Austin Dog Bite Lawyer
Austin Dog Bite Lawyer
On This Page
- Austin and Travis County Dog Bite Statistics
- Texas Dog Bite Law: The One Bite Rule and Negligence
- Austin Leash Law and Dog Ordinances
- Austin Animal Control and Rabies Follow-Up
- What To Do After an Austin Dog Bite
- Austin Hospitals and Urgent Care for Dog Bites
- How To Report a Dog Bite in Austin
- Who Can Be Held Responsible for an Austin Dog Bite
- Filing a Dog Bite Claim in Travis County
- Compensation for Austin Dog Bite Victims
- Proportionate Responsibility in Texas Dog Bite Cases
- Statute of Limitations for Austin Dog Bite Cases
- Homeowner and Renter Insurance for Austin Dog Bites
- Why Choose Dog Bite Laws for Your Austin Case
- Frequently Asked Questions
- No Bite Statute: Texas has no law making a dog owner automatically liable, so an Austin claim runs on the owner's knowledge, ordinary negligence, or a city ordinance violation.
- Report Every Bite: Austin Animal Services says all animal bites must be reported to Animal Protection, and tells you to complete the online Animal Bite Report if you received medical attention.
- 2,525 Investigations: Austin Animal Services reported 2,525 bite investigations in its 2023 annual report, the most recent one the city has posted. That counts investigations opened across all animals, not confirmed dog bites.
- Ten Full Days: A dog that bit or scratched a person must be observed for 10 full days from the date of the bite, regardless of its rabies vaccination status.
- Home Quarantine Conditions: Austin allows home quarantine only if the dog was restrained at the time and current on its rabies vaccine. Otherwise it serves the 10 days at a vet clinic.
- State Law Governs: Austin's code has a Chapter 3-5 titled Dangerous Animals, but section 3-1-1(3) limits that term to dangerous wild animals and other wild or feral mammals and reptiles, so it does not reach dogs. A dangerous dog determination for a dog that injures a person runs on Health and Safety Code chapter 822.
- Vicious Dog Category: Austin's own vicious dog designation under city code 3-4-7 covers a dog that, while running at large, kills or seriously injures another animal.
- Two Level I Centers: Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas and Dell Children's Medical Center are both state-designated Level I trauma centers in Austin.
If a dog attacked you in Austin, the law here works differently from what most people expect. Texas dog bite law has no statute making an owner automatically liable, so whether you recover turns on what the owner knew about the dog, how carelessly the dog was handled or contained, and whether the city’s restraint rule was broken. A first bite is still often a winnable case.
This page covers what Austin does and does not publish about bites, the leash and tethering rules in Title 3 of the city code, the 10 day observation, the city’s trauma centers, how to report, who besides the owner can be responsible, what a claim pays, and your deadlines.
Dog Bite Laws takes dog attack cases and nothing else. The consultation is free, and there is no fee unless we recover money for you.
Austin and Travis County Dog Bite Statistics
Austin does publish a bite figure. The 2023 Austin Animal Services annual report, the most recent annual report the city has posted, reports 2,525 bite investigations by Animal Protection, alongside 101 Serious Bodily Injury investigations. Those are investigations opened, not bites confirmed, and they cover every animal rather than dogs alone. The city’s reports page also carries a dashboard, the open data portal, annual reports for 2021, 2022 and 2023, a fiscal year 2019 report, and monthly reports to the Animal Advisory Commission running from January 2019 through June 2024. The open data sets record shelter intakes and outcomes, which is a different thing from bite incidents.
In the monthly reports the comparable line is broader still. The June 2024 report states that officers entered 249 rabies exposure reports and submitted 42 specimens for rabies testing, and rabies exposure reports include scratches and contact with wild animals.
For statewide context only, the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm estimated 1,313 Texas dog related injury claims in 2025, at an average cost per claim of $70,885 against a $65,450 national average. That is an insurance claim figure, not a bite count.
The record in your case therefore comes from your own report, so make it, and make it in writing.
