What is the “One Bite Rule” in Dog Bite Cases?

When it comes to dog bites, and liability for injuries that happen when dogs bite, you may have heard of the one bite rule, or the one free bite rule. But what is this rule, and is it really the law?

Notice in Injury Cases

To understand the one bite rule, you have to understand the concept of notice in personal injury cases. Generally, to be liable for someone else’s injury, a negligent defendant must know, or have reason to know, that they are causing a dangerous condition.

So, for example, if a store inspects its floors once every 6 hours, that’s too long—it has reason to know that someone will get injured. If a store keeps live electrical wires showing where people walk, it knows that this is a condition that can injure someone. That’s notice.

The One Bite Rule

In the world of dog bites, the one bite rule says that the owner of a dog that bites someone, must have some advanced knowledge that the dog is dangerous—that is, that the dog has already bitten someone or attacked someone in the past.

Under the one bite rule, an owner can’t be held liable for a sweet, kind, gentile dog that just suddenly “snaps,” because that owner never had knowledge that the dog ever was, or could be, dangerous.

Strict Liability

But Massachusetts, like many states, doesn’t follow this one bite rule. In Massachusetts, a dog owner is strictly liable for what the dog does, including biting.

The dog bite victim need not show that the owner had prior notice of the dog’s dangerousness, and the dog’s owner may have been taken totally by surprise over the dog’s sudden, violent behavior. But that doesn’t matter; so long as the person owned the dog, and the dog bit someone, the owner is liable, no matter what the dog’s prior behavior was, and even if the dog never bit anybody in the past.

This of course makes recovery for dog bite victims much easier. The victim need not prove what the dog’s owner subjectively knew or didn’t know. A dog owner can’t say “but Fido was so sweet, I had no idea.”

This strict liability isn’t just for dog bites, either: it also applies to any injury caused by dogs, even if accidental, and even if the dog isn’t being aggressive such as accidental scratching or pushing someone over playfully.

Other Defenses

This isn’t to say that there are no defenses to a dog bite case. There are, and dog owners will use them.

For example, a dog owner can say that the dog was provoked, or that the dog bite victim did something negligent or careless, to cause the dog to bite. The owner may claim that the victim who was bitten, was somewhere he or she wasn’t supposed to be.

Call our Boston personal injury lawyers at The Law Office of Joseph Linnehan, Jr. today at 617-275-4200 for help after an accident if you’ve been injured in any way by a dog.