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Maine law turns on where you were bitten. If a dog injures you anywhere other than its owner’s or keeper’s premises, 7 M.R.S. section 3961(2) makes the owner or keeper liable without proof that they were careless. If you were bitten on the owner’s own property, the case runs on negligence instead, either under the first subsection of the same statute or under common law.
This page covers both halves of that statute, the two common law claims, Maine’s statewide rule against dogs at large, who counts as an owner or keeper, defenses, how fault is compared, a child’s case, landlord liability, deadlines including the rules for claims against a town or the state, damages, the dangerous dog law, rabies confinement and reporting, and insurance. One point to know: the old dangerous dog section, 3952, has been repealed, and the current law is section 3952-A.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases. Talk to us for free, and pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
Maine’s dog bite statute has two parts, and which one applies depends on location. Subsection 2 of section 3961 covers dogs only. It says that “when a dog injures a person who is not on the owner’s or keeper’s premises at the time of the injury, the owner or keeper of the dog is liable in a civil action to the person injured for the amount of the damages.” There is no negligence element in that sentence. You do not have to show the dog had bitten before, that the owner knew it was aggressive, or that the gate was left open.
Subsection 1 covers any animal and is built on carelessness. The owner or keeper is liable when an animal damages a person “due to negligence of the animal’s owner or keeper,” if the damage was not caused through the injured person’s fault. The Law Court has called a claim under this subsection statutory negligence. For most bites that happen in the owner’s house or yard, this is the statutory route.
Maine also keeps two common law claims. The first is strict liability for an owner who knew the dog was dangerous: the Law Court adopted the Restatement rule in Young v. Proctor (1985) and said it has “always required knowledge,” meaning what the owner should have known is not enough. The second is ordinary negligence, recognized in Henry v. Brown (1985), where a victim may argue the owner should have seen the risk coming. Both can be pleaded alongside the statute, and both cases arose before the current statute was written in 2001.
So Maine is not a pure one bite rule state. A first bite off the owner’s land is covered by the statute; a first bite on it usually needs proof of carelessness.
What you must prove depends on which claim fits the facts.
Breed is not a shortcut. In Morgan the Law Court agreed that the law does not treat a pit bull mix as abnormally dangerous by breed alone, so the strict liability claim failed when nothing showed the owners knew their particular dog was likely to bite. The same court reinstated the negligence claim, because there the victim could argue what the owners should have known.
A bite has not always been required either. In Henry v. Brown (1985) a visitor fell when a chained dog charged at her and never touched her, and the Law Court held that no bite or contact was required under the dog statute then in force or under the common law, and let her negligence claim go forward too. Read more about a dog attack without a bite.
Maine has a statewide rule, though it is about dogs at large rather than leashes as such. Under section 3911, it is unlawful for any dog, licensed or not, to be at large, except when used for hunting. Section 3907 defines at large as off the premises of the owner and not under the control of any person whose personal presence and attention would reasonably control the animal. A dog can therefore be off its leash and still not at large if someone with it truly has it under control. A violation is a civil matter, with a forfeiture of $50 to $250 the first time and $100 to $500 after that, under section 3915.
Towns can go further. Section 3950 lets a municipality adopt stricter dog rules, such as leash requirements in parks or downtown, but it forbids breed-specific ordinances. So check the town where you were bitten.
What a violation proves is limited. Maine does not treat breaking a safety statute as negligence by itself. The Law Court said in French v. Willman (1991) that it is “only evidence of negligence.” A loose dog can still be part of the evidence in a negligence case, and a citation from the animal control officer is a dated official record of how the dog reached you.
For a bite off the owner’s premises you may not need that evidence at all, because section 3961(2) does not require negligence. Where it matters most is the bite near a property line or in a shared space, where the fight is over which subsection applies.
Maine defines both words. Under section 3907, an owner is “a person owning, keeping or harboring a dog,” and a keeper is “a person in possession or control of a dog.” More than one person can qualify at once. In one Law Court case a jury found an adult daughter and both of the parents she lived with to be owners or keepers of her dog.
Control is the test for keepers, and it has limits. In Parrish v. Wright (2003), parents who owned a summer house where their adult daughter brought her dog were not keepers, because they lacked care, custody and control and were not even in Maine when the bite happened. The court also noted the daughter lived elsewhere and was not part of their household.
The definition can also work against a victim. In Morgan v. Marquis the Law Court held that a dog’s keeper cannot recover under section 3961(1) against its owner, because the statute protects people who are not in a position to control the dog. The victim there was a family friend who had come to pet sit. Whether she had become the keeper at the moment of the bite was a question for the jury, and her ordinary negligence claim was allowed to go forward anyway.
