This Dog Leans over the Fence….

Dog bite cases seem like they’d be super-simple.

There’s a strict liability statute in Washington. RCW 16.08.040 makes a dog owner liable if the dog bites someone who is lawfully on public or private property, regardless of the dog’s past behavior.

(This is a lot different than in other states where every dog gets one free bite, where you have to prove the owner’s negligence, etc.)

But with so many rules there are exceptions. One of the most interesting is “provocation” which sometimes is referred to as the dog’s self-defense statute.

Another is when someone sticks part of their body through a fence and that body part is bitten. In the Sligar case that’s often cited by defendants, the plaintiff stuck her fingers through a fence and her fingers were bitten.

We had a case recently that brought up this area of the law.

Our client walked up to her neighbor’s fence.

When she called out to the neighbor she was met by his Mastiff. The Mastiff leapt, stuck his head over the fence and bit her in the face.

The defendant was quick to cite that case and argue that our client must have been sticking her head over the fence.

We countered that the case didn’t apply for a couple of reasons. First, sticking her head over the fence wasn’t the same thing as sticking her head through it. Which would have been pretty tough. And, more importantly, there was no way that she would have stuck her head (essentially) into the Mastiff’s airspace.

The defendant was unwilling to accept the possibility that his dog had done wrong. But his insurance company—which fortunately was calling the shots and held the purse-strings—saw our way of thinking and ended up settling the case.

Two claps for an unlikely recipient: the insurance company. It was able to put emotion aside and really focus on the most likely way this happened and what a jury would ultimately think.