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Connecticut makes the owner or keeper of a dog pay for the harm the dog causes, whether or not it ever bit anyone before. General Statutes Section 22-357 is a strict liability law: if a dog does damage to your body or property, its owner, its keeper, or both are liable, unless you were committing a trespass or other tort or were teasing, tormenting, or abusing the dog. Connecticut also keeps a separate common law negligence claim, which is the route to a landlord who knew the dog was dangerous but did not own or keep it.
This page covers the statute and the negligence claim, what you have to prove, the roaming law, who counts as a keeper, the two exceptions, comparative fault, a child’s case, landlord liability, deadlines (including the notice rules for towns and housing authorities), injuries and damages, the restraint and disposal orders an animal control officer can issue, quarantine and rabies, settlement value, and insurance. One thing has changed recently: Public Act 24-108, effective October 1, 2024, rewrote the wording of the liability statute and replaced the whole process for dealing with a biting dog, so older summaries of Connecticut law are out of date in places.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases. Talk to us for free, and pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
Connecticut has had a dog damage statute for well over a century, and it does most of the work in a bite case. Section 22-357 says that if any dog does any damage to either the body or property of any person, “the owner, keeper, or both, shall be liable for the amount of such damage,” with two exceptions written into the same sentence. The Connecticut Supreme Court has described it plainly: the statute imposes strict liability on the owner or keeper of any dog that does damage to the body or property of any person.
Strict liability means the owner’s carefulness does not matter. You do not have to show the dog had bitten before, that the owner knew it was aggressive, or that anyone left a gate open. That is the opposite of the one bite rule. The statute also reaches more than bites. In 1952 the Supreme Court held that a dog never had to touch a man who fell while it menaced him, because a keeper’s liability extends to all damage to the person proximately occasioned by the dog. If you were knocked down or hurt running from a dog, read about a dog attack without a bite.
Connecticut keeps a second route as well: common law negligence. It asks whether the defendant knew or should have known the dog was dangerous and failed to act reasonably. That claim matters most when the person you need to hold responsible is not the owner or keeper, such as a landlord that let a known biter stay on its property. A case can plead both counts.
The statutory claim is short. You prove that the defendant owned or kept the dog, that the dog did damage to you or your property, and the amount of that damage. The owner’s knowledge and the owner’s carelessness are not part of it. Because the statute created a cause of action that did not exist at common law, Connecticut courts have said the plaintiff must bring the case clearly within its terms, so the facts about who had the dog matter from the first day.
The two exceptions are the defense side of the case. If the dog’s owner says you were trespassing, committing some other tort, or teasing, tormenting, or abusing the dog, that is the fight. For a child under seven the statute puts the burden of proving an exception on the defendant.
The negligence claim asks more. You show that the defendant owed you a duty, usually because it knew or should have known the dog had dangerous tendencies, that it failed to take reasonable steps, and that the failure caused your injury. The Connecticut Supreme Court put the traditional rule this way in 2012: knowledge of a domestic animal’s vicious propensity imposes a duty on the owner to restrain that animal, and failure to do so is treated as negligence. In a 2014 horse bite case the same court added that the owner or keeper of a domestic animal must take reasonable steps against injuries that are foreseeable because the animal belongs to a class naturally inclined to cause them, whether or not that animal had hurt anyone before.
So gather two sets of records: one proving who owned or kept the dog and what the injury cost, the other proving what people knew, such as earlier complaints, prior bites, and restraint orders.
Connecticut’s statute on loose dogs is a roaming law, not a rule that every dog be leashed everywhere. Section 22-364 says no owner or keeper may allow a dog to roam at large on someone else’s land, or on any part of a public highway, when it is not under the control of the owner, keeper, or an agent. The dog’s unauthorized presence on another person’s land or on the highway, unattended and uncontrolled, is prima facie evidence of a violation. A first violation is an infraction.
