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Oregon’s main dog bite statute is narrow: under ORS 31.360, a person hurt by a dog can pursue economic damages, meaning medical bills, lost income, and other out of pocket loss, without proving the owner could have foreseen the injury. For pain, scarring, and emotional harm, Oregon still follows the older rule that the owner must have known, or had reason to know, the dog was dangerous.
This page explains both routes, what you must prove, how leash rules and Oregon’s dangerous dog law fit in, who counts as an owner or keeper, the defenses an insurer will raise, Oregon’s comparative fault bar, a child’s deadline, landlord liability, the 180 day notice for claims against a public body, damages after the Oregon Supreme Court struck down the injury cap in 2020, rabies reporting, and insurance. One thing to know first: Oregon’s old $500,000 cap on pain and suffering no longer applies to a personal injury case against a private party.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases. Talk to us for free, and pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
Oregon is often called a one bite state, and that label is only half right. The 2007 Legislature added ORS 31.360, which says that for the purpose of a claim for economic damages arising from an injury caused by a dog, the plaintiff need not prove that the owner could foresee the injury, and the owner may not argue that it could not. Economic damages are defined in ORS 31.705 as objectively verifiable monetary losses: medical and hospital charges, rehabilitation, lost income, impaired earning capacity, substitute household help, and repair or replacement of damaged property.
That statute stops at economic loss. It says in its own words that provocation and any other available defense survive, and that it does not change Oregon’s standard for punitive damages. Everything else, including pain, mental suffering, emotional distress, and the effect of a permanent scar, falls under the common law.
The common law is the one bite rule in its Oregon form. In Westberry v. Blackwell, decided April 18, 1978, the Oregon Supreme Court held that the owner of a dog is strictly liable for injuries the dog causes only if the owner knows or has reason to know of the dog’s dangerous propensities. The same opinion recognized a second claim in negligence for failing to confine or control a dog. In Kathren v. Olenik in 1980, the Oregon Court of Appeals added that the negligence claim also depends on knowledge: the court did not read Westberry as imposing a duty to confine or control a dog absent knowledge or a basis for knowledge that it would behave in a potentially injurious manner.
So an Oregon case has two layers: economic loss, which does not depend on foreseeability, and noneconomic loss, which turns on what the owner knew before the bite.
For the economic damages claim, ORS 31.360 takes one issue off the table: you do not have to prove the owner could foresee that the dog would cause the injury, and the owner’s claim that the attack came out of nowhere is not a defense to that part of the case. You will still need to show, at a minimum, that the defendant owned the dog, that the dog caused your injury, and what the injury cost you in verifiable dollars.
For pain, suffering, and disfigurement, you prove more. Under Westberry and the Restatement rule it adopted, you show that the dog had a dangerous propensity abnormal to dogs generally, that the owner knew or had reason to know of it, and that your injury came from that propensity. Kathren put the knowledge question in plain terms: would what the owner knew have caused a reasonable person to anticipate the kind of behavior that produced the injury? The plaintiff carries that burden, and in Kathren an expert’s opinion that the dog was vicious was not enough, because it said nothing about what the owners themselves knew.
Knowledge does not require a prior serious attack. Westberry quoted the rule that any knowledge of a propensity to bite or attack, whether in anger or play, is sufficient, and found a jury question where the same dog had given the visitor a superficial bite on the way in and her son said later in the visit that it had tried to bite him. A prior bite is not conclusive either way, though. Whether the owner knew is usually for the jury.
So gather two kinds of evidence early. One proves the economic claim: ownership, medical records and bills, and missed work. The other proves knowledge: earlier complaints to animal services, any nuisance or potentially dangerous dog finding, neighbors who saw the dog lunge or snarl, and what the owner said at the scene.
Oregon’s dog control statute leaves leash and at-large rules to counties and cities. ORS 609.060 lets a county prohibit dogs from running at large, by ordinance or by a measure the voters approve, and after notice is published a keeper whose dog runs at large where prohibited commits a Class B violation. Chapter 609 also says it does not limit the power of cities and counties to adopt their own dog control rules, so the real leash rule where you were bitten is usually a city or county code.
