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Iowa holds a dog’s owner strictly liable. Under Iowa Code section 351.28, the owner of a dog is liable for all damages done by the dog when it is attacking or attempting to bite a person, and the only way out written into the statute is proof that the injured person was doing an unlawful act that directly contributed to the injury. Nobody has to show the dog bit before or that the owner knew it was dangerous. Iowa also keeps an ordinary negligence claim, which matters when the person responsible for the dog is not its legal owner.
This page covers both claims, who counts as the owner, the defenses an insurer will raise, comparative fault, children, landlords, deadlines, damages, local dangerous dog rules, reporting and rabies, and insurance. One change up front: since July 1, 2026, a child bitten in Iowa has five years after turning 18 to file, not one.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases. Talk to us for free, and pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
Iowa is a strict liability state. The current wording of Iowa Code 351.28 says the owner of a dog “shall be liable to an injured party for all damages done by the dog, when the dog is caught in the action of worrying, maiming, or killing a domestic animal, or the dog is attacking or attempting to bite a person, except when the party damaged is doing an unlawful act, directly contributing to the injury.” The legislature last changed that section in 1983.
Strict liability means the owner pays even if the owner did nothing wrong. In Collins v. Kenealy, decided in 1992, the Iowa Supreme Court put it this way: its cases have held legal dog owners absolutely liable, regardless of whether the owner was negligent or knew of the dog’s vicious propensity. So Iowa does not follow the one bite rule, and the first bite counts.
The statute has limits worth knowing. It covers a dog that is attacking or attempting to bite, so a dog that knocks you down while lunging at you is covered, but a friendly dog that wanders into the road is not. In Steinkuehler v. Brotherson, a 1989 case about a motorcyclist who hit a loose dog, the Iowa Supreme Court said the 1983 amendment narrowed only the strict liability statute, not negligence claims, and that a negligence claim against an owner does not require proof the owner knew of a vicious propensity. There is also a narrow rabies exception: the statute does not apply to damage done by a dog with hydrophobia unless the owner had reasonable grounds to know and could have prevented the injury.
The negligence claim is the second route, for people the statute does not cover, such as a caretaker or a landlord, and for injuries caused by a dog that was not attacking.
Under the statute, the proof is short. Read straight from section 351.28, you need four things:
You do not have to prove the dog was vicious, that it had bitten before, or that the owner was careless. The statute’s one defense is an unlawful act by you that directly contributed to the injury.
A negligence claim asks more. The Iowa Court of Appeals lists the elements as a duty to conform to a standard of conduct to protect others, a failure to meet it, proximate cause, and damages. In a dog case that usually means showing the person in charge of the dog did something a careful person would not do, such as unhooking a dog known to be aggressive or leaving a gate open near a school bus stop.
Start gathering evidence on day one: who owns the dog, how the attack happened, medical records, and wound photographs. Then collect what people knew about the dog, such as earlier complaints and bite reports, which matters for negligence against non-owners and for punitive damages.
Iowa has no general statewide leash law. Chapter 351 leaves that to cities and counties, and section 351.41 says the chapter does not limit the power of any city or county to prohibit dogs from running at large or to add further restrictions on dogs.
State law does reach a loose dog in two narrower ways. A dog running at large without a valid rabies tag, and without a vaccination certificate being shown, must be picked up and impounded by a local board of health or law enforcement official under section 351.37. And when a local board of health declares a rabies quarantine for an area, section 351.40 requires anyone with a dog there to keep it securely enclosed or on a leash for as long as the quarantine lasts.
So in most Iowa cases the leash rule that matters is a city or county ordinance. The owner is liable without proof of carelessness, so a leash violation is not what wins the statutory claim. Where it comes up is the negligence claim, for example against a dog walker who let the dog loose, and there it has to be proved properly.
In Welcher, a negligence case against a dog’s caretaker, the Iowa Court of Appeals upheld the refusal of a jury instruction on Waterloo’s leash law, partly because the ordinance itself had never been made part of the record.
In Iowa the statute reaches only the owner, and the word has had a narrow meaning since 1994. Until then, section 351.2 defined an owner to include anyone who keeps or harbors a dog. The legislature repealed that section along with the old licensing provisions in 1994, and in Fouts v. Mason, decided in 1999, the Iowa Supreme Court held that the word owner in section 351.28 now means legal owner.
Where nobody can show legal title, you can prove ownership by showing the dog was in the defendant’s possession and the defendant was harboring it on the defendant’s premises as owners usually do. Where there is evidence of legal ownership, that evidence controls.