Two details give the law teeth. The Appellate Court has held that a dog wandering 20 to 30 yards out of sight on someone else’s property was not under control, even though it later came back when its owner called. And an owner who knows of a dog’s vicious propensities, already violated the roaming law within the past year, and then intentionally or recklessly lets the dog roam again faces a fine of up to $1,000, up to six months in jail, or both, if the dog injures someone who was not teasing or abusing it. Since June 4, 2024 an animal control officer may also ask the Superior Court for an order, including an injunction, to stop a dog from roaming. Separately, Section 22-364b requires a leash near a person with a disability who is accompanied by a service animal when the dog is off its owner’s property. Check your town’s ordinances for local leash rules too.
For your claim, you do not need a roaming violation to recover under Section 22-357, which makes the owner or keeper liable without proof of fault. Still, ask animal control whether the owner was cited, because a citation is an official record of how the dog was being handled.
Connecticut defines a keeper in Section 22-327 as any person, other than the owner, harboring or having in his possession any dog. To harbor a dog, the Supreme Court has said, is to afford it lodging, shelter, or refuge.
The leading modern case is Auster v. Norwalk United Methodist Church, decided March 25, 2008. A church let its sexton and his family live in an apartment on its property, and his dog bit a woman attending a meeting there. The church had only limited when and where the dog could be let out, and the court held that was not enough: a nonowner is a keeper only if it was responsible for maintaining and controlling the dog at the time, which generally means evidence it was feeding, giving water to, exercising, sheltering, or otherwise caring for the dog when the incident happened. The court said in the same opinion that the church might still have been negligent, and the injured woman could pursue that claim.
More than one person can be liable. Since October 1, 2024 the statute says owner, keeper, or both, and when two or more dogs kept by different people injure someone at the same time, Section 22-356 makes their owners or keepers jointly and severally liable. If the owner or keeper is a minor, the parent or guardian is liable. A household member of a law enforcement officer assigned an agency dog is presumed not to be its keeper. For background, read what determines ownership of a dog.
The keeper rule can also cut against a victim, because a keeper cannot recover under the statute. In Murphy v. Buonato, affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1997, a man who agreed to care for another man’s dog at his own home while the owner was away was held to be its keeper and could not recover from the owner. In a 2023 Appellate Court case, a woman who had agreed to take another person’s dog along in a car was treated as its keeper, which ended her statutory claim. Brief visits can be different: in 1939 the Supreme Court held that a neighbor who only came by to feed and water dogs kept in the owner’s kennel was not their keeper. If you were pet sitting, walking, grooming, or fostering the dog, tell your lawyer at the start.
The statute has exactly two exceptions. The owner or keeper is not liable under Section 22-357 if the injured person, at the time, was:
Connecticut courts read the trespass exception narrowly. In Verrilli v. Damilowski, decided in 1953, the Supreme Court said the word refers to something more serious than the mere technical trespass of walking onto someone’s land with no intent to damage and no acts that would naturally rouse an ordinary dog to protect its owner’s property or family. The woman in that case had been using a shortcut across the dog owner’s lot for years, he had never forbidden it or warned her about the dog, and she recovered.
Teasing, tormenting, or abusing is read in the same spirit. In Weingartner v. Bielak in 1955, a two and a half year old playing fetch with a rubber bone was not teasing the dog, and the owners were liable when it knocked her down and cut her face. In a 1964 decision, an appellate panel of the former Circuit Court held that an eleven year old paperboy who put his hand on a dog’s head was not teasing it, saying none of the statute’s words fit petting a dog. The word provocation does not appear in the civil statute, so do not accept an adjuster’s label for what you did. We cover dog bite provocation in more depth.
Ordinary carelessness by the victim is not one of the exceptions. In 1933 the Supreme Court said conduct outside the exceptions, even if it might be called contributory negligence in a broad sense, is not a defense to the statute. A 1961 Superior Court decision held that assumption of risk has no place as a separate defense to a claim under the statute, and for negligence claims Connecticut abolished it in Section 52-572h.
