Your Rights After a Dog Bite in California

California has one of the clearest, most victim-protective dog bite laws in the country. Here's what it says, in plain language, and what it means for you.

The core rule: strict liability

California Civil Code section 3342 says a dog owner is liable for damages when their dog bites someone who is:

• in a public place (a street, sidewalk, park), or
• lawfully in a private place — including as a guest at the owner's home.

"Strict liability" means the owner is responsible regardless of whether the dog ever bit anyone before and regardless of whether the owner was careless. There is no "one free bite" in California. The owner saying "he's never done that before" — even if true — is not a defense.

The main exceptions

The statute has limits worth knowing:

• Trespassers aren't covered by the strict liability rule (other claims can sometimes still exist).
• Police and military dogs doing their work are generally excluded.
• Provocation and assumption of risk can come up — for example, veterinary staff handling a dog as part of their job.
• The statute covers bites; injuries a dog causes other ways (being knocked down by a charging dog, a bicycle crash caused by a chasing dog) fall under ordinary negligence rules instead — those cases are real too, just analyzed differently.

None of these exceptions is a reason to assume you don't have rights — they're reasons the details of your situation matter.

Who actually pays

Almost always, the owner's homeowner's or renter's insurance — through their liability coverage, negotiated with an adjuster, usually without a lawsuit. This matters enormously when the owner is a neighbor, friend, or relative. Our guide Dog Bites and Homeowner's Insurance covers this in depth.

If you were bitten while working — delivery driver, postal carrier, gig worker, home health aide, anyone on the job — you may have a workers' compensation claim through your employer in addition to a claim against the dog's owner. Those tracks run in parallel, and it's worth understanding both.

What your damages can include

Dog bite injuries are routinely undervalued by the people who have them. Compensable damages can include emergency and follow-up medical care, scar revision and plastic surgery (bite scars are common and treatment is often delayed for months), infection treatment, therapy for post-bite anxiety — very common, especially in children — lost wages, and pain and suffering. Children's cases deserve special care: scarring on a growing body changes over years, and settlements for minors have their own court-approval process.

The deadlines

• Two years from the bite, generally, to file most California personal injury claims (Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1).
• As little as six months to present a formal claim when a government entity is involved.
• For minors, deadlines are generally paused until age 18 — but waiting years to investigate a child's case is still a mistake: evidence and witnesses don't wait.

Deadlines are the quiet case-killer. Nothing about an insurance conversation, a friendly owner, or a pending records request pauses them.

The records that protect your rights

Every right described above gets easier to exercise with documentation: the animal control bite report, the 10-day quarantine outcome, the dog's vaccination status and prior history, your medical records, and photographs. The bite report is usually the anchor — it's the official, close-in-time account that identifies the dog and owner.

That's what this site helps you do: answer a few questions and we'll identify the agency that holds your report and help you request everything that exists. Free, about a minute to start, in English or Spanish.