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A serious dog attack in Maryland can mean emergency surgery, permanent scarring, lost wages, and lasting trauma. Maryland’s dog bite laws are unusually distinctive: the state pairs a strict-liability statute with a pure contributory negligence rule that can wipe out your entire claim if the insurance company pins even 1% of the blame on you.
That combination makes early, aggressive representation critical. At Dog Bite Laws, we hold negligent owners and their insurers accountable so Maryland victims recover the full compensation the law allows — medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering.
Economic damages are the direct, measurable financial losses caused by the attack. These include emergency room bills, hospitalization costs, surgery fees (including reconstructive or plastic surgery for scarring), follow-up medical appointments, prescribed medications, wound care, and physical therapy or rehabilitation. If injuries require ongoing treatment, future medical expenses are also recoverable.
Lost wages cover income you missed during recovery. If the injuries affect your ability to work long-term, for example, nerve damage to your hands, or PTSD that prevents you returning to your previous role, loss of future earning capacity can also be claimed. These figures are typically supported by employer records, tax returns, and expert testimony.
Non-economic damages cover the human cost of the attack. Pain and suffering accounts for the physical discomfort experienced during and after the injury. Emotional distress covers anxiety, depression, nightmares, and the lasting fear of dogs that many victims develop, particularly children. PTSD is common after dog attacks and has real, documentable medical value in a claim.
Permanent scarring or disfigurement carries significant weight, especially when it is visible on the face, neck, or hands. Loss of enjoyment covers activities the victim can no longer participate in due to physical or psychological limitations. Loss of consortium may be claimed by a spouse or family member when the attack meaningfully disrupts the victim’s relationships and family life.
If the victim is a minor, parents or legal guardians can file on their behalf for both economic and non-economic damages. Claims involving children often reach higher values due to the long-term duration of disfigurement and the psychological impact that can follow a child into adulthood.
With dog bite cases, punitive damages do not apply. They are reserved for situations where the dog owner’s conduct was especially reckless or malicious. For example, knowingly keeping a dog with a documented history of attacks without any precautions, or allowing an aggressive dog to roam free in a populated area after prior warnings. When punitive damages are available, they can significantly increase total recovery above compensatory amounts.
Several factors shape the final settlement value. The severity of the injury such as a deep facial wound requiring multiple surgeries, can settle for far more than a bite that heals cleanly. The visibility of scarring, the victim’s age, available insurance coverage, quality of medical documentation, and strength of the liability argument all play a role.
Our team has recovered over $1M in individual dog bite settlements. See real case results including a $505,000 settlement for a facial bite and a $295,000 recovery for a three-year-old victim. For a quick estimate of your own case value, use our dog bite settlement calculator.
The steps you take in the first 24 to 48 hours after a dog bite directly affect your ability to recover full compensation. Evidence disappears fast and early mistakes can be used against you.
Contact a Maryland dog bite lawyer before accepting any settlement offer. Early offers typically undervalue long-term medical costs and non-economic damages. Once you accept, you generally cannot reopen the claim.
Maryland gives dog bite victims three years from the date of the attack to file a personal injury lawsuit (Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101). For children injured by a dog, the deadline is generally extended, but you should never assume extra time applies to your case.
Three years can pass quickly while you focus on recovery. Medical records must be gathered, insurance coverage identified, responsible parties confirmed, and — given Maryland’s contributory negligence rule — fault evidence preserved before it disappears. Contacting an attorney early protects both your health and your claim.
Dog bite settlements are paid through the dog owner’s homeowners or renters insurance policy. Standard homeowners policies typically include personal liability coverage between $100,000 and $300,000, and that coverage applies to dog bite incidents even when the attack happens away from the insured property. If the bite occurred at a rental property, the landlord’s policy may also apply.
Insurance companies will work to minimize what they pay. They may claim the bite was provoked, challenge the severity of injuries, or dispute liability. Having a dog bite lawyer handle all communication with the insurer protects your claim from being undervalued before you fully understand the scope of your damages.
Maryland’s dog bite statute, Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 3-1901, makes a dog’s owner strictly liable for injury, death, or property loss caused by the dog while it is running at large. In those cases, the victim does not have to prove the owner was negligent or knew the dog was dangerous.
For attacks that do not involve a dog running at large, the statute still helps victims: proof that the dog caused the injury creates a rebuttable presumption that the owner knew or should have known the dog had vicious or dangerous propensities. That presumption shifts the burden to the owner and makes Maryland dog bite claims substantially easier to prove than they once were.
Before § 3-1901, Maryland followed a strict ‘one bite’ rule that often forced victims to prove the owner already knew the dog was dangerous. The statute flipped that burden: once a victim shows the dog caused the injury, the law presumes the owner knew or should have known of the dog’s dangerous propensities.