Running at large has a statutory meaning. A dog is at large when it is off the premises from which its keeper may lawfully exclude others, or is not in the company of and under the control of its keeper. Dogs being used to hunt under supervision, to work livestock, or riding in a vehicle are excepted.
Do not expect a leash violation to win the case on its own. In Kathren v. Olenik, a 1980 case under a Washington County ordinance, the Court of Appeals refused to treat an at-large violation as negligence per se for a bite, reasoning that injury from dog bites was not within the area of risk the at-large provision was designed to avoid. The court also read that ordinance, which made it unlawful to fail to prevent a dog from running at large, as requiring fault, so the fact that the dog was loose was not enough by itself.
When a keeper is convicted of an at-large or nuisance violation, ORS 609.990 also lets the court order the keeper to pay restitution for physical injury the dog caused as a result of the violation.
ORS 31.360 speaks of the owner of the dog and does not define the word. Oregon’s dog control chapter uses a broader term, keeper, which ORS 609.035 defines as a person who owns, possesses, controls, or otherwise has charge of a dog. Boarding kennels, humane societies and nonprofit shelters, facilities impounding dogs for a city or county, and veterinary facilities are carved out of that definition. Oregon law also declares dogs to be personal property.
The common law claims reach beyond the title holder. Westberry speaks of a possessor of a domestic animal and of one who possesses or harbors it. Kathren shows the practical point: the dog belonged to the son, but the father had been caring for and keeping it for about two months and was sued as well. A relative watching the dog, a roommate, or a household that took the dog in may all be worth naming, along with the owner.
Because the economic damages statute uses only the word owner, who owned the dog and who merely had it can matter, especially when the owner has no insurance but the person who had the dog does. If you are not sure who had the dog, read what determines ownership of a dog, and tell your lawyer everyone who fed, walked, or housed it.
Provocation is the defense Oregon wrote into the dog statute itself. ORS 31.360 says it does not prevent the owner from asserting that the dog was provoked, or from asserting any other defense that may be available. The statute does not define provoked. For background, see our guide to dog bite provocation.
Provocation also runs through the dangerous dog law. A dog is potentially dangerous, or dangerous, only if it acted without provocation, and ORS 609.115, which makes a keeper strictly liable for economic damages after a court has found the dog potentially dangerous, excludes three groups by name:
ORS 31.620 abolishes the doctrine of implied assumption of the risk. In Blair v. Mt. Hood Meadows Development Corp. in 1981, the Oregon Supreme Court read that as ending every use of implied assumption of risk in negligence cases, other than in its express sense, while a plaintiff’s unreasonable choice to face a known risk can still be weighed as fault under the comparative fault statute. So in a negligence claim an owner cannot win just by arguing that you chose to walk past the yard; that argument comes in, if at all, as comparative fault, discussed below. Blair set express assumption of risk aside, so a signed waiver, such as one used by a dog daycare or groomer, raises different questions and should be read by a lawyer.
Oregon uses modified comparative fault. Under ORS 31.600, a claimant’s own negligence does not bar recovery if it was not greater than the combined fault of the persons the statute compares, and any award is reduced in proportion to the claimant’s percentage of fault.
Run the numbers rather than relying on a label. A victim found 50 percent at fault is not more at fault than everyone else combined, so that victim recovers half the damages. A victim found 51 percent at fault recovers nothing. Because your share is compared against the combined fault of the others, a victim at 40 percent still recovers 60 percent where the owner and a careless dog sitter are each found 30 percent responsible.
The jury compares your fault with that of each party you sue, third party defendants liable to you, and anyone you settled with, but not people who are immune or beyond a deadline. If the owner brings a third person into the case, such as a neighbor who left a gate open, or blames someone you settled with, the owner must prove that person’s fault.
What to expect in practice: the insurer will look for any act of yours to build a percentage, such as reaching over a fence, ignoring a warning, or stepping between two dogs. Be careful what you say about how the bite happened until you have spoken with a lawyer.
Kathren v. Olenik, the Court of Appeals case on Oregon’s negligence rule, involved an eight year old girl who suffered severe facial lacerations requiring stitches and plastic surgery. She lost on the knowledge question despite those injuries, which is why a child’s case needs the dog’s history investigated from the start.
