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Delaware holds a dog’s owner strictly liable for the harm the dog causes. Section 3053F of Title 16 makes the owner liable in damages for any injury, death, or loss the dog causes, unless the person hurt was trespassing or committing a crime on the owner’s property, committing a crime against someone, or teasing, tormenting, or abusing the dog. There is no one free bite in Delaware, and you do not have to prove the owner knew the dog was dangerous.
This page covers what you must prove, Delaware’s statewide leash law, who counts as an owner, the three exceptions and other defenses, how fault is handled, a child’s case, landlord liability, deadlines and claims against government, damages, the dangerous dog law amended in 2024, reporting and rabies quarantine, settlement value, and insurance. One Delaware rule deserves special attention: a child bitten by a dog does not get extra time to sue. The two year clock starts on the day of the bite.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases. Talk to us for free, and pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
Delaware has a dog bite statute, and it does most of the work in a case. Section 3053F says the owner of a dog “is liable in damages for any injury, death, or loss to person or property that is caused by such dog,” followed by three exceptions and nothing else. The same sentence has been law since July 13, 1998. It began as 7 Del. C. § 1711, was renumbered twice, and its text has not changed, as the Delaware Supreme Court explained in 2024.
Strict liability means the owner’s care is not the question. In Riad v. Brandywine Valley SPCA, decided June 10, 2024, the court described liability under the statute as “strict, i.e., not dependent on a showing that the dog owner was negligent in its handling of the dog.” That is the opposite of the old one bite rule, under which the victim had to prove the owner knew the dog was dangerous.
Note the statute’s reach. Its words are not limited to bites: it covers “any injury, death, or loss to person or property that is caused by such dog.” And under Section 3050F, “all dogs shall be deemed personal property.”
Delaware also recognizes an ordinary negligence claim alongside the statute. In Riad the plaintiff brought both, and the Supreme Court revived both. A negligence claim matters when the defendant is not the dog’s owner, such as a landlord.
Under the statute, the case comes down to a short list:
That third item is unusual. In Russo v. Zeigler, 67 A.3d 536 (Del. Super. 2013), the court held that the victim “must demonstrate that none of the statutory ‘exceptions’ are applicable,” and the Superior Court’s current pattern jury instruction says the same. In practice, that means showing you were not trespassing, not committing a crime, and not teasing or tormenting the dog. Witness statements and photographs of the scene carry real weight here.
A negligence claim asks for more: a duty of care, a breach, and an injury caused by the breach. Against a landlord, Delaware also requires actual knowledge of the dog’s dangerous tendencies. The Delaware Supreme Court held in Riad that no expert was required on the standard of care, because whether someone acted with reasonable prudence in handling a dog with known vicious propensities “is not outside the ken of the average layperson.”
So gather two kinds of evidence early. The first proves the statutory claim: who had the dog, what happened, and your injuries. The second proves the dog’s history: earlier complaints, prior bites, and what the owner or landlord already knew. That second set drives a claim against a landlord, which turns on what the landlord actually knew.
Delaware has a statewide leash law. Under Section 3048F, unless an exemption applies, “a dog may not run at large outside at any time” and must be on a leash capable of physically restraining it. A dog is not at large if it is within its owner’s property lines, on private property with permission, or inside a vehicle. Working dogs doing their jobs, and dogs in a designated off-leash area attended by their owner, need only be under reasonable control.
The penalties are civil. Letting a dog run at large carries a $50 civil penalty, and $200 for a repeat within 12 months. If a dog running at large bites a person without provocation, the owner, custodian, possessor, or harborer faces a $500 civil penalty for a first violation and $1,000 after that. Those amounts were set by a 2024 act that converted the old fines to civil penalties.
For the injury claim, the leash law is mostly backup. The strict liability statute already makes the owner pay without proof of carelessness. Where a leash violation helps is the negligence claim. The Superior Court’s pattern jury instruction tells jurors that violating the leash law “constitutes negligence as a matter of law.” That can matter in a negligence claim, like the one the Supreme Court allowed to go forward alongside the statutory claim in Riad. An animal control citation for the incident is also a dated official record of how the dog got loose.
