Nationwide, households own an estimated 77 million dogs. Despite the moniker “man’s best friends,” dogs often bite. Forty-six people died in the United States in 2020 from dog bites. Eleven of those occurred away from the premises of the dog owner. The Insurance Information Institute reports that, in 2017, nearly 350,000 people received treatment from non-fatal dog bites. Children accounted for 10,600 of these victims.
According to the Insurance Information Institute, dog bite claims to insurance companies numbered 488 in Georgia in 2020. This placed the state ninth in the number of claims. Dog owners can face liability for failing to control and take reasonable steps to prevent dog bites. Below, we focus on Georgia dog bite law and your rights if you’re bitten by a dangerous or vicious dog.
The Basis of Liability for Dog Bites
Georgia statutes place duties upon owners of “dangerous” or “vicious” dogs to restrain and confine them. When such a dog bites another, the victim may have claims based on breaches of these duties.
The Dangerous Dog
Section 4-8-21(a)(3) offers three avenues for you to illustrate that a “dangerous dog” bit you:
*The dog has substantially punctured another’s skin without causing serious injury. The bite must do more than scratch, nip, or cause an abrasion of the skin.
*The dog has aggressively attacked others so as to cause another to reasonably believe that the dog presents an “imminent threat” of death, fractures, lacerations that require multiple sutures, disfigurement, need for hospitalization, need for plastic surgery, or other serious injury. Infection, contagious diseases, and impairment of organ functions also constitute serious injury. In this prong, it is not necessary that the dog has previously caused serious injury.
*The dog kills another pet off of the premises of the dog owner. Hunting, herding, or predator control dogs are not deemed dangerous because they kill pets off-premises.
The Vicious Dog
A claim against a “vicious dog” owner turns on whether the dog caused you serious injuries caused when you used reasonable efforts to flee the dog.
The Propensity
Owners face liability when they know or should have known of their dogs’ dangerous or violent propensities. As the statutes imply, a previous history of biting or attacking will suffice. Evidence of a dog’s prior actions and the owner’s notice comes from eyewitness accounts by neighbors, reports to police or animal control, video footage from the neighborhood, and even admissions or statements by the dog owner.
You can prove a dog’s propensity even without a prior history of a dog bite. Section 51-2-7 of the Georgia Code allows a local ordinance requirement to place a dog on a leash or require it to be at heel (next to the owner) to show propensity where the dog is neither leashed nor heeled at the time of the bite. Witnesses to a dog’s menacing or chasing others may support your claim that you are the victim of a dangerous or vicious dog.
The Owner’s Carelessness
Georgia law imposes upon the owner of a dangerous or vicious dog generally the duty to keep it enclosed or under control, such as on a leash or other restraint. Generally, liability arises from the owner’s careless management of the animal or allowing it to move at liberty. Examples of the owner’s negligence include:
*Letting go of a leash or other restraint
*Leaving a gate unlocked
*Allowing the animal to escape an open house or fence door
*Installing and keeping a fence too short for the size or jumping ability of the dog
*Using a leash more than six feet long, such that the animal can reach and bite, scratch, or claw you
*Relying on a fence not sturdy enough for the size or strength of the dog
Owners of dogs declared dangerous or vicious must also post at all entrances signage clearly indicating the presence of a “dangerous” or “vicious dog.”
Defenses in Dog Bite Cases
Trespassing
Generally, a dog bite victim who enters or remains on the owner’s premises without permission or authorization cannot recover from a dog bite.
If you face a potential trespass defense, you can establish that you had express or implied permission to be on the property. The express form may come from the spoken word, text, email, or a printed invitation for a gathering or event. Property owners requesting home repairs or maintenance authorize the service provider to be present. If you’re bitten while performing work, you may also have a workers’ compensation claim due to having injuries while on the job. Retail businesses implicitly authorize customers to be present at their stores or restaurants.
The trespass defense does not bar a claim that the dog owner instructed the dog to bite or attack you. In such a scenario, your suit would turn upon an intentional act by the owner.
Provoking the Dog
The dog owner may argue that you instigated the dog bite or attack. Section 51-2-7 expresses the idea that you must not have provoked the animal. Acts that may constitute provocation include:
- Teasing the animal, such as by mimicking barking or making other sounds
- Placing or waiving hands or objects in the dog’s face
- Throwing objects at the animal
- Running at the animal
- Stepping on the dog’s tail or foot, even if unintentionally
In the face of a provocation argument, you might present proof that the owner led you to reasonably believe that the animal was not dangerous, vicious, or would not attack you. Statements such as the dog “won’t bite” or “is friendly” or invitations by the owner to pet the animal might defeat provocation — especially if there are no other signs of the dog’s dangerous or vicious propensities.
The Harms From a Dog Bite
Rabies
After a dog bite, rabies comes to the mind of victims, animal control officers, and physicians. Often, the inquiry of the dog’s vaccination status immediately follows a report of a dog bite.
This is because rabies can prove fatal or very serious. This infection from a dog bite attacks your central nervous system. Rabies can cause you to lose awareness of your surroundings, become repeatedly confused, unable to communicate, impair judgment and logic, and become forgetful. In addition to these symptoms of delirium, you might develop a phobia of water, have disturbed sleep, hallucinate, and behave abnormally. Those infected by rabies normally die.
The significant risk of death from a rabies infection creates the urgency for rabies shots — unless the dog itself was vaccinated and is immune from rabies. Dog bite victims receive an immediate globulin to prevent the infection. The preventitive regiment turns to a series of vaccines. Until you become vaccinated or learn that the dog poses no risk of rabies, you likely experience anxiety, fear, and other significant emotional distress.
Even in the absence of a rabies virus, you may suffer bacterial infections. In nearly half of dog bite cases, victims become infected by bacteria. One such bacteria, capnocytophaga, causes diarrhea, fever, confusion, headaches, vomiting, and confusion. Among instances of severe capnocytophaga infections, the death rate stands at 30 percent.
Compensation for Rabies and Other Dog Bite Injuries
Damages
From dog bites can come personal injury claims. As with claims arising from automobile crashes, defective property conditions, or other acts causing personal injuries, you can recover in a dog bite case the following:
- Lost Income: These economic damages consist of earnings you lose due to missing time at work. You may have lost days on the job thanks to emergency room or hospital stays, trips to the doctor or therapy, and time at home recovering. Lost earning capacity compensates you for jobs you can no longer perform due to the dog bite. For instance, disfigurement and mood swings may deprive you of jobs that involve public interaction. With memory loss and behavioral problems from rabies (assuming you avoid death), you cannot follow directions.
- Medical Expenses: You can recover what you or insurance pay or have to pay for vaccines, hospital stays, examinations, antibacterial medications, pain relievers, and other medical services.
- Pain and Suffering: Non-economic damages include the discomfort, pain, loss of sleep, shock, anxiety, fear of water or other dogs, trauma, and other physical and emotional suffering. These losses do not have an inherently objective standard of measurement. If you’re a family member of the dog bite victim and you were with or near the victim during the attack, you can claim severe emotional distress damages as a bystander of the victim.
Pursuing Homeowners or Animal Liability Insurance
By Georgia statute, owners of vicious or dangerous dogs must carry at least $50,000 of liability insurance to pay for damages resulting from a dog bite. Coverage comes via animal liability policies. You may also resort to the liability portion of homeowners’ coverage.
Statute of Limitations
You get two years in Georgia to start a personal injury lawsuit. This statute of limitations begins to run from the date of the dog bite because, at the moment of the bite, you suffered some injury. When death occurs from the dog bite, you have two years from the date of death to bring a wrongful death suit.