Oregon gives a child extra time, but with a cap. ORS 12.160 pauses the two year limitation period while the child is under 18. It then caps the pause: the time to sue may not be extended for more than five years, or for more than one year after the child turns 18, whichever comes first. Worked through, the deadline is the earlier of seven years after the bite (the two year period plus the five year maximum extension) or the child’s nineteenth birthday, though never less than the ordinary two years from the bite. A child bitten at age six would have to sue by age thirteen, and a child bitten at sixteen would have until the nineteenth birthday. Do not treat a child’s case as having until age twenty.
Parents have money at stake too. A parent who pays a child’s medical bills has a claim for those expenses, and ORS 12.160 tolls that claim for the same period as the child’s. Under ORS 31.700, a parent can instead consent to including those medical expenses in the child’s own case, which keeps everything in one action.
Expect the owner to point at the child’s behavior. Oregon’s dog statute preserves provocation as a defense without defining it, and in Kathren the five year old brother had pulled the dog’s tail just before the bite. If an adjuster is blaming your child, read whether a child can provoke a dog, then talk to a lawyer before giving any statement.
The leading Oregon case is Park v. Hoffard, decided by the Oregon Supreme Court on March 25, 1993. A tenant’s Labrador, which Multnomah County had already quarantined after biting a child and marked with a potentially dangerous dog sign on the property, attacked a young girl playing in the parking lot next door. The landlord, who lived in another city, argued that a landlord owes nothing to someone bitten off the rental property.
The court disagreed and adopted a test from the Restatement of Torts. A landlord can be liable for harm off the rental property caused by a tenant’s dog only if two things are true. First, the landlord consented to the tenant keeping the dog, or knew about it, at the time of the lease, at a renewal, or at any time during a tenancy the landlord could end on its own. Second, the landlord knew or had reason to know that keeping that dog would unavoidably involve an unreasonable risk of harm to people off the property.
The reasoning matters for a month to month tenancy. The court said a landlord’s control over a tenant’s activities comes mainly from deciding whether to rent, whether to renew, and whether to end a tenancy. A landlord who knows about a biting dog and keeps renewing month after month can face a jury. In Park the landlord knew about the posted sign and the earlier bite, and the case went back for trial.
Plainly: an Oregon landlord is not liable just because a tenant owns a dog. The question is knowledge plus the power to act. Park involved a bite off the property, and its test was written for that situation; a bite in a common area or a yard the landlord controls is a different question that a lawyer should look at.
Two years, measured from the bite. ORS 12.110 gives two years for an action for any injury to the person not arising on contract, which covers both the economic damages claim and the common law claims. A child’s time is extended under ORS 12.160, with the caps described in the section above.
The public body notice is the deadline that catches people. A formal notice states that a claim will be made, describes the time, place, and circumstances, and gives the claimant’s name and mailing address, and it goes to the public body’s principal office, a governing body member, or its designated attorney. Actual notice to a claims handler, a lawsuit filed within the notice period, or a payment also counts, but the plaintiff must prove notice. At most 90 days of incapacity or minority is added to the 180, and the two year suit deadline applies notwithstanding the rest of the limitation chapter, so do not count on a child’s tolling here.
Treat all of these as outer limits. Our guide to the dog bite statute of limitations explains how the clocks interact.
Oregon’s dog control law sorts bite injuries in two tiers. A bite that causes physical injury less severe than a serious physical injury can make a dog potentially dangerous. A bite that causes serious physical injury, a term Oregon borrows from its criminal code, can make a dog dangerous.
Document both Oregon categories: bills and missed shifts for the economic claim, and photographs of healing wounds and a journal of sleep and fear for the noneconomic one.
Oregon verdicts list economic damages (medical care, rehabilitation, lost income and earning capacity, help at home, property repair) separately from noneconomic damages (pain, mental suffering, emotional distress, humiliation, interference with normal activities). Read dog bite compensation for how these are proved.
The old cap is gone for injury cases against private parties. Former ORS 31.710(1) limited noneconomic damages to $500,000. On July 9, 2020, in Busch v. McInnis Waste Systems, the Oregon Supreme Court held that applying that cap as a limit on the noneconomic damages a court can award violates the remedy clause of the Oregon Constitution. In 2021 the Legislature rewrote ORS 31.710 so that its $500,000 noneconomic limit now applies only to wrongful death actions. A dog bite injury case against a private owner has no statutory cap on pain and suffering.