Delaware defines owner broadly. Section 3041F(7) says an owner is “any person who owns, keeps, harbors, or is the custodian of a dog.” So the statute is not limited to the person who bought or adopted the dog. Anyone who fits one of those four words can be an owner under the statute.
The Delaware Supreme Court applied that definition literally in Riad. A man waiting to adopt a dog at a shelter was bitten while a shelter employee held the leash. The trial court had treated the statute as aimed only at irresponsible people keeping vicious pets. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the statute “does not contain an exception for animal welfare organizations” and that if the shelter “owned, kept, harbored, or was the custodian of the dog when it bit the plaintiff, it is liable.” The court also noted that Delaware’s general definition of person includes corporations, and the shelter did not argue it was not a person.
Who was the owner at the moment of the bite is a question of fact. In Riad the dog’s earlier adopter had signed it back over to the shelter only after the bite, so the case went back for trial on who was the owner or custodian. If you are unsure who had the dog, read what determines ownership of a dog.
Section 3053F lists three exceptions. The owner is not liable under the statute if the injured person was, at the time:
Read the first one closely. It covers trespass on the owner’s property, not anywhere else. A person bitten on a sidewalk, in a park, or in their own yard was not trespassing on the owner’s land. The teasing exception has no location limit, so it can come up anywhere.
The word provocation does not appear in the civil statute, though insurers use it anyway. The statute’s question is whether you were teasing, tormenting, or abusing the dog. We discuss the general idea in dog bite provocation.
Two defenses owners sometimes raise have been rejected by the Superior Court. The premises guest statute, which limits a homeowner’s liability to unpaid guests, does not limit a dog owner’s liability under the dog bite statute: the court held in McCormick v. Hoddinott (2004) that the dog bite statute supersedes it for a bite on the owner’s property. And secondary assumption of risk, meaning a plaintiff unreasonably chose to encounter a known risk, has been folded into comparative negligence. The narrow exception is express or primary assumption of risk. As the Superior Court described in Russo, a 2006 decision applied it to relieve dog owners of liability to a veterinarian who was treating the dog. In 2024 the Delaware Supreme Court called that 2006 decision’s reasoning about legislative intent flawed, but said the assumption of risk defense was “not before us.” A veterinarian or other professional bitten while handling a dog should get advice early.
Delaware law also lets anyone injure or kill a dog in self-defense while it is attacking a person, without civil or criminal liability.
Delaware’s general fault rule is modified comparative negligence. Under 10 Del. C. § 8132, a victim’s own negligence does not bar recovery if it “was not greater than the negligence of the defendant or the combined negligence of all defendants against whom recovery is sought.” Any award is reduced by the victim’s share. So a victim found 50 percent at fault recovers half, and a victim found 51 percent at fault recovers nothing. Note the comparison is with the defendants against whom you seek recovery.
Here is the Delaware twist. In Russo v. Zeigler the Superior Court held that the comparative negligence statute “cannot be used in defense of” a claim under the dog bite statute. The court reasoned that Section 8132 applies only to actions based in negligence, and that the dog bite statute’s words, liable for “any injury,” leave “no room for diminution by finding of comparative fault.” Under that ruling, a victim who wins the strict liability claim is not reduced for carelessness. The defense has to fit one of the three statutory exceptions or lose.
Two caveats, honestly stated. Russo is a Superior Court ruling, not a Delaware Supreme Court decision, made during a trial that ended in a mistrial. And the fault statute does still apply to negligence claims, such as one against a landlord. In those claims a jury can weigh your conduct and cut or bar your recovery.
In practice, expect the insurer to hunt for facts that fit the teasing exception, so be careful what you say about how the bite happened before talking to a lawyer.