So if you were walking, sitting, boarding, or grooming the dog, say so on the first call with a lawyer. It changes which claims you have. If you are not sure who legally had the dog, read what determines ownership of a dog.
Section 3961 does not use the words provocation or trespass. Its limits are built in differently.
Provocation also matters for the dog’s future. Maine’s definition of a dangerous dog leaves out a dog that injures someone on its owner’s premises if it has no prior history of assault and was provoked by that person immediately before. A dog that seriously injures or kills someone who is committing a crime against a person or against property owned by the dog’s owner or keeper is also excluded.
On a negligence claim, a victim’s own conduct is weighed under Maine’s comparative fault statute, 14 M.R.S. section 156, which defines fault to include any act or omission that would, apart from that statute, give rise to the defense of contributory negligence. For more, read about dog bite provocation. If an adjuster says you provoked the dog, do not adopt that word for your own conduct.
Maine’s general rule is modified comparative fault. Under 14 M.R.S. section 156, your own fault does not defeat a claim, but damages are reduced “to such extent as the jury thinks just and equitable.” If the jury finds you equally at fault, you recover nothing. The Law Court has read this to mean you must be less at fault than the defendant to recover anything. Maine juries make the reduction in dollars, not percentages: they record your total damages, then subtract an amount for your share.
The dog statute adds a stronger rule for bites off the owner’s premises. Under section 3961(2), “any fault on the part of the person injured may not reduce the damages recovered for physical injury” unless the court determines your fault exceeded the owner’s or keeper’s. Put plainly, if you were partly careless off their property, your physical injury damages are not trimmed unless your fault was the greater share. The statute does not spell out what happens once that line is crossed.
The first subsection is harsher. It applies only if the damage “was not occasioned through the fault of the person injured.” Before 2001 the dog statute used that same phrase, and the Law Court held that any fault by the victim barred the statutory claim, with comparative fault applying only to a separate negligence count. Subsection 1 still contains that phrase today.
One more Maine rule helps victims: where there are several defendants, section 156 makes each jointly and severally liable for the full amount.
Children get more time in Maine. Under 14 M.R.S. section 853, a person who is a minor when the claim arises may sue within the limitation period after reaching majority, and Maine sets majority at 18. With the six year period in section 752, a child bitten in Maine has until the 24th birthday. Section 853 extends the time only for the person who was a minor, so a parent’s own claims, such as bills the parent paid, should be looked at right away rather than assumed to ride on the child’s longer clock.
Maine also protects the money. Under section 1605, a settlement of a lawsuit brought on a child’s behalf is not valid unless the court approves it or enters judgment on it. If no suit has been filed, the child, through a next friend such as a parent, may ask a court to approve the settlement. The court can require the funds to be paid out through a trust.
Children appear in several of Maine’s leading dog cases. In Stewart v. Aldrich a seven-year-old visiting a friend’s apartment was bitten in the face by the tenants’ Akita. In Canney v. Strathglass Holdings a thirteen-year-old was bitten while invited to swim at a neighbor’s pool. In Young v. Proctor the jury found that an eight-year-old had teased and provoked the dog, and the family lost. That case shows a child’s own conduct can be put to a jury, so expect the owner’s insurer to look closely at what your child did. Read whether a child can provoke a dog.
Where the bite happened matters even more with children, who are often bitten at a friend’s or relative’s home. That is the owner’s premises, so the claim usually depends on negligence or the owner’s knowledge.
Maine law is protective of landlords. In Stewart v. Aldrich, decided in 2002, a tenant’s Akita had already attacked the tenants’ own two-year-old, and there was evidence the landlord knew. When the dog later bit a seven-year-old visitor inside the apartment, the Law Court still held the landlord owed her no duty. The court’s reasoning was that “the mere power to coerce the conduct of tenants through the threat of eviction or by refusing to renew the tenancy” is not the control that makes a landlord responsible.
The same opinion describes where a landlord’s retained control can create liability for dangerous conditions, though it did not apply these rules to a dog:
The court also expressly left open whether a landlord who fails to enforce the terms of a lease could be liable.
Other property owners get similar treatment. In Parrish v. Wright the Law Court said Maine has not established a duty of a property owner who is not present to require visitors to control their dogs. In Canney v. Strathglass Holdings, a rental company that employed the dog’s owner as its on-call maintenance worker was not liable for a bite in his private yard.
A landlord who actually takes possession or control of the dog is a different case, because that person may be a keeper under section 3907. Ask your lawyer to look at the lease and at who used the space where the bite happened.
Under 14 M.R.S. section 752, civil actions must be started within six years after the claim accrues. The Law Court has said a tort claim accrues when the plaintiff sustains harm, which for a bite is the day it happened.
