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West Virginia holds a dog’s owner or keeper responsible for any damage the dog does while it is running at large, with no need to prove the owner was careless or knew the dog was dangerous. Code section 19-20-13 sets that rule, and the Supreme Court of Appeals has read running at large to mean simply that the dog was not properly secured. When the dog was not loose, for example a bite inside the owner’s home or yard, the older common law applies: you recover if the dog had a dangerous propensity the owner knew or should have known about, or if the owner failed to use ordinary care.
This page walks through all three routes, what each requires, the local leash rules, who counts as an owner or keeper, the defenses an insurer will raise, the 2015 comparative fault law, a child’s case, landlords, deadlines and government claims, damages and caps, the vicious dog statute and the Durham v. Jenkins decision, reporting and rabies, settlement value, and insurance. Two points to know at the start: West Virginia is not a pure one bite state, and since 2015 its fault rule bars a victim only whose share of fault is greater than everyone else’s combined.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases. Talk to us for free, and pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
West Virginia has a dog statute, but it reaches only one situation. Section 19-20-13 says any owner or keeper of any dog who permits it to run at large is liable for any damages the dog inflicts on another person or their property while so running at large. The statute is one sentence long. It covers a loose dog, and only a loose dog.
The Supreme Court of Appeals first read that sentence in Marcum v. Bellomy, decided March 19, 1974. A neighbor’s German Shepherd bit a small boy in the face in his great-grandmother’s yard, and the trial judge required proof that the owners were negligent or knew the dog was dangerous. The high court reversed. It said the statute’s obvious intention is to place responsibility for damage done by dogs on the owner, and it gave a short test: a dog is permitted to run at large if he is not properly secured.
For a dog that was not running at large, West Virginia uses the common law, and the leading case is Jividen v. Law from 1995. Jividen involved a horse, and the court stated its rule for injuries by any domestic animal. It gives a person who was lawfully where the injury happened two separate claims against the owner or keeper. The first is strict liability, available when the animal had a dangerous or vicious propensity and the owner or keeper had actual or constructive knowledge of it. The second is ordinary negligence, available when that history cannot be proved but the owner failed to use the care needed to prevent a foreseeable injury.
So West Virginia is a hybrid. It is a statute state for loose dogs and a one bite rule state, with a negligence fallback, for everything else. Which side of that line the facts fall on decides which rules apply.
What you need depends on the route.
Every route still requires proof that the dog actually caused the injury. In practice you need proof that the dog was loose (the dog warden’s report, photographs of the open gate, neighbors who saw it in the road), proof of its history (earlier bites, complaints, what the owner said), and proof of the harm (records, bills, photographs, missed work). The history disappears fastest, so start on it in the first week.
West Virginia leaves leash rules to local government. Section 19-20A-8 says dogs vaccinated against rabies may run at large in any area or locality, subject to quarantine orders from the Commissioner of Agriculture and to local rules. County commissions may adopt dog control ordinances under section 19-20-6, and cities may regulate the keeping of animals and impound those found running at large. Leash rules therefore vary by city and county.
That matters less than you might expect, because liability under section 19-20-13 does not depend on breaking a leash ordinance. The statute asks only whether the owner permitted the dog to be loose, and Marcum treats any dog that was not properly secured as loose. A local ordinance citation is still useful evidence: it is a dated official record that the dog was off its property or uncontrolled when it reached you.
Where the statute does not apply, a violated ordinance can help the negligence claim. The Supreme Court of Appeals treats the violation of a statute as prima facie evidence of negligence, which means the case goes to a jury, as long as the violation caused the injury. Whether a jury may treat a county or city ordinance the same way is a question for your lawyer. One point is particular to West Virginia: under 19-20A-8, a county or city may not adopt an ordinance keeping a vaccinated dog from running at large while it is engaged in lawful hunting, training, or herding, so a working dog in the field may not be breaking any local leash rule.
Section 19-20-13 reaches any owner or keeper, and Jividen frames the common law claims against the owner or keeper of the animal. The dog chapter has no definitions section, so the statute does not define either word. An owner is the person the dog belongs to, and section 19-20-1 declares a dog to be personal property. The word keeper means the statute is not limited to the dog’s owner.
The criminal vicious dog statute, section 19-20-20, uses a third word. It bars any person from owning, keeping, or harboring a dog known to be vicious, dangerous, or in the habit of biting or attacking people. The rabies quarantine duty in section 19-20-9a likewise falls on whoever owns or harbors a dog that bites.