The single most important Delaware rule for parents is this: a child’s dog bite claim has the same two year deadline as an adult’s. Delaware’s general savings statute for minors, 10 Del. C. § 8116, applies only to actions covered by Sections 8101 through 8115. The personal injury statute, Section 8119, sits outside that range. In Tilden v. Anstreicher, 367 A.2d 632 (Del. 1976), the Delaware Supreme Court held that Section 8119 “is not subject to any savings provisions.” Do not wait for a child to grow up. File within two years of the bite.
A child’s case is brought by a parent or guardian on the child’s behalf, as the parents did in McCormick v. Hoddinott, which involved a seven year old bitten on the dog owners’ property.
Expect the owner to point at your child’s behavior. In negligence law, Delaware gives young children some protection. A child under seven is presumed incapable of negligence, though the presumption can be rebutted. A child’s negligence is judged by an individualized look at the child’s age, intelligence, and maturity. In McCormick the owners said the girl had jumped on or body slammed the dog and the family said she was petting it, a factual dispute the court’s rulings left for trial. If an adjuster is blaming your child, read whether a child can provoke a dog, then talk to a lawyer.
Delaware’s pattern jury instruction lets a jury award future pain and suffering, permanent impairment, and future medical expenses that are reasonably probable. A settlement offer that arrives before anyone knows how a child’s injuries will heal deserves a hard look.
A landlord who only rented to the dog’s owner faces a negligence claim, and Delaware sets a demanding test. In Dougherty v. Hibbits, decided August 31, 2015, the Superior Court explained that such a landlord’s only potential common law duty arises as a harborer of the dog or as a landlord who knew of the dog’s vicious propensities. Quoting a 1997 Delaware Supreme Court order, Kirshner v. Wilmington Housing Authority, the court said liability arises “when the landlord knows of the animal’s dangerous propensities and the landlord has the power, through its control over the premises, to remove or confine the animal.”
The key word is knows. In Dougherty the Superior Court held that “the correct standard in Delaware for landlord-tenant dog bite liability is the landlord’s actual knowledge of a dog’s vicious or dangerous propensities.” Should have known is not enough. The landlord in that case lived out of state, had never seen the dog, and had a pet form that misdescribed it, so the court granted him summary judgment even though the dog had bitten three people before.
Actual knowledge can still be proved with circumstantial evidence. The court listed the kinds of facts that can get a case to a jury:
In Dougherty the court also looked at whether the property manager had actual knowledge that could be attributed to the landlord, so a written complaint to management is valuable evidence.
A landlord who was itself keeping, harboring, or acting as custodian of the dog is in a different position. The statute defines owner as “any person who owns, keeps, harbors, or is the custodian of a dog,” and Riad holds that whoever fits that definition when the dog bites is liable under the statute.
Two years from the date of the bite. 10 Del. C. § 8119 bars a personal injury action filed more than two years “from the date upon which it is claimed that such alleged injuries were sustained.” For a dog bite, that is the day of the bite. Section 8106, which sets three years for actions based on a statute, is expressly “subject, however, to the provisions of” Section 8119, so the two year period applies to the dog bite statute claim too.
Treat all of these as outer limits. The deadlines that decide cases are much shorter: the ten day rabies quarantine, the animal control investigation, and the weeks before wounds heal and can no longer be photographed. Our guide to the dog bite statute of limitations explains how these clocks interact.
Delaware’s dangerous dog law draws a line between levels of injury. It defines physical injury as impairment of physical condition or substantial pain, and serious physical injury as injury that creates a substantial risk of death or causes serious and prolonged disfigurement, impairment of health, or loss of function of a bodily organ.
Delaware runs an inclusive statewide trauma system whose regulations are based on American College of Surgeons guidelines. Christiana Hospital is the state’s Regional Level 1 trauma center, and Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware is the Pediatric Regional Level 1 trauma center. Bayhealth’s Kent and Sussex campuses, Beebe Healthcare, ChristianaCare’s Wilmington Hospital, St. Francis Healthcare, and TidalHealth Nanticoke are Level 3 community trauma centers.