Texas Dog Bite Law: The One Bite Rule and Negligence
Texas is a one bite state. No statute here makes an owner pay simply because their dog bit you, and Health and Safety Code chapter 822 does not fill that gap, because it is criminal and administrative rather than a source of money damages.
What Texas does have is two common law routes. The first, from Marshall v. Ranne, is the one bite rule: the dog had dangerous tendencies abnormal for a dog, the owner knew or should have known about them, and those tendencies caused your injury. Proof of that knowledge can come from a prior bite, but also from prior charging or snapping, neighbor complaints, a warning sign, or the way the dog was kept. A Texas court charged a business with knowing what chaining an aggressive guard dog would produce, with no prior bite in the file.
The second route is ordinary negligence, and it asks nothing about the dog’s history. Did the owner let the dog off leash where the city says it must be restrained, leave a gate unlatched, or tether it where it could reach a sidewalk? Texas courts say a negligence plaintiff never has to prove the animal was vicious, and the Texas Supreme Court has held that an owner who sees an attack start has a duty to try to stop it.
So a first bite does not end your case. It usually just moves it onto the second route.
Austin Leash Law and Dog Ordinances
Texas has no statewide leash law, so the rule depends on where you were standing. In Austin it comes from Title 3 of the city code. Section 3-2-1 says an owner or handler may not allow a dog to run at large, and section 3-4-1 says an owner or handler shall keep the dog under restraint and that a person holding a dog on a leash shall keep it under control at all times.
Section 3-1-1 defines restraint as being kept in a secure enclosure or under the direct physical control of the owner or handler by a leash, cord, chain or similar.
Tethering has its own rule. Section 3-4-2 says a person may not restrain a dog with a chain or tether unless the person is holding it, with narrow exceptions. A tether must attach to a properly fitting collar or harness, must not be wrapped around the neck, and must not weigh more than one eighteenth of the dog’s body weight. A dog may not be restrained in a way that lets it move outside the property of the person restraining it.
Section 3-4-4 names eleven public areas where a dog need not be restrained, among them a designated portion of Auditorium Shores, part of Zilker Park, and the part of Red Bud Isle east of Red Bud Trail. A Title 3 violation is a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a fine up to $500, or up to $2,000 where the person acted with criminal negligence.
Austin Animal Control and Rabies Follow-Up
Austin Animal Services runs animal control through its Animal Protection program, which the city describes as the rabies control authority for the City of Austin and for unincorporated Travis County. Travis County contracts that work to the city, so one agency covers both.
The observation period is fixed. Animal Protection states that a dog, cat or ferret reported to have bitten or scratched a person must be observed for 10 full days from the date of the bite, regardless of rabies vaccination status. Where those days are served depends on two facts. If the animal was restrained at the time, meaning in the home, on a leash or in a dog park, and was current on its rabies vaccine, it may be eligible for home quarantine. If it was loose, or not current on its vaccine, it completes the observation at a veterinary clinic, and the city requires notice of which clinic before the 10 days run out.
The owner of a dog in a bite case must give Animal Protection a current rabies vaccination certificate. If vaccination is not current or unknown, the animal goes into quarantine and is observed by a veterinarian, and it is not released until a veterinarian certifies it is free of transmissible rabies.
Do not wait on the 10 days to decide about your own care. If the dog was unvaccinated or cannot be found, that decision belongs to your doctor and the health department, and it is often made the same day.
What To Do After an Austin Dog Bite
Austin Animal Services puts it bluntly on its own page: rabies has a strong presence in Travis County and the risk should not be taken lightly. Treat the first day as the day that decides your case.
- Call 911 if you were attacked, bitten or scratched and need emergency care. That is the city’s own instruction.
- Get seen the same day, even for a puncture that has already stopped bleeding.
- Report the bite to Animal Protection. Austin says all animal bites must be reported, and that you should complete an Animal Bite Report if you received medical attention.
- If an officer left a yellow notice, keep it. The activity number on it is what the city asks you to use on the bite report.