The owner can try to rebut that presumption with evidence of the dog’s prior good behavior, but the practical effect is that victims now start from a much stronger position. Evidence of prior complaints, bite history, or aggressive behavior makes the presumption even harder for an owner to overcome and strengthens your claim.
For a full breakdown of the laws, liability rules, and reporting requirements, see our dedicated Maryland dog bite laws guide.
The statute expressly preserves common-law claims, so a Maryland victim can also pursue a traditional negligence theory. Negligence requires proving that the owner owed a duty to control the dog, breached that duty, and that the breach proximately caused the injuries.
A violation of a local leash law or animal-control ordinance can also support a claim of negligence per se, where the owner’s breaking of a safety law is treated as evidence of negligence itself. We investigate every available theory to maximize your recovery.
The dog’s owner is the primary defendant in most Maryland cases, but responsibility can extend further. A keeper or harborer who cared for the dog, a landlord who knew a dangerous dog lived on the property and did nothing, or a parent of a minor owner may all share liability.
Identifying every responsible party matters because it can open additional insurance coverage — often the difference between a policy that fully covers your injuries and one that falls short.
Provocation is the defense insurers raise most often, claiming the victim triggered the attack. In Maryland, ordinary reactions — flinching, walking past, or protecting a child — are not provocation, and we push back hard on inflated versions of events.
The defense that makes Maryland especially dangerous for victims is pure contributory negligence. Maryland is one of only a handful of jurisdictions where being found even 1% at fault for the attack bars you from recovering anything. Insurers know this and will aggressively try to shift blame onto the victim. Countering that strategy — with witness statements, medical evidence, and a clear account of what happened — is the single most important part of a Maryland dog bite case, and exactly where experienced representation pays off.
Dog attacks are a serious and rising cost nationwide: U.S. insurers paid about $1.86 billion across 28,450 dog-related injury claims, an average of roughly $65,450 per claim, and more than 5,200 postal workers were attacked by dogs in 2025. Maryland’s Department of Health documents close to 8,000 reported dog bites statewide each year, and state analysts estimate roughly 5,000 emergency-room visits and more than 200 hospitalizations annually (Maryland Department of Legislative Services / Maryland Department of Health).
Maryland’s law changed dramatically after the Court of Appeals’ 2012 Tracey v. Solesky decision, which briefly imposed harsh breed-specific rules — prompting the legislature to pass § 3-1901 in 2014 and create today’s breed-neutral strict-liability framework.
Maryland also empowers local governments to declare a dog dangerous or potentially dangerous and impose containment, muzzling, and insurance requirements. A prior dangerous-dog designation can be powerful evidence of the owner’s knowledge in your civil claim.
Dog Bite Laws is led by Michael Agruss, Managing Partner and personal injury attorney with a track record of results in dog bite cases. He is supported by Michael Bertucci, Taylor Kosla Unterberg, and Zara Saiyed, a team that handles dog bite cases across Maryland and multiple other states.
The firm has recovered millions of dollars for dog bite victims. These results reflect the firm’s approach: identify every liable party, document every dollar of damages, and push for a full settlement before resorting to trial.
The team is available 24/7 and takes every case on a contingency basis. There are no upfront legal fees and no costs unless we win.
Read more client testimonials or contact us directly for a free, confidential case review.
Maryland’s statute of limitations for personal injury is three years from the date of the bite under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101. Claims involving children may have more time, but missing the deadline generally ends your right to recover. See our full Maryland dog bite laws guide for detail on how deadlines are calculated.
No. Under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 3-1901, an owner is strictly liable when the dog was running at large, and in other cases the fact that the dog caused your injury creates a rebuttable presumption that the owner knew the dog was dangerous. You do not have to prove a prior bite, though evidence of past aggression makes the owner’s presumption much harder to overcome.
This is where Maryland law is especially harsh. Maryland follows pure contributory negligence, meaning if you are found even 1% responsible for the attack, you can be barred from recovering anything at all. Insurers exploit this rule constantly, which is why having a lawyer build and protect your version of events is so important in Maryland.
Maryland enacted Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 3-1901 in 2014 to replace the confusion left by the Tracey v. Solesky case. The statute created breed-neutral strict liability for dogs running at large and a rebuttable presumption of owner knowledge in other cases — making it significantly easier for victims to recover than under the old ‘one bite’ rule.
Nothing up front. We handle Maryland dog bite cases on contingency — you pay no fee unless we recover money for you. Your case review is free, and you can reach us by call, text, email, or chat 24/7.
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