Delaware’s pattern jury instruction for personal injury lists the categories a jury may award: pain and suffering to date and in the future, permanent impairment, medical expenses to date and those reasonably probable in the future, and lost earnings past and future. Jurors may consider the mental as well as physical consequences of pain, including anxiety and the loss of activities you used to enjoy. The strict liability statute itself covers “any injury, death, or loss to person or property.”
Two limits on what you can collect are worth knowing:
Punitive damages have a higher bar. Delaware’s pattern instruction allows them only for intentional or reckless conduct, which it describes as “conscious indifference” amounting to an “I don’t care” attitude, and not for ordinary carelessness. Any award must bear a reasonable relationship to the compensatory damages.
For more on how these categories play out, read our guide to dog bite compensation.
Delaware’s dangerous dog law is in Subchapter V of Chapter 30F of Title 16, much of it amended by an act approved August 29, 2024. An animal welfare officer with reasonable cause to believe a dog did one of the listed acts must seize and impound it. Unless the owner agrees to conditions, the state files a civil action in the Justice of the Peace Court, which decides the dog’s status on clear and convincing evidence.
No dog may be declared potentially dangerous based solely on breed, and none of these labels applies if the injured person was committing criminal trespass or a tort on the owner’s premises, teasing or abusing the dog, or committing a crime.
A declaration brings real conditions. A dangerous dog must be spayed or neutered, microchipped, confined in a proper enclosure, and muzzled on a short non-retractable leash outside, and the owner must post a warning sign and carry at least $100,000 of liability insurance. A potentially dangerous label carries similar conditions without the insurance requirement. Under the 2024 changes, a potentially dangerous label given on or after August 29, 2024 no longer expires after 24 months without a new incident. A dangerous dog that later attacks without provocation must be seized and euthanized.
There is criminal exposure too. Under 11 Del. C. § 1327, knowingly or recklessly keeping a dangerous animal that seriously injures a person is a class F felony, and that covers dogs with a known individual propensity to attack as well as declared dogs.
For your civil case, a declaration does not create liability, since the statute already does. But if the dog had already been declared dangerous before it bit you, the owner was required to carry at least $100,000 of liability insurance “covering any damage or injury which may be caused by such dog.”
Delaware’s rabies law requires reporting fast. Under 3 Del. C. § 8203, any medical practitioner, hospital, veterinarian, or other person who knows of a human known or suspected to have been exposed to rabies must report it to the Division of Public Health within 12 hours. Delaware Animal Services tells people bitten by a dog to report the exposure to the division, and notes that all medical providers must report. The Division of Public Health’s rabies page takes reports online and says all exposures should be reported regardless of the dog’s vaccination status. If the dog was aggressive, also report it to Delaware Animal Services, which responds statewide to dog bites and dangerous dogs. Here is what happens after a dog bite is reported.
The quarantine rule is in Section 8208. The owner of a dog that exposed a person to rabies must place it under strict quarantine for at least ten days starting at the time of the exposure. A vaccinated dog may be quarantined at home. Without proof of a current rabies vaccination, the dog goes to a veterinarian, kennel, or approved facility at the owner’s expense until a veterinarian examines and vaccinates it after the ten days. During quarantine the dog may not be moved, killed, or given away without written permission from the state, and the owner must report within 12 hours if it escapes, sickens, or dies.
Delaware requires every dog six months or older to be vaccinated against rabies, so ask the owner for the certificate. If there is none, read about being bitten by an unvaccinated dog. According to Delaware Animal Services, a healthy dog that stays healthy through the ten day observation period did not transmit rabies at the time of the bite. Whether you need rabies shots is still a decision for your doctor and the health department.
The best published figures are national. For 2025, the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm reported 28,450 dog-related injury claims nationwide, at an average cost of $65,450 per claim. Their summary names California, Florida, New York, and Connecticut but gives no Delaware figure. That is an insurance average across every claim, large and small. It is not a settlement value and it does not predict any one case.
What actually moves the number in a Delaware case:
Our overview of dog bite settlement amounts explains how injury levels are valued, and the dog bite settlement calculator gives a rough sense of ranges.