- Get the owner’s name and phone number, the address where the dog lives, and the rabies vaccination certificate if it is offered.
- Photograph the wounds, your torn clothing, the leash or tether, the gate and the yard before anything is cleaned up or fixed.
- Write down what the owner did while the dog was on you, and get the names of witnesses.
- Keep every bill and explanation of benefits. The medical file drives the claim, and in Texas you recover what was actually paid, not what was billed.
- Do not give the owner’s insurer a recorded statement, and do not sign a release.
Austin Hospitals and Urgent Care for Dog Bites
Austin has two hospitals carrying the state’s top trauma designation. Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas is a state-designated Level I trauma center and lists 512-324-7000. Dell Children’s Medical Center is also a state-designated Level I trauma center and is Austin’s children’s hospital, at 512-324-0000. St. David’s South Austin Medical Center is a state-designated Level II trauma center and carries 512-447-2211. Several other Travis County hospitals hold Level IV designations, published on the Texas trauma facilities list.
Go to an emergency department for a deep or crushing bite, a bite to the face, hand or a joint, bleeding you cannot control, a bite from a dog nobody can identify, or any bite to a young child. Urgent care can handle a shallow puncture on a healthy adult, but ask about tetanus and antibiotics.
Come back if the wound turns red, swollen, hot or numb, or if a fever starts. Infection after a dog bite can change both your treatment and the value of your claim, and every follow up visit belongs in the record.
How To Report a Dog Bite in Austin
Reports go to Animal Protection. If you received medical attention, the city’s published route is the online Animal Bite Report on the Austin Animal Services animal bites page. Austin’s general line to Animal Protection is 3-1-1, which the city lists as 311 and 512-974-2000. The department also publishes a bite affidavit form. If you live in unincorporated Travis County, the county directs you to the same 512-974-2000 line.
There is a second route worth understanding before you use it. Under city code section 3-2-31, a person injured by an animal may give an affidavit describing the animal and the injury to the health authority and to the animal’s owner, and within 24 hours of receiving it the health authority must direct that the animal be impounded. Impound costs normally fall on the owner or handler. But subsection (D) shifts them to the injured person where the injury happened while the animal was physically restrained on the premises of its owner or handler and had a current rabies vaccination. Ask who will be billed before you file an affidavit, and talk to a lawyer first.
Either way, report. The report creates a dated government record of the dog, the owner and the vaccination status, and it starts the observation. Here is what happens after a bite is reported.
Who Can Be Held Responsible for an Austin Dog Bite
Start with the owner, then keep going. Texas liability runs against the owner or possessor, and a possessor is anyone with custody or control: an adult child living at the house, a roommate, a sitter, a walker, a boarding kennel. A Texas appeals court upheld a single judgment against three members of one household over one dog. Ownership of a dog is decided by control, not by the microchip record.
Where the bite happened changes who else is reachable. In an apartment common area the landlord controls, such as a breezeway, courtyard or complex dog park, you can pursue the landlord on proof of actual or imputed knowledge that the dog was vicious, and complaints made to the leasing office become the heart of the case. Inside a tenant’s own unit, with the landlord out of possession, you must show the landlord actually knew the dog was dangerous and could control the premises.
Austin’s code has a Chapter 3-5 titled Dangerous Animals, but section 3-1-1(3) limits that term to dangerous wild animals and other wild or feral mammals and reptiles, so it does not reach dogs. Austin’s only dog specific ordinance of this kind is section 3-4-7, which covers a dog that, while running at large, kills or seriously injures another animal. A dangerous dog determination here is made under Health and Safety Code chapter 822 by Animal Protection, which the city says handles dangerous and vicious dogs in Travis County. The city’s own designation, under section 3-4-7, is the vicious dog category, and it covers a dog that, while running at large, killed or seriously injured another animal. Neither designation pays you. Both are criminal or administrative, and your civil claim is a separate case in which those records serve as evidence of what the owner knew.