Connecticut uses modified comparative negligence for negligence claims. Section 52-572h says a plaintiff’s own negligence does not bar recovery if it “was not greater than the combined negligence” of the people the plaintiff is suing, counting settled or released parties too. Any award is then reduced by the plaintiff’s percentage.
Put in numbers: a victim found 40 percent at fault recovers 60 percent of the damages. At 50 percent, the victim is not greater than the other side and recovers half. At 51 percent, the victim recovers nothing on the negligence claim. When several negligent defendants share the blame, each generally pays only its own share, with a court able to reallocate a share that cannot be collected.
This matters less in a Connecticut dog case than you might expect. The comparative negligence statute applies to causes of action based on negligence, and it expressly bars apportioning damages between parties liable for negligence and parties liable on strict liability or a statutory cause of action. The dog statute has its own defense structure, and under the 1933 decision described above, conduct outside the two exceptions is not a defense to it. So the fight on the statutory count against the owner or keeper is over whether your conduct fits an exception.
Your own conduct can still reduce or defeat recovery on the negligence count, such as a claim against a landlord. Expect the insurer to argue you approached the dog or ignored a sign.
Connecticut writes a protection for young children directly into the statute. If the injured child was under seven when the damage was done, the law presumes the child was not committing a trespass or other tort and was not teasing, tormenting, or abusing the dog, and the defendant carries the burden of proving otherwise. For an older child the exceptions still have to fit the facts, and the courts’ narrow reading of them helps. If an adjuster is blaming your child, read whether a child can provoke a dog.
Watch the calendar closely. Neither of the two limitation statutes discussed in the deadlines section below, Sections 52-584 and 52-577, contains an exception for minors. The Appellate Court has said the two year negligence statute provides no exceptions for minors, and the Supreme Court has refused to read one in by implication for an unemancipated child. A child’s claim can therefore expire on the same schedule as an adult’s.
The parent’s money is handled through the child’s case. Under Section 52-204, medical bills and other expenses a parent has paid or will have to pay can be recovered in the child’s action, and a recovery there bars a separate claim by the parent for those amounts. Keep every bill and explanation of benefits from the start.
One hard rule involves family dogs. In Squeglia v. Squeglia in 1995, the Supreme Court held that parental immunity bars an unemancipated child from suing a parent under Section 22-357 for an attack by the parent’s dog. The decision concerned a suit against the child’s own parent.
A landlord is usually not liable under the dog statute. In Auster the Supreme Court held that a landlord does not become a keeper merely by allowing a tenant’s dog or putting limits on how the tenant handles it. The statute requires something like an owner’s control: feeding, sheltering, exercising, or otherwise caring for the dog. A property owner who actually took care of the dog is in a different position.
The negligence claim is where landlord cases are won. In Giacalone v. Housing Authority of Wallingford, officially released September 18, 2012, a tenant was bitten by another tenant’s dog. The housing authority knew the dog was dangerous and aggressive and had ordered its owner to remove it two years earlier, but the dog stayed. The Supreme Court held that a landlord’s common law duty to alleviate known dangers includes dangers posed by vicious dogs, and that a landlord must take reasonable steps to alleviate the danger created by a dog with known vicious tendencies in the common areas of the property.
So the questions in a Connecticut landlord case are:
The landlord’s own deadline can be shorter. A claim against a public housing authority for an injury on its property requires written notice to the authority’s chairman or secretary within six months under Section 8-67, and suit within two years.
Connecticut has two limitation statutes that matter here, and the safe course is to work to the shorter one. Section 52-584 gives two years from the date the injury is first sustained or discovered for injury caused by negligence or reckless conduct, and never more than three years from the act. Section 52-577 gives three years from the act for actions founded on a tort generally. Several Superior Court decisions have applied the three year statute to claims under the dog statute, but those are trial court rulings, and a negligence count, such as a claim against a landlord, is a two year claim.