Insurers paid $1.86 billion in dog related injury claims nationwide in 2025, according to the Insurance Information Institute. The Delaware Department of Insurance tells homeowners that the typical policy includes coverage for injuries to other people, that it may pay for injuries caused by a family member or even a pet away from home, and that it may pay legal bills if the owner is sued. The Insurance Information Institute says standard homeowners and renters policies typically cover dog bite liability up to the policy’s limits, usually $100,000 to $300,000.
Breed can complicate coverage. The Department of Insurance warns that some insurers charge more for breeds they consider higher risk and some decline to offer coverage at all. An owner may tell you there is no insurance because of the dog’s breed or a policy exclusion. Do not take that at face value; have a lawyer ask for the policy.
One other source of coverage is worth checking. An owner of a dog declared dangerous must carry at least $100,000 of liability insurance for that dog. And remember that under Riad, a shelter or other organization that owned, kept, harbored, or had custody of the dog can itself be liable as its owner.
For the full process from start to finish, read our guide on how to file a dog bite claim.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases, and Delaware’s statute gives victims a strong starting point. The real work sits around it: identifying every owner, keeper, harborer, or custodian, including a shelter, kennel, or business that had the dog; proving that none of the three exceptions applies; getting the Division of Public Health and Delaware Animal Services records; finding any prior dangerous dog finding or complaints; building a negligence case against a landlord who actually knew; and filing inside two years, even for a child.
We deal with the insurer so you do not have to, and we make sure a friendly phone call does not turn into an argument that you teased the dog. We work on a contingency fee, so there is nothing to pay up front and no fee unless we recover money for you. Founding attorney Michael Agruss built the firm around injury clients who need someone else to carry the paperwork.
We take dog bite cases across Delaware, including Wilmington, Dover, Newark, Middletown, Smyrna, Milford, and Georgetown. If you or your child was bitten, contact us for a free consultation. We will tell you honestly whether there is a claim worth bringing.
Yes. Under 16 Del. C. § 3053F, a dog's owner is liable for any injury, death, or loss the dog causes, whether or not it had bitten before and whether or not the owner was careful. The only exceptions are when the victim was trespassing or committing a crime on the owner's property, committing a crime against someone, or teasing, tormenting, or abusing the dog.
No, and this catches many Delaware families off guard. The personal injury deadline is two years from the date of the bite, and the Delaware Supreme Court held in 1976 that the statute has no extra time for minors. A parent or guardian should bring the claim on the child's behalf well before that second anniversary.
Only in limited circumstances. The Superior Court has held that the landlord must have actually known the dog was dangerous, and must have had the power to remove or confine it. Proof that the landlord should have known is not enough. The court listed the kinds of evidence that can raise that question: the landlord seeing the dog act aggressively, reports of aggression from others, and steps the landlord took to remove the dog.
It can. In 2024 the Delaware Supreme Court held that the dog bite statute has no exception for animal welfare organizations. If the shelter owned, kept, harbored, or had custody of the dog when it bit you, the statute applies. Who had custody at that moment can be disputed, as it was in that case, so the details of the handoff matter.
On the strict liability claim, a Delaware Superior Court decision says no: the comparative negligence statute applies to negligence actions, not to the dog bite statute. The owner must instead prove facts fitting an exception, such as teasing the dog. On a separate negligence claim, your share of fault can reduce the award, and it bars recovery if it is greater than the defendants' combined share.
The owner must keep the dog in strict quarantine for at least ten days from the bite. A vaccinated dog can usually stay home, while an unvaccinated one goes to a veterinarian or approved kennel at the owner's cost. Separately, if animal welfare officers believe the dog is dangerous, it can be impounded and the Justice of the Peace Court decides whether to impose restrictions or order euthanasia.
Claims against a county or municipality have a limit: these governments are immune from tort suits except as a statute provides, and any recovery is limited to $300,000 per occurrence unless the government carries more insurance. Against a private owner, the owner's homeowners or renters policy pays only up to its limits, and the Insurance Information Institute says the owner is responsible for damages above that amount.
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