Filing a Dog Bite Claim in Travis County
In our experience most Austin dog bite claims settle with the owner’s insurer without a lawsuit. When one is needed, Travis County has several layers of trial court: the justices of the peace for the smallest claims, up to $20,000, the county courts for mid sized claims, and the civil district courts, which have no ceiling and handle serious scarring, surgery and child injury cases. Your lawyer does that work.
Your job is the part that actually sets the value of the claim.
- Complete your treatment. In our experience unexplained gaps are one of the first things an adjuster uses against you.
- Keep everything on paper: bills, explanations of benefits, receipts for destroyed property, and records of missed work.
- Report the bite so the Animal Protection file exists.
- Photograph the wound every week as it heals, not once at the end.
- Give the owner’s insurer nothing beyond your name and how to reach your lawyer.
- Call a lawyer while the dog, the witnesses and the city record can all still be found.
For the wider picture, here is how a dog bite claim gets filed.
Compensation for Austin Dog Bite Victims
Texas separates what a bite costs you from what it did to you. The cost side covers emergency treatment, surgery and scar revision, dental and eye repair, rabies treatment, physical therapy, counseling, and lost income and earning capacity.
There is a Texas rule that catches people out. You recover medical expenses only in the amount actually paid or incurred, not the amount billed. A hospital bill of $60,000 that a health plan settles for $18,000 supports a claim for $18,000, and the written off part of the bill does not go in front of the jury. Keep your explanations of benefits, which prove the paid amount.
The human side is listed separately on a Texas verdict form: physical pain and mental anguish, disfigurement, physical impairment, loss of enjoyment of life. Texas caps none of it in a dog bite case. A Texas appeals court upheld $2 million in purely non-economic damages for a facial attack that took 149 stitches, a single affirmed verdict rather than a forecast, but proof there is no ceiling in the law.
Punitive damages require clear and convincing proof of gross negligence, which in practice means something like letting a dog out after it was already declared dangerous. Emotional harm after an attack is compensable as well. See also what compensation covers and the settlement calculator.
Proportionate Responsibility in Texas Dog Bite Cases
Texas uses a modified rule, and the modification is harsh. Under chapter 33 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code the jury puts a percentage of responsibility on every person involved, including you, and your award drops by your percentage. Land at 30 percent and you keep 70 percent. Land at 50 percent and you keep half. Go one point past 50 and you keep nothing.
The defense builds that percentage out of what you were doing in the seconds before the bite: a hand through a fence, a step into a yard, walking past a warning sign, running, or letting a child reach toward a dog nobody knew. Texas has no statute making provocation a defense to a civil claim, so it arrives instead as a number on the verdict form. Whether a child can provoke a dog is argued the same way.
A percentage can also be placed on someone who is not a party, such as whoever left the gate open. Write down the sequence of events the same day, and stop explaining the attack to people whose job is to reduce what you are paid.
Statute of Limitations for Austin Dog Bite Cases
Two years. Civil Practice and Remedies Code 16.003 requires a Texas personal injury suit to be filed within two years of the date of the bite. Reporting to Animal Protection, opening a claim with an insurer, or trading emails with an adjuster does nothing to that clock.
A child’s clock is paused. Under Civil Practice and Remedies Code 16.001, the two years do not start until the child turns 18, which puts the practical deadline at the 20th birthday. That protects the child’s own claim only. A parent’s claim for bills the parent paid runs on the ordinary two years.
If a public entity is involved, everything speeds up. Civil Practice and Remedies Code 101.101 requires written notice within six months, and Texas city charters are allowed to shorten it. The Texas Supreme Court has enforced a 90 day charter deadline against an injured claimant. Treat any bite involving a city, county, school district or transit agency dog as a matter of weeks and call a lawyer immediately.
Even with time left, delay costs you. Dogs are rehomed, tenants move, agencies purge files. More on dog bite filing deadlines.
Homeowner and Renter Insurance for Austin Dog Bites
The money in an Austin dog bite case usually comes from an insurance policy rather than the owner’s own pocket. The Insurance Information Institute describes the usual structure: homeowners and renters policies typically cover dog bite liability up to the liability limits, typically $100,000 to $300,000, with the owner personally responsible for anything beyond that.