That leaves many people outside the statute. In Fouts, the landlord had fed, petted, and walked the tenant’s dog, and still was not the owner as a matter of law. In Welcher, the Iowa Court of Appeals found no evidence to treat a woman who, with the owner’s permission, fed and watered another person’s dog as its owner. Those people can still be sued in negligence: the Iowa Supreme Court has said that at common law, responsibility for a dog comes from possession and the duty to care for the animal, not only from ownership. If you are unsure who owns the dog, read what determines ownership of a dog.
People bitten while caring for someone else’s dog are not shut out. In Collins v. Kenealy a groomer was bitten by a customer’s dog that escaped her shop, and the Iowa Supreme Court held that a temporary custodian is not an owner and could sue the dog’s legal owners. A 2026 bill to spell out how dog ownership is proved, House File 2190, passed the Iowa House but did not become law.
The statute gives the owner one defense: the person hurt was doing an unlawful act that directly contributed to the injury. Both halves matter. The act has to be against the law, and it has to have directly contributed to the injury.
If an adjuster says you were trespassing, ask exactly what law they think you broke and how it directly contributed to the injury, since section 351.28 requires both.
Iowa’s general fault rule is modified comparative fault. Section 668.3 says your own fault does not bar recovery unless you bear a greater percentage of fault than the combined percentage of the defendants, third-party defendants, and people released from the case, and that any award is reduced in proportion to your share.
In numbers: at 50 percent you are not greater than everyone else combined, so you recover half. At 51 percent you recover nothing. Because the comparison is to the defendants together, a victim at 40 percent still recovers 60 percent where two defendants are 30 percent each. Under section 668.3(1)(b), a parent’s claim for loss of a child’s companionship is reduced by the child’s share of fault.
Under section 668.4, a defendant found less than 50 percent at fault pays only its own share, and one at 50 percent or more can be made to pay all of the economic damages but not the noneconomic award. That matters when an owner and a landlord or dog walker are both sued.
Here is the honest complication. The Iowa Supreme Court said in Collins that contributory negligence is not a defense to the strict liability statute, but that statement drew on cases decided before the comparative fault chapter took effect in 1984, and Collins did not discuss chapter 668. Chapter 668 defines fault to include conduct that subjects someone to strict tort liability and an unreasonable failure to avoid an injury. Expect the insurer to argue that a victim’s carelessness reduces a section 351.28 award, and your lawyer to answer with Collins and the statute’s single defense. On a negligence claim against a non-owner, chapter 668 plainly applies.
Children feature in the most serious Iowa cases. In Fouts, a two-and-a-half-year-old in a shared backyard had part of her cheek bitten off and was left with permanent facial disfigurement.
Iowa changed the deadline for children in 2026, and this is the most important update on this page. House File 1036, signed May 15, 2026 and in force July 1, 2026, amended section 614.8(2) so that a minor has five years after reaching majority to file, replacing the one year the statute gave before. Iowa sets majority at 18, so a child bitten today generally has until age 23. The same extension applies to claims against a city, county, or school district under chapter 670 and to claims against the state under chapter 669. If your child was bitten before July 2026, ask a lawyer how the change applies to your dates rather than assuming either rule.
A parent has a separate claim. Under section 613.15A, parents may recover the expense and the actual loss of services, companionship, and society resulting from injury to a minor child. Do not assume the parent’s claim gets the child’s longer clock. Treat the two years from the bite as the safe deadline for anything a parent paid.
The statute’s only defense requires an unlawful act by the person hurt. A parent’s supervision can also come up: in Allison v. Page, a landlord case, the jury assigned 75 percent of the fault to the child’s mother before the Iowa Supreme Court set the verdict aside on other grounds. For more, read whether a child can provoke a dog.
A landlord is not the owner of a tenant’s dog under section 351.28, so any claim against a landlord is a negligence or premises claim, and Iowa keeps it narrow.
The starting point is Allison v. Page, decided in 1996. A tenant’s dog that ran free in a fenced yard had already injured a young girl, and the landlords knew it. Two years later the same dog bit another child. The Iowa Supreme Court held the landlords owed no duty because they did not own or harbor the dog, had no right to control it, and the dog came onto the property after it was leased.
Fouts v. Mason in 1999 opened one door. The Iowa Supreme Court held that a landlord has a duty to keep common areas reasonably safe by excluding a dog known to have vicious propensities, limited to two conditions:
In Fouts the landlord had joined the two backyards with one fence and knew the dog had bitten two children, which was enough to go to a jury. The court added that, unless there is evidence to the contrary, the law presumes a landlord keeps control of areas used in common by different occupants, inside or outside the building, including a shared yard.