Government defendants carry another problem. Towns are liable for employees’ negligent acts under Section 52-557n but immune for discretionary ones, and in 2000 the Appellate Court held that governmental immunity barred a strict liability claim under the dog statute against a volunteer firefighter whose dog bit someone while he was performing a discretionary governmental duty at a parade. A bite involving a police dog, a town shelter, or a school needs a lawyer early. Our guide to the dog bite statute of limitations explains how these clocks fit together.
Connecticut’s dog statute speaks of damage to the body or property of any person, which covers far more than the puncture itself. When an animal control officer decides what to do about a biting dog, the law tells the officer to weigh the severity of the injury and the viciousness of the attack, and those same facts drive the value of a civil claim.
The statute also covers harm to your pet. If a dog attacks your companion animal, Section 22-357 defines the recoverable amount to include veterinary care, the animal’s fair monetary value, training expenses for a service animal, and burial costs.
Connecticut’s tort statute sorts damages into two groups. Economic damages cover pecuniary losses: medical care, rehabilitation, custodial care, and lost earnings or earning capacity. Noneconomic damages cover nonpecuniary losses such as physical pain and suffering and mental and emotional suffering. A dog bite claim can include both, past and future.
Punitive damages work differently in Connecticut. Under Connecticut common law, punitive damages are limited to the expenses of bringing the legal action, including attorney’s fees, less taxable costs, as the Supreme Court restated in Ulbrich v. Groth in 2013. In Venturi v. Savitt in 1983 the court said they require evidence of a reckless indifference to the rights of others or an intentional and wanton violation of those rights.
If a dog attack causes a death, the estate’s action under Section 52-555 recovers just damages along with reasonably necessary medical, hospital, and nursing costs and funeral expenses. For how claims are valued, see dog bite compensation.
In Connecticut, the local animal control officer decides what happens to a dog after a bite, under Section 22-358. Public Act 24-108 replaced this process on October 1, 2024.
Under the current law, if an animal control officer investigates and finds that a person was in fact bitten or attacked by a dog, the officer may make any order about restraining or disposing of the dog that is necessary to protect public health and safety. The officer must weigh at least seven factors: the owner’s ability to control the dog, the severity of the injury, the viciousness of the attack, any history of past bites or attacks, whether it happened off the owner’s property, whether the dog was provoked, and whether it was protecting its owner from physical harm.
What the process means for you:
Separately, owning a dog that is a nuisance because of its vicious disposition is an offense under Section 22-363. An order does not create civil liability, since the statute already does, but it is an official finding about the bite and a record of prior trouble. Neither Section 22-358 nor Section 22-363 mentions a dog’s breed.
Report the bite to your town’s animal control officer. The Department of Public Health’s rabies statistics page says a bite to a person by a dog or other domestic animal is reportable to the local animal control officer by the victim or the animal’s owner, and the quarantine and any order start with that report. Separately, under Section 22-358 a person who kills a dog while protecting a person or animal from its attack off the owner’s property must make a complaint to animal control. Here is what happens after a dog bite is reported.
Under Section 22-359, whenever a dog bites or attacks a person, the animal control officer shall quarantine it for ten days. It is watched for signs of rabies and examined on the tenth day by the State Veterinarian or a designee, who decides whether the quarantine continues. A vaccinated dog may stay at the owner’s premises if they are adequate; an unvaccinated dog goes to a pound, veterinary hospital, or approved kennel, and may stay home only for a veterinarian-certified medical necessity, in which case it must be vaccinated on day ten. The owner pays for the quarantine, examination, vaccination, and any testing. Since June 7, 2023, ignoring a quarantine order brings a $250 fine and possible seizure of the dog.
Connecticut requires every dog and cat to be vaccinated against rabies, first at 12 to 14 weeks of age or the age the vaccine manufacturer recommends, with boosters, under Section 22-339b, and on request a veterinarian must give animal control the vaccination records of a dog that has bitten a person. If the owner cannot show a current certificate, read about being bitten by an unvaccinated dog.
