clearly qualify, but what about other behavior? For example,
someone may own a cat that always snarls, hisses, and claws at others. Under these facts, a court
will likely find that the owner knew about the animal’s dangerous propensity to cause harm,
even though the cat had never bitten anyone.
Applied to the facts from my dog bite, the owner claimed his animal had never shown any dangerous signs.
So the owner would win on this prong as he was completely unaware that the dog would bite me.
A third sub-issue involves when an owner should have known about his pet’s dangerous propensity
to cause harm. This is an objective test in that it examines what someone
should know about the animal. And this brings us to the primary issue in my dog bite case.
By the way, I chose not to pursue any legal action against the owner. I had met my yearly
medical deduction and knew that the medical expenses were not going to cost me anything.
Also, during our interaction the dog’s owner was contrite and apologetic,
which went a long way in my book for letting it go. My only harm was the pain and suffering
from taking antibiotics and the five dollars to purchase the antibiotics.
So, should this dog owner have been aware of his dog’s propensity to bite someone?
I was bitten by a pit bull, a dog considered a vicious breed. For nearly twenty years,
the CDC—the United States Centers for Disease Control—collected dog bite data. Non-fatal dog
bites accounted for the twelfth leading cause of injury in the United States and half of all fatal
attacks came from the pit bull breed of dogs. For some reason, Beagles didn’t make the list.
To avoid arguments that pit bulls aren’t dangerous, many states and localities have passed
laws defining vicious dog breeds, with pit bulls always making the list. If you disagree about pit
bulls being vicious, leave me a comment below. One final thing to understand about domestic
animal tort cases is that they fall under strict liability, not negligence or intentional torts.
This means that the owner is liable no matter how much care the owner uses to prevent the harm.
In the law, we often say that an owner is liable even when they exercise the utmost care.
Going back to my injury, the owner had the dog on a leash and attempted to keep it from attacking me.
He was careful.
The law views that as irrelevant and he was strictly liable for the dog bite.
Keep in mind that the owners of domestic animals can result in jail time.
Twenty years ago, a husband and wife, both well-respected lawyers, owned two pit bulls.
While the wife was taking the dogs out, they escaped her control inside an apartment building.
The dogs then killed a neighbor inside the building. The wife was convicted of second degree murder
and sentenced to 15 years to life.
As of today, the time I am recording this, she's still in prison.
It's been twenty years and she's been denied parole.
The husband, though not present at the time of the dog attack, was an owner of the dog
and he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to four years in prison.
Both lost their law licenses.
When the husband got out of jail, he was homeless for a while, living in his van.
He did have a few odd jobs, eventually becoming a deckhand on a boat.
It's an extreme case,
but it demonstrates the potential outcome when a domestic animal attacks someone.
If you want to learn more about the law and law school,
keep coming back so that you can become a better student, and a better lawyer.