More than one person can be responsible for the same dog, and finding all of them matters because each may have separate insurance. If ownership is murky, read about what determines ownership of a dog.
One caution. If you were the dog’s sitter, walker, or caretaker when it bit you, expect the insurer to argue that you were a keeper yourself. Tell your lawyer about any role you had with the dog on the first call.
Section 19-20-13 contains no list of defenses, and the word provocation does not appear in it. An owner’s insurer can still raise your behavior. Every route requires proof that the dog caused your injury, and the 2015 fault statute lets a jury assign you a share of the fault under any legal theory. For background, read our guide to dog bite provocation.
The defenses that are written down are these:
Assumption of risk is weighed as fault. The 2015 fault statute lists assumption of the risk within its definition of fault, so it is added to your share of fault and ends the claim only if that share is greater than everyone else’s combined.
West Virginia uses modified comparative fault, set by statute since 2015. Section 55-7-13c says your own fault does not bar recovery unless it is greater than the combined fault of all other persons responsible, and that any smaller share reduces your award in proportion. The rule applies to an action based on tort or any other legal theory, and the statute’s definition of fault expressly includes absolute liability, so expect it to be raised against a loose dog claim too.
Do the arithmetic rather than trusting a label. Under the statute’s wording, a victim found 50 percent at fault is not greater than the other 50 percent, so the claim is not barred, and each defendant pays its percentage of the damages, which leaves the victim with half. At 51 percent the recovery is zero. The comparison is to everyone else combined, which can include people who were never sued if the defense gives notice within 180 days of being served. The burden of proving your fault is on whoever claims it.
This rule changed in 2015. Before then the rule came from the court’s 1979 decision in Bradley v. Appalachian Power, which barred a plaintiff whose fault equaled or exceeded the others’. The Legislature replaced it with House Bill 2002, passed February 24, 2015 and in effect ninety days from passage, for causes of action arising or accruing on or after its effective date. Under the old rule a 50 percent victim got nothing. Under the current one that victim recovers half.
The same law made liability several only. Each defendant pays its own percentage, not the whole judgment, with narrow exceptions such as a defendant whose criminal conduct caused the harm. If one defendant cannot pay, you may ask the court within a year after the judgment becomes final to reallocate the uncollectible share among the others.
Children get more time. Under section 55-2-15, when a claim belongs to an infant, the two years run from the child’s becoming of full age, and West Virginia sets full legal capacity at 18. So a child bitten at six generally has until the twentieth birthday. The same section also says no such claim may be brought more than 20 years after the bite. If you paid your child’s medical bills, ask a lawyer early how long you have to claim them.
Expect the owner’s side to blame your child, and know the rule that answers it. In Pino v. Szuch the Supreme Court of Appeals restated that a child under seven is conclusively presumed incapable of negligence. Between seven and fourteen the child is presumed incapable, and the defense must prove otherwise with evidence of the child’s intelligence, maturity, experience, and judgment. Only at fourteen is a child presumed capable. Applying those presumptions to a claim that a child provoked a dog is a lawyer’s argument rather than a settled dog rule, and our article on whether a child can provoke a dog covers the wider question.
Children appear often in West Virginia’s reports. In 2024, according to the state’s animal encounters report, 491 of the 2,577 reported animal encounters, 19 percent, involved children aged 14 or younger. Those encounters include bites and scratches from every species. The state recorded seven involving babies under one year old, and all but one, which involved a bat, were attributed to dogs or puppies. Five of those seven involved bites or scratches to the head, face, or neck. One practical point from Marcum: the Supreme Court of Appeals held the trial judge was wrong to keep out the boy’s words to his mother right after the bite, so write down exactly what your child said.
Section 19-20-13 and the Jividen claims run against the dog’s owner or keeper. Neither names a landlord or property owner as such, so a landlord’s responsibility depends on its own role.
If you were bitten at a rental property or a business, ask early who owns the property and who controlled the place you were bitten.
The general rule is two years. Section 55-2-12 requires a personal injury action to be brought within two years after the right to bring it accrued, which in a dog bite case is normally the day of the bite.
If a timely case is dismissed for a reason unrelated to its merits, section 55-2-18 gives one year to refile. Treat every one of these as an outside limit. The clocks that really decide a case are shorter: the ten day rabies confinement, the dog warden’s file, and the few weeks before a wound closes and witnesses forget. Our article on the dog bite statute of limitations explains how these deadlines interact.