Claims against government have a bigger hurdle than the clock. Under section 8103 of the Maine Tort Claims Act, governmental entities are immune from tort suits except as a statute expressly provides. The exceptions listed in section 8104-A cover vehicles and other machinery or equipment, public buildings, pollutant discharges, and road work, and none of them mentions animals. Under section 8116, insurance the entity buys can make it liable in areas where it would otherwise be immune, up to the policy limits. A bite by a police dog or at a municipal shelter needs a lawyer’s review quickly.
Six years is a limit, not a plan. The ten day confinement, the animal control file, and witness memories are what actually win cases. Our guide to the dog bite statute of limitations explains how these clocks fit together.
Maine’s dog laws borrow their injury definitions from the criminal code. Bodily injury means physical pain, physical illness, or any impairment of physical condition. Serious bodily injury, under 17-A M.R.S. section 2, includes injury that creates a substantial risk of death or causes “serious, permanent disfigurement” or extended convalescence. That line decides whether a dog is a nuisance dog or a dangerous dog, and it also describes the injuries that drive the value of a civil claim.
Photograph wounds before and after cleaning and as they heal.
A Maine dog bite claim can include medical bills, future treatment such as scar revision, lost wages and lost earning capacity, and noneconomic losses such as pain, suffering, disfigurement, and emotional distress.
Maine statutes cap damages in two situations that can arise in a dog case. Against a governmental entity, the Tort Claims Act limits all claims from one occurrence to $400,000 including costs, unless the entity’s insurance provides more, and it bars punitive damages entirely under section 8105. In a wrongful death case, 18-C M.R.S. section 2-807 limits damages for loss of comfort, society and companionship to $1,000,000 adjusted for inflation, and punitive damages to $500,000. Medical and funeral expenses and the family’s financial losses are separate.
Punitive damages are hard to get. In Tuttle v. Raymond the Law Court required proof by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with malice, either ill will toward the victim or deliberate conduct so outrageous that malice can be implied. Mere reckless disregard is not enough.
Maine’s dangerous dog law adds one more remedy. If an owner or keeper refuses or neglects to comply with an order issued under the dangerous dog law and the dog then wounds someone in a sudden assault, section 3952-A requires the owner to pay that person treble damages and costs. A court finding a dog dangerous may also order restitution. For an overview of categories, see dog bite compensation.
Maine’s dangerous dog law was rewritten in 2017, and the section number changed. The old section 3952 is repealed. The current law is section 3952-A, with definitions in section 3907.
Maine sorts problem dogs into two groups. A dangerous dog kills or seriously injures a person or domesticated animal not trespassing on the owner’s premises, puts a reasonable person off the premises in fear of imminent serious injury by assaulting or threatening them, or injures someone after already being found a nuisance dog. A nuisance dog causes bodily injury short of serious, or similar threats or property damage.
The process starts with you. A person assaulted or threatened by a dog, a witness, or someone who knows of an assault on a child may make a written complaint to the sheriff, local police, or the animal control officer within 30 days. The officer investigates and may issue a civil summons, and a court decides. If the dog is found dangerous, the owner pays a fine of $250 to $5,000 and the court may order any of these, among others:
Before the hearing, an officer can order a threatening dog muzzled or confined. An owner who refuses or neglects to comply with a court order commits a Class D crime. Separately, section 3955 makes it a Class D crime for an owner whose dog injures someone badly enough to need medical attention to leave without getting help and giving their name and contact information.
A finding does not by itself award you damages, though the court may order restitution, and in an older case the Law Court upheld excluding a prior finding under the former law from the civil trial. Its value is the record and the insurance order.
In Maine, bites are reported to the town, not the state. Maine CDC’s rule on rabies, 10-144 C.M.R. chapter 251, says the owner, keeper, or person having possession and knowledge of any animal that has bitten a person must notify the municipality where the bite happened. A person bitten by an animal suspected of having rabies must notify the municipality immediately. Maine CDC’s guidelines say bites themselves are not required to be reported to Maine CDC. In practice, call the local animal control officer yourself, even if the owner says they will. Here is what happens after a dog bite is reported.
The rule then requires that a healthy owned dog that bites be confined for ten days and observed daily, regardless of its vaccination status. Maine CDC’s guidelines say confinement may be at the owner’s home and is supervised by the local animal control officer. The owner pays the costs and may not sell, give away, euthanize, or otherwise dispose of the dog during that period. At the end, the officer inspects the dog, and if the bite victim asks for a veterinary exam, the officer orders one at the owner’s expense.
What the ten days mean: according to Maine CDC, if the dog is healthy ten days after the bite, rabies virus was not in its saliva at the time. Whether you need rabies shots is for your doctor to decide. The Maine CDC rabies page explains the process.
