Dog and other pet owners and insurers in New York are now exposed to increased risk of liability in the wake of a Court of Appeals ruling that allows an injured party to bring an ordinary negligence claim against a domestic animal owner for the first time.
The New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, has ruled that domestic animal owners may be held liable for an injury if they are deemed negligent for failing to exercise due care under the circumstances that caused their injury.
That’s a broader standard than the strict liability theory that has been in place for decades and holds that a dog owner could only be held strictly liable if the owner knew or should have known the animal had “vicious propensities.”
Now plaintiffs alleging injury can pursue one or both theories of liability against an animal owner.
“A plaintiff who suffers an animal-induced injury therefore has a choice. If the owner knew or should have known the animal had vicious propensities, the plaintiff may seek to hold them strictly liable. Or they can rely on rules of ordinary negligence and seek to prove that the defendant failed to exercise due care under the circumstances that caused their injury. Of course, a plaintiff might also assert both theories of liability, as Flanders chose to do,” the court explained.
Flanders refers to Rebecca Flanders, a postal worker who while handing a package to a homeowner on an inside porch was attacked by the homeowners’s unrestrained 70 lb. dog. The dog bit her shoulder, causing an injury that required multiple surgeries and resulted in permanent scarring.
Flanders sued under the state’s traditional dog bite theory of strict liability that the owner knew or should have known about the dog’s “propensity to do any act that might endanger the safety of the persons and property of others in a given situation.”
Flanders also sued under the theory of negligence, despite its precedent (Bard v Jahnke) set in 2006 that negligence did not apply in such circumstances. Flanders asked the court to overrule Bard and recognize negligence as an alternative to strict liability for injuries caused by domestic animals.
Both of Flanders’ claims were dismissed by lower courts that found there was insufficient evidence to prove that the owner knew or should have known about “vicious” tendencies of his dog that would prove strict liability. The lower courts outright dismissed the negligence claim citing the Bard ruling under which negligence claims are unavailable in cases of domestic animals.
The Court of Appeals, however, reversed those rulings and reinstated both claims. The high court found there was sufficient evidence to create a triable issue under strict liability whether the owner knew or should have known about the dog’s propensities.
Then the court went further and overruled Bard to the extent that it bars negligence liability for harm caused by domestic animals. The court reinstated Flanders’ negligence cause of action, allowing her to question whether the dog owner in her case took reasonable steps to “prevent foreseeable harm.”
Noting that it had carved out various exceptions to the Bard ban on negligence claims over the years, and lower courts had tried to create loopholes, the court declared that “precluding negligence liability has proven unworkable, and at times unjust.”
The Court of Appeals concluded: “Experience has shown that this rule is in tension with ordinary tort principles, unworkable, and, in some circumstances, unfair. Continued adherence to Bard therefore would not achieve the stability, predictability, and uniformity in the application of the law that the doctrine of stare decisis seeks to promote.”
The opinion continues: ‘Tort law seeks to incentivize us to be mindful of the risk that our behavior might harm others by imposing a duty to act with due care. That is why, under ordinary principles of negligence, a victim may seek recovery by proving that a defendant failed to exercise due care and thereby proximately caused a victim’s injuries.”
These principles apply to persons engaged in an array of activities including riding a bike, driving a car, and manufacturing. “A single idea unites these decisions: when people go about their daily lives, the law generally requires them to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm,” the opinion states.
By exempting owners of domestic animals from negligence liability, Bard departed from these principles, and the standard incentives of the tort system, according to the court.
The opinion refers to a dissent in Bard that asked: “Why should a person who is negligent in managing an automobile or a child be subject to liability, and not one who is negligent in managing a horse or bull?”
Legal experts see the decision leading to more claims and lawsuits against dog owners and property owners.
“Insurers may face a higher volume of claims and greater exposure to damages, particularly in cases where the strict liability threshold could not previously be met. Now, even a well-behaved dog can be the basis for a claim if reasonable precautions were arguably lacking, attorneys Peter Gregory and Endell Osuna of Goldberg Segalla wrote.
They also see the decision potentially affecting landlords, tenants, and business owners “if they fail to implement or enforce reasonable safety measures related to dogs on their property.”
The ruling comes at a time when insurers are reporting rising clams related to dog bites. Insurers in the U.S. paid out about $1.6 billion in dog-related injury claims in 2024, according to the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) and State Farm. The number of dog bite and related injury claims last year totaled 22,658, an increase of nearly 19% from 2023 and a 48% increase over the past decade.
The same report said that nearly half (45.5%) of U.S. households include dogs, for a total of nearly 90 million canine companions.
According to Triple-I, homeowners and renters insurance policies usually cover dog bite liability legal expenses, up to the liability limits (typically $100,000 to $300,000).
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