Basic Primer on Dog Bite Claims in North Carolina
Basic Primer on Dog Bite Claims in North Carolina
Dog bite claims in NC…wow! That’s a pretty big topic to handle in a tiny blog post. When writing in blog format, I’ve found it’s sort of a razor’s edge experience; it’s easy to do the topic a disservice by oversimplifying it, but it’s also easy to verbally vomit information all over a screen and overwhelm an audience. Animal claims in general, and dog bite/attack claims specifically are a great example of this difficulty. We’re talking about a huge amount of case law and some pretty complex legal issues. But I want to write about it, so I’ll do my best to walk the edge…(please note there is a video version of this, too!)
There are essentially two paths down which you might pursue a dog bite claim in North Carolina:
- Vicious propensities
- General propensities
The elements for each are similar, but there are important, subtle differences.
VICIOUS PROPENSITIES
- Defendant was the owner or keeper of animal
- Animal caused injury/damage
- Animal was dangerous, vicious, mischievous, ferocious, OR one termed in law as possessing a vicious propensity
- Defendant had actual or constructive knowledge of the vicious prop, character, or habits of the animal
GENERAL PROPENSITIES
- Defendant was the owner/keeper (as bove)
- Animal caused injury/damage
- Animal’s conduct SHOULD reasonably have been anticipated by defendant
- Defendant failed to exercised due care to prevent injury done by such reasonably anticipated conduct by the animal
I know, SOOOO many things to discuss, but let’s just pick out a few points:
These claims are technically not negligence claims. In theory, we have “strict liability” for dog bite claims. Strict liability means that if your dog bites someone, you’re liable. Period. Sadly, it’s not that simple.
If you have a dog that is famous for his dangerous, vicious, (etc., above) behavior, then that might get you into the strict liability realm. In other words, if you know about that behavior history, and the dog does that behavior resulting in injury, then you are probably on the hook. That’s about as close to strict liability as we come.
The Health director can label dangerous dogs, and that creates specific rules for them. In other words, if your dog attacks someone and causes serious injury (there are specific guidelines about those injuries necessary for this result) then the Health Director might label that dog as dangerous. The upshot of that is that gets you in the vicious propensities angle of attack.
In terms of the general propensities angle, the “reasonable person” standard is used to analyze the anticipated conduct and the injury caused thereby. In other words, like a negligence claim, the judge/jury/finder of fact has to determine if a reasonable person would have anticipated the complained-of conduct and the injury that that conduct my cause.
For example: You might have a dog that jumps on people all the time. He’s sweet and just licks people in the face, but he’s 100 lbs and is still subject to the laws of physics. He knocks someone down and causes injury. Well, we might argue that a “reasonable person” would anticipate that that sort of conduct would cause that injury, so as long as you were aware of that general propensity of being big and jumping on people, and a reasonable person would have anticipated this, then that claim might be viable.
Another interesting point of case law is that notice of dangerousness and propensities is imputed from owner to keeper and vice versa. So if you are a dog sitter, watch out! You might be on the hook even if you don’t know about this mutt.
Some other general information:
City’s can, but don’t have to, have more strict rules about keeping dogs confined, even “non-dangerous” ones.
Punitive damages can be available for dog bite claims! As always, you have to prove liability first, then you have to show malice or willful/wanton conduct. Those damages are limited to3x compensatory OR $250k, whichever is greater. That could make a huge difference in your case, and it’s worth exploring.
That was A LOT of stuff, I know. Maybe in future posts I can go into more detail on some of those points, or maybe explore some other issues I didn’t have space to in here. Anyway, I hope you find it useful.
Be safe!
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