Claims against a public body are different. The Oregon Tort Claims Act caps total liability, adjusted each July. For causes of action arising between July 1, 2026 and June 30, 2027, the limits are $902,700 per claimant and $1,805,300 for all claimants against a local public body, and $2,708,100 and $5,416,200 against the State, according to the Oregon Judicial Department.
Punitive damages are possible but hard. ORS 31.730 requires clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with malice or showed a reckless and outrageous indifference to a highly unreasonable risk of harm, with conscious indifference to others’ safety. A complaint cannot ask for them at the start; a party must move to amend. And under ORS 31.735 the plaintiff receives only 30 percent of a punitive award, with 60 percent going to the state’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Account and 10 percent to court facilities.
Oregon’s statewide dog control law in chapter 609 works in two tiers. A potentially dangerous dog is one that, without provocation, menaces a person while off its keeper’s premises, injures a person less severely than a serious physical injury, or, off the premises, injures or kills livestock or a domestic animal. Menacing means lunging, growling, snarling, or other behavior that would make a reasonable person fear for their safety. Keeping a potentially dangerous dog is a public nuisance and a violation, and anyone may complain about one to the county or city, orally or in writing.
A dangerous dog is one that, without provocation and aggressively, inflicts serious physical injury on or kills a person; repeats potentially dangerous behavior after a prior nuisance finding against its keeper; or is used as a weapon in a crime. A keeper who with criminal negligence fails to prevent such an act commits the crime of maintaining a dangerous dog, a Class A misdemeanor, or a Class C felony if the dog kills a person. On conviction the court must order the dog humanely killed.
Here is why a prior finding matters to a bite victim. Under ORS 609.115, once a court has determined under ORS 609.990 that a dog is potentially dangerous, its keeper is strictly liable for economic damages from any later injury the dog causes, unless the injured person provoked the dog, assaulted the keeper, or trespassed. A prior finding can also bear on what the keeper knew about the dog, which is the question that decides pain and suffering damages.
A county board may also order a dog that bit a person killed after weighing listed factors, and the keeper has ten days to seek review. Chapter 609 names no breeds and imposes no insurance requirement on dangerous dog keepers, but cities and counties may adopt their own dog control rules. The most recent change, Senate Bill 733, added livestock to the potentially dangerous dog definition effective January 1, 2026. See also how many times a dog can bite before being put down.
Oregon puts the duty to report on everyone. Under ORS 433.345, if a dog bites a person and the bite breaks the skin, the facts must be immediately reported to the local health officer by any person having direct knowledge. The Oregon Health Authority’s investigative guidelines say anyone who knows of a person bitten by a potentially rabid animal must report it to the local health department within one working day. Here is what happens after a dog bite is reported.
After a report, the dog is held for observation. OAR 333-019-0024 requires any dog that has bitten a person to be held until the tenth day after the bite, under a licensed veterinarian or someone the local public health administrator designates, in an enclosure or with restraints that keep it from contact with people and other animals. The health department may allow a responsible owner to confine a low risk dog at home. The rule also forbids anyone from euthanizing a dog that bit a person without the local public health administrator’s authorization, because holding the dog for observation is preferred.
What the ten days mean: according to the Oregon Health Authority’s bite and rabies investigative guidelines, a dog that is alive after ten days was not rabid when it bit. The guidelines also note that in Oregon, bats are the only reservoir species for rabies. Whether you need rabies shots is a decision for your doctor and the health department.
Oregon law requires rabies vaccination for dogs six months or older or with permanent canine teeth, unless a rule exempts them. Ask the owner for the certificate, and if no one can produce one, read about being bitten by an unvaccinated dog.
This page does not use an Oregon average settlement figure. The best available number is national insurance claim data. For 2025, research by the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm put the average cost per dog-related injury claim paid by insurers at $65,450 nationally. That figure covers every kind of claim, small and large, across the country. It is not an Oregon figure and it is not a prediction for any one case.