Rabies in Maine is mostly a wildlife disease. Of the 60 animals that tested positive at the state laboratory in 2024, none was a dog. Raccoons made up 28. Every Maine dog must be vaccinated against rabies within 30 days after reaching three months of age under section 3916, and a town cannot license a dog without proof of vaccination. If the dog’s status is unknown, read about being bitten by an unvaccinated dog.
The insurance industry figure below is national; the report gives no Maine figure, and we will not invent one. For 2025, the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm reported an average dog-related injury claim cost of $65,450 across the country, with $1.86 billion paid on 28,450 claims. That is an insurance industry average across claims large and small, not a Maine number, and it does not predict any one case.
What actually moves the number in a Maine case:
For more on how values are built, see our page on dog bite settlement amounts, or try the dog bite settlement calculator for a rough sense of ranges.
Insurance is usually the first place to look for payment. The Maine Bureau of Insurance’s consumer guide to homeowners insurance explains that medical payments coverage pays medical bills for people injured on the policyholder’s property or by the policyholder’s pets, and that personal liability coverage covers the policyholder’s loss if sued and found legally responsible for injuries to someone else. The Insurance Information Institute says homeowners and renters policies typically cover dog bite liability up to the policy limit, usually $100,000 to $300,000, with the owner responsible above that.
Breed matters to Maine insurers. The same guide warns that most insurers will not insure people who own certain breeds or dogs with a history of aggressive behavior, and the Bureau’s homeowners policy comparison marks which major companies deny coverage based on dog breed. A 2013 bill to bar breed-based insurance decisions, LD 1192, was not enacted.
That has two practical results for a victim. First, a dog owner may have a policy that excludes the dog, or no policy at all, so the coverage question has to be answered early. Second, look for other policies: the dog may have been in someone else’s care, or the bite may have happened on property with its own coverage.
If a court has already found the dog dangerous, section 3952-A lets the judge order the owner to carry at least $100,000 of liability insurance for the life of the dog. Ask whether that order exists. Do not take the owner’s word that there is no insurance.
For the whole sequence, read our guide on how to file a dog bite claim.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases, and in Maine the details decide them. The first job is pinning down where the bite happened and whether the no-negligence rule in section 3961(2) applies. If it does not, the work shifts to building the negligence case and finding proof of what the owner knew: earlier complaints to animal control, any dangerous or nuisance dog finding, prior bites, and what neighbors saw.
We also identify every owner and keeper, check whether a landlord kept control of the place where the bite happened, find every insurance policy that might apply, and move fast where a town or the state is involved, because the 365-day notice rule comes long before the general deadline. We deal with the insurer so you do not have to, and we make sure a friendly phone call does not turn into an argument that you were at fault.
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 Maine, including Portland, Lewiston, Bangor, South Portland, Auburn, Biddeford, and Augusta. 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.
Both, depending on location. If the dog injured you somewhere other than its owner's or keeper's premises, 7 M.R.S. section 3961(2) makes the owner or keeper liable without proof of negligence or of a prior bite. If you were bitten on the owner's property, you generally need to prove the owner was negligent or knew the dog was dangerous.
Possibly, but it is a negligence case rather than an automatic one. Inside the owner's home, the no-negligence rule in section 3961(2) does not apply. You can still claim under section 3961(1) or ordinary negligence by showing the owner failed to take reasonable care, or under common law by showing the owner knew the dog was dangerous. In 2012 the Law Court revived a negligence claim over a bite inside the owners' kitchen, holding that breach was a question for the fact-finder.
Usually six years from the bite under 14 M.R.S. section 752. A child has six years from turning 18. A claim against a town, county, or state agency is much tighter: written notice within 365 days and a lawsuit within two years. A wrongful death action must be brought within three years of the death.
Usually not, under Stewart v. Aldrich. The Law Court held that a landlord's ability to evict or refuse to renew is not control over a tenant's dog, even where the landlord may have known of an earlier attack. A landlord can be liable for dangerous conditions in common areas it controls, or where the lease reserves control, and the court left open the case of a landlord who fails to enforce lease terms.
It can. Off the owner's premises, your fault cannot reduce damages for physical injury unless the court finds it exceeded the owner's or keeper's fault. On a negligence claim, Maine's general rule applies: a jury reduces your damages for your share, and you recover nothing if you are found equally at fault. Do not accept an adjuster's description of your own conduct.
The town where it happened, usually through the local animal control officer. Maine CDC's rabies rule requires the owner or keeper of a dog that bit someone to notify the municipality, and a person bitten by an animal suspected of rabies must notify it immediately. The report starts the ten day confinement and creates the official record your claim will rely on.
Maine statutes set caps in two situations. If a government entity is responsible, the Tort Claims Act limits recovery to $400,000 per occurrence unless its insurance is higher, and wrongful death cases cap companionship and punitive damages. In practice, the owner's insurance limit is often the real ceiling.
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