Abogado especializado en mordeduras de perro en Jacksonville

Chapter 767, Florida’s dog statute, has no general leash rule for dogs that have not been classified as dangerous, so the rule that applied where you were bitten comes from a local ordinance. Jacksonville is consolidated with Duval County, and its rules are in chapter 462 of the Ordinance Code. The City Council rewrote the at-large provisions in Ordinance 2025-811-E, passed January 27, 2026. The prohibition now sits in Section 462.302(b): no owner or custodian may permit an animal to be at-large or fail to restrain it. Older summaries that cite Section 462.303 for this rule predate that change; 462.303 now covers habitual nuisances, such as a dog that runs at-large twice within a month.

The definitions in Section 462.102 do most of the work:

• At-large. A dog is at-large when it is off its owner’s property without a leash, tether or other device keeping it under a responsible person’s physical control, and it has entered someone else’s property without permission or public property, a street or a right-of-way.
• Eight feet. Physical control means a leash no longer than eight feet at its maximum extension, and a retractable leash run out past eight feet counts as at-large, though the code enforces that only when another violation happens at the same time.
• Common areas. In a community association, a dog that leaves the owner’s curtilage for the common property is off the owner’s property unless that area is clearly designated off-leash.

Exemptions cover working police dogs, legal hunts and trials, and supervised dogs in a designated off-leash park. Section 462.302(d) separately bars an owner from permitting a dog, willfully or through failure to exercise due care or control, to bite, attack or wound a person. Violations are civil infractions with fines set in Part 18 of the chapter.

Against the owner, Section 767.04 already supplies liability, so an at-large violation mainly answers an argument that you were partly at fault, and it carries more weight against a walker or sitter who is not the owner. In deJesus v. Seaboard Coast Line Railroad (1973), the Florida Supreme Court treated violating a statute written to protect a particular class of people as negligence per se, and violating other statutes, such as traffic rules, as only prima facie evidence of negligence. Ask your lawyer which category a Jacksonville ordinance falls into.

Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach and Baldwin are separate cities inside Duval County, so check whose code applies. Jacksonville Beach’s own code requires a leash no longer than eight feet off the owner’s property and, from April 1 through September 30, allows dogs on the beach only from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m.

Florida’s bite statute reaches only the owner. In Belcher Yacht v. Stickney the Florida Supreme Court said Section 767.04 is silent as to a custodian or keeper who is not the owner. Everyone else is reached through negligence.

• The owner. Jacksonville’s code defines an owner broadly for city enforcement: anyone possessing, harboring, keeping or having control or custody of an animal, with the parents treated as the legal owner when the person caring for the dog is under 18, and a presumption that the person named on the dog’s registration or microchip is the owner. That definition is for city enforcement, and in Huie v. Wipperfurth (1994) a Florida appeals court refused to apply the state dangerous dog law’s similar definition to the bite statute. License and microchip records are a good place to start in proving who owned the dog. See what determines ownership of a dog.
• A sitter, walker or relative. In Belcher Yacht the court said the security guard handling the dog was not liable under the statute but could still be sued for his own negligence. A sitter, walker or relative who does not own the dog is in the same position: outside the statute, but answerable for their own negligence.
• A landlord. Under Vasques v. Lopez, a landlord can be liable for a tenant’s dog if the landlord knows of the presence of the animal and its vicious propensity and has the ability to control its presence. In Sutherland v. Pell (1999) a Florida appeals court treated what a landlord should have known as a fact question. Prior complaints to management and earlier ACPS calls to the address can help show it.
• A business. A company that keeps a guard dog can be the owner itself, as the marina was in Belcher Yacht.
• The consolidated government. If a city-held dog or a police K-9 was involved, Section 768.28 applies, with its own claim rules and caps. Working police dogs are exempt from both the state dangerous dog law and Jacksonville’s at-large ban.