February 28, 2022
Dog Bite Lawyer
No matter whether you are the owner of a dog in Texas or you are considering filing a claim against someone who owns a dog that has bit you, you’re probably going to want to talk to a dog bite lawyer. But just in case you’re worried about the dog bite law, you should fully understand if you’re going to own a dog in Texas. You should know the law and that’s what we’re here to help you with.
The One Bite Rule
Many states have a civil statute that is going to specifically lay out what the dog owner is going to be liable for damages and how if their pet causes them. However, Texas does not follow that civil statute that many states have adopted, instead Texas follows the one bite rule.
The history of the one bite rule is that in 1974 the Supreme Court ruled on a case called Marshall v Ranne, Ranne’s hog viciously attacked and injured his neighbor, and the jury ruled that Marshall was indeed contributing to the negligence of the incident because he voluntarily assumed the risk of meeting the pig.
This was the ruling that would lead to the one bite rule being applied to dog bite, and this is a very oversimplified idea of a rule that applies to dog owners. Essentially the dog’s first bite is going to be free of liability, however after the first bite then the dog owner is considered to be on notice for the tendency for his dog to bite as this first bite was free and is considered the animal giving warning that has a tendency to be aggressive. The owner of the dog should then use facts to understand what went wrong in the event their dog bit somebody, and they should avoid events like that again by advocating for the dog.
So if your dog has bitten somebody in the past and you do nothing about it and it might bite somebody again, you are going to be more likely to be considered negligent the next time it bites someone. So civil liability could also be said to be based on negligence when it comes to dog owners, and often when somebody is filing a dog bite claim with the dog bite lawyer in Houston TX, they must be able to prove that the dog’s owner knew the dog was acting aggressively and had been somewhat in the past or the dog’s owner was absolutely negligent to use reasonable care to control the dog.
The dog owner liability rule was going to apply to bites and other injuries that are caused by your animal, so even if you’re very large dog knocks a small child down and they break a bone, they can bring forth a personal lawsuit against the dog’s owner, however the injured person will have to show that the dog’s owner should have known or had reasonable cause to know that the dog was going to harm someone in some way.