West Virginia’s 2024 animal encounters report shows where bites and scratches land. It counts 2,577 reported encounters with all species, and as a share of all of them, 40 percent involved the hand, 15 percent an arm, 13 percent a leg, and 12 percent the head, neck, or face. Fifty four people were hospitalized.
Serious attacks go to the state’s trauma centers. The West Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services’ designated list, dated December 2022, names two Level I centers, CAMC General Hospital in Charleston and the Jon Michael Moore Trauma Center at WVU Hospitals in Morgantown, and two Level II centers in Huntington, Cabell Huntington Hospital and St. Mary’s Medical Center.
The damages that compensate you are, in the words of section 55-7-13b, damages for economic and noneconomic loss. In a bite case economic loss is mainly medical bills and lost income, and noneconomic loss is the pain and harm the injury causes. Any share of fault assigned to you reduces them.
Punitive damages are available but hard to win. Section 55-7-29 requires clear and convincing evidence that the harm came from conduct carried out with actual malice toward you, or with a conscious, reckless and outrageous indifference to the health, safety and welfare of others. The award cannot exceed the greater of four times the compensatory damages or $500,000, and the defendant can ask for a separate trial phase on punitive damages. An owner who kept a dog after repeated attacks is the kind of case where the question is worth asking.
Different rules apply when the defendant is a county, city, county school board, or other political subdivision. Under section 29-12A-7, punitive damages against it are prohibited, economic loss is uncapped, and noneconomic loss is limited to $500,000 for any one person. Section 29-12A-5 also makes political subdivisions immune from a list of claims, and their employees are personally liable only for acts manifestly outside their duties, acts done with malicious purpose, in bad faith, or in a wanton or reckless manner, or where a statute expressly imposes liability on them.
If a dog attack is fatal, the wrongful death statute lets a jury award damages for sorrow, mental anguish, and solace, lost income and services, and medical and funeral expenses. For an overview, see dog bite compensation.
West Virginia’s dog chapter deals with dangerous dogs in section 19-20-20, which makes it a crime to own, keep, or harbor a dog known to be vicious, dangerous, or in the habit of biting or attacking people, whether or not the dog wears a tag or muzzle. On satisfactory proof before a circuit court or magistrate that the dog is vicious, the judge may authorize the humane officer to have it killed. A violation is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $100, up to 30 days in jail, or both.
The Supreme Court of Appeals narrowed how that statute works in Durham v. Jenkins, decided November 9, 2012. After a two year old was badly mauled at a 2010 party in Grant County and no charges were filed, her family won a magistrate’s order to destroy the surviving dog. The high court vacated it, holding that section 19-20-20 is criminal in its entirety and that a private cause of action may not be brought to have a dog destroyed under it. Justice Workman dissented.
What that means for you: if you want the dog dealt with, the path runs through the dog warden, the humane officer, the sheriff, and the county prosecutor, not a civil suit. Durham decided only that a private suit cannot have a dog destroyed under section 19-20-20; it did not decide a claim for money damages under section 19-20-13 or the Jividen claims described above. A separate statute, section 19-20-21, requires anyone keeping a dog generally considered vicious for protection to buy a special $10 license from the county assessor and to secure the dog so it cannot injure people lawfully on the property. The statute says the license is no defense to an action for personal injury.
West Virginia’s reportable disease rule, 64CSR7, requires a dog bite to be reported to the local health officer within 24 hours. The duty falls first on the doctor or other provider treating you, and also on veterinarians and animal control or humane officers. If no provider attended you, the rule puts the duty on you as the adult victim, and on a parent or guardian when the person bitten is a child. Providers send the state’s Animal Encounter Report Form to the health department of your county of residence. Here is what happens after a dog bite is reported.
The dog then has to be watched. Section 19-20-9a requires anyone who owns or harbors a dog that bites a person to confine and quarantine it for ten days of rabies observation, licensed or not. If the owner does not, the humane officer, dog warden, or sheriff may place the dog with a veterinarian at the owner’s expense, and the owner faces a $50 fine or two to three days in jail. The state’s March 2026 bite surveillance protocol applies the same ten day confinement to vaccinated and unvaccinated dogs alike.
State law requires every dog to be vaccinated against rabies by six months of age, but in 2024 reports only 37 percent of the domestic animals involved were documented as vaccinated, and 46 percent were unknown. If that describes your dog, read about being bitten by an unvaccinated dog. Whether you need rabies shots is a decision for your doctor and the health department.