What moves the value of an Oregon claim:
For more on how amounts are reached, see our dog bite settlement amounts guide, and try the dog bite settlement calculator for a rough range.
The Insurance Information Institute says standard homeowners and renters policies typically cover dog bite liability up to the policy’s liability limits, usually $100,000 to $300,000. Anything above the limit is the owner’s personal responsibility, which is why a serious injury may also call for looking at umbrella policies and other people who had the dog.
Breed is where Oregon consumers get confused. The Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, the state insurance regulator, answers yes to the question whether an insurer can deny coverage based on the type of dog, explaining that some insurers choose not to cover owners of breeds with a history suggesting more bite claims. But the regulator also says that if homeowners coverage is in force and the policy does not have a specific exclusion, the company cannot deny coverage based on dog breed. So the question is what the policy actually says, not what kind of dog it was.
Oregon’s dog control chapter does not require the keeper of a dangerous dog to carry liability insurance, so coverage cannot be assumed from a prior finding. Renters policies count too, and a landlord’s own policy may matter where the Park v. Hoffard test is met. Do not take the owner’s word that there is no insurance: ask for the carrier’s name and policy number, and let a lawyer request the declarations page.
For the full sequence, read our guide on how to file a dog bite claim.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases, and Oregon is a state where the split between economic and noneconomic damages decides how much a family recovers. ORS 31.360 takes foreseeability out of the claim for medical bills and lost wages, but a serious scar or lasting fear is compensated only if we can prove what the owner knew. That proof lives in animal services files, county health department records, prior complaints, and the memories of neighbors, and it has to be gathered before it disappears.
We find everyone who owned, kept, or harbored the dog, check for a prior finding that triggers ORS 609.115, ask whether a landlord knew and could have acted, identify every policy, and give notice on time if a public body is involved. We deal with the insurer so you do not have to.
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 and the phone calls.
We take dog bite cases across Oregon, including Portland, Salem, Eugene, Gresham, Hillsboro, and Bend. If you or your child was bitten, contact us for a free consultation, and we will tell you honestly whether there is a claim worth bringing.
Partly. For medical bills, lost income, and other economic losses, ORS 31.360 removes the need to prove the owner could foresee the bite, and the owner cannot defend those losses by saying the bite was unforeseeable. For pain, suffering, and scarring, Oregon follows the common law rule from Westberry v. Blackwell, which requires proof that the owner knew or had reason to know the dog was dangerous.
Not in an injury case against a private owner. The Oregon Supreme Court held in 2020, in Busch v. McInnis Waste Systems, that applying the old $500,000 noneconomic damages cap violated the state constitution, and in 2021 the Legislature limited that cap to wrongful death cases. Separate limits still apply when the defendant is a city, county, school district, or the State under the Oregon Tort Claims Act.
Less time than many parents expect. Oregon pauses the two year deadline while a child is under 18, but ORS 12.160 caps the extension at five years, or one year after the eighteenth birthday, whichever comes first. A young child's claim can expire before the teen years. If a public body is involved, written notice is due within 180 days, and a child's age adds at most 90 days to that.
Sometimes. Under Park v. Hoffard, a landlord can be liable for a tenant's dog attacking someone off the property if the landlord knew about the dog when leasing or renewing, or during a tenancy it could end, and knew or had reason to know the dog posed an unreasonable risk. A landlord who simply allowed a pet, with no reason to think it was dangerous, is generally not responsible.
Yes, as long as your share of fault is not greater than the combined fault of the others. ORS 31.600 reduces your award by your percentage, so a victim found 30 percent at fault recovers 70 percent, and one found exactly 50 percent recovers half. ORS 31.620 has also abolished the doctrine of implied assumption of risk in Oregon.
Yes, if the bite broke the skin. ORS 433.345 requires anyone with direct knowledge to report it immediately to the local health officer. The dog must then be held for observation until the tenth day after the bite, and the report becomes an official record of the bite.
A great deal. If a court had already determined the dog was potentially dangerous, ORS 609.115 makes its keeper strictly liable for the economic damages of a later injury, unless you provoked the dog, assaulted the keeper, or trespassed. That earlier finding can also bear on what the keeper knew about the dog, which matters for a claim for pain and suffering.
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