Outside common areas, the Iowa Court of Appeals has turned landlord claims away. In Patterson v. Rank in 2010, a tenant’s dog bit a visitor on the front walk of a single-family rental, and the court found no duty, saying extending liability to landlords is for the legislature. Dunkins v. RTL Enterprises in 2015, where a tenant’s dog bit a visitor and the landlord did not know of an earlier bite, reached the same result. So the questions in an Iowa landlord case are where the bite happened, who controlled that space, and what the landlord knew before.
For an adult it is two years. Section 614.1(2) gives two years for actions founded on injuries to the person, which covers both the statutory and the negligence claim. The Iowa Supreme Court has explained that a claim accrues when the injury occurs, or under the discovery rule when the person knows of the injury and its cause, which for a dog bite is normally the day of the bite.
Those are outside limits. The deadlines that decide cases are shorter: the 10 day confinement, the animal control or police report, and wounds that need to be photographed before they close. For background, read our guide to the dog bite statute of limitations.
Iowa’s statute covers more than tooth marks. Because it reaches a dog that is attacking or attempting to bite, injuries from being knocked to the ground or falling while trying to escape an attack can be part of the claim, as long as the attack caused them.
If the dog also attacked your pet, the vet bills can be part of the claim, because section 351.28 also covers a dog caught worrying, maiming, or killing a domestic animal.
An Iowa dog bite victim can recover medical care past and future, lost wages and earning capacity, pain and suffering, scarring and disfigurement, and emotional distress. Parents may recover a child’s medical expenses and the loss of the child’s services, companionship, and society.
Section 351.28 makes the owner liable for all damages done by the dog, and neither it nor Iowa’s comparative fault chapter caps a dog bite award. The Iowa Code’s caps on noneconomic damages are written for claims against health care providers (section 147.136A) and for commercial motor vehicle cases (section 668.15A, added in 2023), not for a dog owner.
Two Iowa rules affect the medical side. Under section 668.14A, added in 2020, recoverable medical expenses cannot exceed what was actually paid to your providers plus what is actually needed to satisfy bills still owed, so the billed amount is not the measure. And in actions under the comparative fault chapter, section 668.14 allows evidence that insurance paid some of the bills, but not payments from a state or federal program or from your own or your family’s assets.
Punitive damages carry a high bar. Section 668A.1 requires proof, by a preponderance of clear, convincing, and satisfactory evidence, that the defendant’s conduct showed willful and wanton disregard for the rights or safety of another. Iowa then splits the award: unless the conduct was directed specifically at you, you may receive no more than 25 percent, and the rest goes to a state civil reparations trust fund. Punitive damages are not available against a city or county under section 670.4 or against the state under section 669.4. For a broader look at what drives a recovery, read our guide to dog bite compensation.
Iowa has no statewide dangerous dog statute. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services says so in its model dangerous dog ordinance for communities, last updated in 2016: there is no statewide law or regulation governing the handling of dangerous dogs in Iowa, and each community should take its own approach. Chapter 351 contains rabies, impoundment, and liability rules but nothing that designates a dog as dangerous or vicious.
So dangerous dog rules in Iowa are local, preserved by section 351.41. A city or county that regulates dangerous dogs writes its own definitions, decides who can declare a dog dangerous or vicious, and sets the hearing process and consequences. Check the code of the city where the owner lives, or the county code in an unincorporated area.
What a declaration adds to your claim is proof. The statute does not need it, since the owner is liable without any history. But a prior declaration, bite report, or animal control warning shows people knew the dog was dangerous, which matters for negligence against a non-owner, for a landlord claim under Fouts, and for punitive damages. Ask animal control for the dog’s full file. If you want to know what happens to the dog itself, see how many times a dog can bite before being put down.
Breed rules, where they exist, are local too. In 2023 the Iowa House passed House File 651, which as introduced would have stopped cities and counties from regulating dogs by breed, but it never passed the Senate. Section 351.28 itself says nothing about breed; it applies to the owner of any dog.
Iowa puts the duty to report broadly. Section 351.38 says the owner of a dog that has bitten or attacked a person, and any person having knowledge of the bite or attack, must report it to a local health or law enforcement official. That includes the person bitten and a parent. Physicians and veterinarians must report to the local board of health any animal known or suspected to have rabies. The report creates the official, dated record a claim is built on. Here is what happens after a dog bite is reported.
Once a local board of health learns that an animal has bitten a person, section 351.39 requires it to order the owner to confine the animal as the board directs. If the owner does not, the animal is impounded and may be humanely destroyed after ten days. The rule does not apply to a police service dog acting in its duties.