For perspective, of 917 animals tested for rabies in West Virginia in 2024, 28 were positive, and none was a dog. The positives were bats, cats, a fox, a groundhog, an otter, raccoons, and skunks. The state’s last human rabies case was in 1994, after a bat exposure.
Any single average would say little about your case. The figure most often cited is national. For 2025 the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm reported that the average dog-related injury claim cost $65,450, across 28,450 claims. That is an insurance industry average of claims large and small, not a West Virginia figure and not a prediction for any case.
What moves the value of a West Virginia case:
Our dog bite settlement amounts page explains how injury severity affects value, and the dog bite settlement calculator gives a rough range.
Insurance is often where the money comes from. 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 for damages above that.
Check the actual policy rather than assuming what it covers. And because liability is several only under the 2015 law, each responsible defendant pays its own share, which makes it worth identifying every owner, keeper, and property owner and asking about every policy.
Do not accept an owner’s word that there is no insurance; a renter’s, landlord’s, umbrella, or business policy may apply. And talk to the adjuster carefully, because the owner’s insurer will look for facts that shift fault to you or move the case off the loose dog statute. Our article on how to file a dog bite claim explains what to send and what to hold back.
Skipping the report has its own costs, which our article on what happens if you do not report a dog bite covers.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases, and West Virginia is a state where the first legal question decides much of the rest. Was the dog running at large? If so, section 19-20-13 does most of the work, and the fight is over proving it was loose and who kept it. If not, the case depends on the dog’s history and what the owner knew, and that evidence has to be found before it disappears. We work out which route fits, gather the dog warden and health department records, track down earlier complaints, find every policy, and push back on the fault arguments insurers use under the 2015 statute.
We deal with the insurance company so you can concentrate on healing, and we watch for the early offer that arrives before anyone knows whether a scar will need revision. We work on contingency, so there is nothing to pay up front and no fee unless we recover money for you. Founding attorney Michael Agruss built the firm to carry that load for injured people.
We take dog bite cases across West Virginia, including Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown, Parkersburg, Wheeling, and Martinsburg. If you or your child was bitten, contact us for a free consultation and an honest answer about whether you have a claim.
Partly. If the dog was running at large, meaning not properly secured, section 19-20-13 makes the owner or keeper liable without any proof of a prior bite or of carelessness. If the dog was not loose, the common law applies, and you recover by showing a dangerous propensity the owner knew or should have known about, or a failure of ordinary care that made the bite foreseeable.
Often, yes, but on a different theory. In Marcum v. Bellomy the Supreme Court of Appeals said the loose dog statute's wording gives an owner a defense on his own property, so the case runs under Jividen v. Law. If you were lawfully there and the owner knew or should have known the dog was dangerous, the owner is liable without proof of carelessness. Without that history, you can still sue for negligence if the bite was reasonably foreseeable.
Only if your share is greater than everyone else's combined. Since the 2015 statute, a victim found 40 percent at fault recovers 60 percent of the damages, and one found 50 percent at fault recovers half. At 51 percent the claim is barred. The defense has the burden of proving your fault, and assumption of risk is weighed as part of it rather than as a complete bar.
Generally until two years after turning 18, so the twentieth birthday, because section 55-2-15 pauses the two year limit during minority. That holds even against a county or city, because in 1993 the Supreme Court of Appeals held that the shorter clock for minors in the government claims law cannot deny them that pause. Parents who paid the medical bills should ask a lawyer about their own deadline right away.
Not through a lawsuit of your own. In Durham v. Jenkins the Supreme Court of Appeals held that the vicious dog statute is criminal and gives private citizens no civil action to have a dog destroyed. An order to kill a dog comes out of a criminal case, so report the attack to the dog warden, humane officer, or sheriff and ask the prosecutor to act. Your claim for money damages is unaffected.
Two caps can apply. Punitive damages need clear and convincing proof of malice or outrageous indifference and are limited to the greater of four times compensatory damages or $500,000. If a county, city, or school board is the defendant, pain and suffering is capped at $500,000 per person and punitive damages are not allowed.
The treating provider must report it to the local health department within 24 hours, and if no provider saw you, the duty falls on you or, for a child, on a parent. The owner must confine the dog for ten days of rabies observation, and if the owner refuses, the dog warden, humane officer, or sheriff can have it held by a veterinarian at the owner's cost.
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