The Department of Public Health’s rabies guidance says to clean the wound immediately with soap and water, see a health care provider, get the owner’s contact information, and call animal control or the local health department. In the department’s 2023 annual table, none of the 36 animals confirmed rabid in Connecticut was a dog: most were bats, raccoons, and skunks, plus three cats.
An average settlement figure would say little about your own claim. The closest data is insurance claim data. For 2025 the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm reported a national average of $65,450 per dog-related injury claim. They also reported that New York had the highest average cost per claim, at $92,154, followed by Connecticut and California. That is an industry average across every claim large and small, not a settlement value, and it does not predict any one case.
What moves the number in a Connecticut case:
For how amounts are built up, see our guide to dog bite settlement amounts, and use the dog bite settlement calculator for a rough sense of ranges.
Insurance often decides how a dog bite claim gets paid. 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, with the owner responsible above that.
Two practical points:
Do not take the owner’s word that there is no insurance. A lawyer can ask the owner and the insurers directly, and the animal control file can give the owner’s address, which is where the search for a policy starts.
For the whole process, read our guide on how to file a dog bite claim.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases, and Connecticut rewards getting the details right early. The statute gives you strict liability, so the real work is elsewhere: proving who owned or kept the dog under the control test from Auster, keeping a pet sitter or helper from being labeled a keeper, finding a landlord that knew the dog was dangerous, meeting a six month notice deadline when a town or housing authority is involved, getting the animal control file and any restraint order, and building the medical record that supports the full value of the claim.
We deal with the insurers so you do not have to, and we keep a friendly phone call from turning into an argument that you were trespassing or teasing the dog. We work on a contingency fee: 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 Connecticut, including Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, Stamford, Waterbury, and Norwalk. 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.
No. Under General Statutes Section 22-357 the owner or keeper of a dog is liable for the damage it does even if it never bit anyone before and even if the owner was careful. The only ways out are showing that the injured person was committing a trespass or other tort, or was teasing, tormenting, or abusing the dog. The dog's history still matters for a negligence claim against someone else, such as a landlord.
Possibly, but not under the strict liability statute unless the landlord actually cared for and controlled the dog. The usual route is negligence: under Giacalone v. Housing Authority of Wallingford, a landlord that knew a tenant's dog was vicious had to take reasonable steps about that danger in common areas it controlled. If the landlord is a public housing authority, written notice is due within six months.
It is harder. Connecticut treats someone who had possession and control of the dog at the time as its keeper, and a keeper cannot recover from the owner under the dog statute. The Supreme Court applied that rule in 1997 to a man caring for another man's dog at his home while the owner was away, and a 2023 Appellate Court decision applied it to a woman who had agreed to take another person's dog in a car. Those rulings were about the dog statute, and the facts of who controlled the dog matter, so get advice before you give up.
Plan on two years from the bite. Negligence claims have two years under Section 52-584, and while some trial courts have allowed three years for the statutory claim under Section 52-577, those are trial court rulings. Children do not get extra time, because neither statute has an exception for minors. Claims involving a town employee or a housing authority need written notice within six months.
Not necessarily. The trespass exception requires more than simply stepping onto someone's land. The Connecticut Supreme Court has said it means something more serious than a technical trespass with no intent to cause damage and nothing that would rouse an ordinary dog to protect its owner. In that 1953 case a woman taking her usual shortcut across the owner's lot recovered, and in 1964 a paperboy bitten on the owner's lawn recovered too.
It must be quarantined for ten days and examined on the tenth day, at the owner's expense. If the animal control officer confirms the bite, the officer may also order the dog restrained or disposed of after weighing factors such as the severity of the injury and any earlier attacks. You receive a copy of any order within 24 hours, and the owner can appeal to the Superior Court within 45 days.
Only in a limited form. Connecticut common law limits punitive damages to the costs of bringing the lawsuit, including attorney's fees, minus taxable costs, and they require reckless indifference to the rights of others or an intentional and wanton violation of those rights. The main damages in a dog bite claim are compensation for medical expenses, lost income, scarring, and pain and suffering.
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