The Iowa Rabies Resource Manual, updated July 2026 by Iowa HHS, the state agriculture and natural resources departments, and the Iowa Veterinary Medical Association, says a dog that has bitten a person should be confined and observed for 10 days regardless of its vaccination status, at home or elsewhere as the local authority decides. A dog still healthy after 10 days did not have rabies when it bit. Iowa HHS tells doctors to consider post-exposure shots if the dog cannot be found within three days. The Iowa HHS rabies page lists the local authorities.
Iowa does require rabies vaccination. Section 351.33 makes it unlawful to keep an unvaccinated dog six months or older, except dogs kept in kennels and not allowed to run at large. If the owner cannot show a current certificate, read about being bitten by an unvaccinated dog. Iowa’s last human rabies case was in 2002, from a bat.
This page does not give an Iowa average settlement figure, and we will not invent one. Iowa does not appear in the 2025 list of the ten states with the most homeowners insurance dog bite claims. The figure that does exist is national: the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm put the average dog-related injury claim in 2025 at $65,450, across 28,450 claims, in their 2025 dog bite claim report. That is a nationwide average across minor and severe claims, not an Iowa number or a prediction for your case.
What moves the value of an Iowa claim:
For more on how these factors combine, see our page on dog bite settlement amounts, or try the dog bite settlement calculator for a rough sense of ranges.
Dog bite claims are commonly paid through the dog owner’s homeowners or renters insurance; the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm counted 28,450 such claims nationwide in 2025. The Iowa Insurance Division, the state regulator, tells consumers that some homeowners or renters policies may provide liability coverage if a pet bites someone. Its homeowners guide explains that liability coverage protects the policyholder if someone is injured on the property, and that medical payments coverage pays guests’ medical expenses regardless of fault. The Insurance Information Institute says these policies typically cover dog bite liability up to limits of $100,000 to $300,000, and that anything above the limit falls on the owner.
Three practical points for Iowa victims:
Be careful with the adjuster’s first call. Keep your account short and factual until you have talked to a lawyer.
For the whole process from start to finish, read our guide on how to file a dog bite claim.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases, and in Iowa the work is in the details the statute leaves open. The owner is strictly liable, but only the legal owner, so we work out who holds title and who else had charge of the dog. We find out whether a landlord controlled the area where the bite happened and what the landlord knew. We get the report, the confinement order, and the animal control file, and we build the medical record that shows the full cost of the injury.
When an adjuster calls your conduct unlawful or argues your share of fault, we answer with the statute and the Iowa Supreme Court’s decisions. We work on a contingency fee, so there is nothing to pay to start 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 Iowa, including Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Sioux City, Iowa City, and Waterloo. 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. Iowa Code 351.28 makes the dog's legal owner liable for all damages when the dog attacks or tries to bite a person, without any proof of an earlier bite or of carelessness. The Iowa Supreme Court has described owners as absolutely liable under it. The owner's only statutory defense is that the victim was doing an unlawful act that directly contributed to the injury.
Since July 1, 2026, a minor has five years after turning 18 to bring the claim, which generally means until age 23. Before that date the extension was one year after turning 18. A parent's own claim for medical bills and lost companionship may run on a shorter clock, so parents should act within two years of the bite to be safe.
Only in limited situations. A landlord is not the owner under the dog bite statute. Under Fouts v. Mason, a landlord can be liable in negligence if the bite happened in a common area the landlord controls and the landlord knew or should have known the dog was vicious. The Iowa Court of Appeals has rejected claims against landlords where a tenant's dog bit a visitor at the tenant's rented house, including a bite on the front walk of a single-family rental.
Not by itself. Provocation is not written into Iowa's statute. The statute's only defense is that you were doing something unlawful, such as a criminal trespass, that directly contributed to the injury. The Iowa Supreme Court has also said that ordinary carelessness and assumption of risk are not defenses to the statute, though insurers may still argue fault.
Possibly. In Collins v. Kenealy, the Iowa Supreme Court held that a groomer who was temporarily caring for a dog was not its owner and could bring a strict liability claim against the legal owners. The statute's only exception is an unlawful act by the injured person, and having custody of the dog is not one. Tell your lawyer early exactly what your arrangement with the owner was.
No. Section 351.28 makes the owner liable for all damages done by the dog and sets no cap, and Iowa's noneconomic damages caps are written for claims against health care providers and commercial motor vehicle cases, not dog owners. Medical damages are measured by the amounts actually paid or still owed, and punitive damages require willful and wanton conduct and are split with a state fund unless the conduct targeted you.
Yes. Iowa Code 351.38 requires the dog's owner and anyone who knows of a bite or attack to report it to a local health or law enforcement official. The report leads the local board of health to order the dog confined, which Iowa HHS says should last 10 days. A report also creates an official, dated record of the attack for your claim.
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