Texas does not require a dog owner to carry liability insurance, with one exception. The owner of a legally dangerous dog must, under Health and Safety Code 822.042, obtain liability coverage or show financial responsibility of at least $100,000 and file proof with the animal control authority. Because the statute allows financial responsibility as an alternative, a registration does not prove a policy exists, so ask Animal Protection for the proof that was actually filed.
Ask the owner which company insures the home and get the policy number. A renter may carry liability coverage of their own. And if the attack happened in a complex common area, look for a commercial policy behind the property owner or manager.
Why Choose Dog Bite Laws for Your Austin Case
We handle dog attack cases and nothing else, which matters in a state where a bite alone does not win the claim. An Austin case is built out of records that disappear quickly: the Animal Protection file, the rabies observation record, prior complaints about the same dog, and what the owner did while the attack was happening.
On an Austin case we request the Animal Protection and rabies records, check for earlier calls about that dog and address, identify everyone who owned or possessed it, find every policy that might respond, and work out whether the city restraint or tethering rule was broken at that spot. We hold the claim open until a surgeon can say whether the scar needs revision, because settling before that is how people get underpaid.
Read more about Michael Agruss, or reach us through the contact page. We take cases across Texas, including San Antonio, Houston and Dallas. The consultation is free and there is no fee unless we win.
Frequently Asked Questions
Through state law. Austin's code does have a Chapter 3-5 titled Dangerous Animals, but section 3-1-1(3) limits that term to wild and feral species, so it does not apply to dogs. The determination is made under Health and Safety Code chapter 822 by Animal Protection, which the city says handles dangerous and vicious dogs in Travis County. The department says you can seek a dangerous dog or vicious dog designation by submitting a signed bite affidavit. A dangerous dog finding does not pay you anything. It matters to your claim as proof of what the owner knew and was told.
Only when two conditions are met. The city says a pet may be eligible for home quarantine if it was restrained at the time of the incident, meaning in the home, on a leash or in a dog park, and was current on its rabies vaccine. If the dog was loose, or the vaccine was not current, it has to finish the 10 days at a veterinary clinic, and the owner must tell Animal Protection which clinic before the period ends or face a citation.
It is possible, and you should ask before you file. City code section 3-2-31 normally puts impound, care and feeding costs on the owner or handler. Subsection (D) shifts those costs, including any impound fee, to the injured person where the injury happened while the animal was physically restrained on the premises of its owner or handler and had a current rabies vaccination. Reporting a bite to Animal Protection is a separate step and is not the same as filing that affidavit.
For an adult, Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas holds the state's top trauma designation. For a child, Dell Children's Medical Center holds the same Level I designation and is Austin's children's hospital. St. David's South Austin Medical Center is a state-designated Level II trauma center. In an emergency, go to the closest one or call 911 and let them route you. Getting seen the same day matters far more than which of them you choose.
The timeline stretches and the injuries are usually worse. A child's two year deadline does not begin until the 18th birthday, though a parent's claim for the bills they paid runs on the ordinary two years. Children are bitten on the face, scalp and neck far more often than adults, so scarring and revision surgery become the center of the case. If the bite happened at an apartment or a daycare, the property owner or operator may also be reachable.
Because a settlement is final and a scar is not. A wound that is still red, raised or tightening has not shown its finished shape, and scar maturation can take a year or longer, more in a child. Until a surgeon can say whether revision surgery is needed and what it will cost, nobody can value the claim honestly. Photograph the scar every few weeks against the same background while you wait, and keep every follow up appointment.
No, and you are not required to give one. The call sounds routine, but the questions are designed to fix your account in place before you know how the injury will heal, to get you estimating distances and timing you cannot actually recall, and to draw out a sentence about your own conduct that becomes a percentage of responsibility under the Texas rule. Give your name and contact information and send the adjuster to your lawyer.
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