Insurance Coverage for Dog Bites

The dog-bite statute makes the owner liable for all of the victim’s damages, but most owners cannot pay a serious claim themselves. What makes the claim worth pursuing is the owner’s homeowners or renters insurance, which covers the owner’s legal liability for bodily injury to others, including injury caused by the family dog, up to the policy limit, and pays for the owner’s defense. A typical policy carries $100,000 to $500,000 in liability coverage and a small medical-payments benefit that pays a visitor’s medical bills regardless of fault.

Coverage is not automatic. The person who owned the dog has to be an insured under the policy, which usually means the named insured or a relative living in the household. A child bitten by the family’s own dog in the family’s own home is usually not covered, because policies exclude injury to insureds and the child is one. A bite at a rental house is not covered by the landlord’s policy on the landlord’s own home. A bite inflicted while the owner was using the dog in a business may fall under a business-pursuits exclusion. A bite at a car is a homeowners claim, not an auto claim, unless the injury had something to do with using the vehicle. And a growing number of policies exclude liability for dogs altogether, or for certain breeds, or for a dog that has bitten before.

Two rules protect the victim. The insurer that defends the owner without promptly reserving its right to deny coverage can be barred from denying it later. And a victim who obtains a judgment against the owner can enforce it directly against the owner’s insurer. The practical lesson is that the coverage investigation starts with the first phone call: identify every policy that could respond, including the landlord’s, the employer’s and the dog-sitter’s, and get the policy language, not the adjuster’s summary of it.

Resident relatives. Homeowners policies insure the named insured and, if residents of the household, relatives and dependents in the insured’s care. Whether the dog’s keeper resided in the named insured’s household is a question of fact when the indicia point both ways. In Fremont Mutual Insurance Co. v. Stinnett (2001) (unpublished), a five-year-old was killed by a dog in the care of the named insured’s adult son at a house the mother owned and the son partly occupied; the son’s license and tax records bore his mother’s address, his fiancée paid the utilities and rent at the house where the dog was kept, and he kept clothes and received mail at both. The conflict in the son’s own sworn examination was enough to defeat summary disposition for either side and send residence to trial. Kinship alone is not residence: tenants who were the landlords’ relatives but lived under a different roof were not members of the landlords’ “household.” Fremont Mutual Insurance Co. v. Wisniewski (1997) (unpublished).

The insured-person exclusion. The standard policy excludes bodily injury to an insured, and a resident minor is an insured. In Allstate Insurance Co. v. Tomaszewski, 180 Mich. App. 616 (1989), an eight-year-old who lived with his mother and stepfather was bitten by the household dog and sued them. The Court of Appeals held that his status must be uniform under the policy, that “any relative and any dependent person in your care” describes two groups rather than two conditions, that “dependent” means factual rather than legal dependency, and that a stepchild is a “relative” of the stepfather; the child was an insured person and “the exclusion is controlling and coverage is unavailable.” Id. at 619–621. The intra-family claim the statute permits, Thelen v. Thelen, 174 Mich. App. 380 (1989) (Chapter 11), is therefore usually uncollectable against the household’s own carrier; the coverage inquiry is whether the child in fact resided elsewhere or whether a non-resident parent’s policy is implicated.

The premises. Liability coverage follows the insured, not the location, for most bites, but the policy’s definition of insured premises matters where a landlord or an absent owner is the target. A landlord’s policy on his own residence does not reach a bite at a separate rental house: the rental premises were not “insured premises,” the rental-property exclusion applied, and the tenant-relatives were not insureds. Wisniewski. The policy to find is the one covering the rental dwelling itself.

Organizations and events. An organization’s commercial general liability policy covers the organization and its officers acting as such, not the individual members. When greyhounds running at a field-trial club’s event attacked a man in a residential area, the club’s CGL carrier owed no defense to the member-owners; their homeowners policies were primary. Citizens Insurance Co. of America v. North Pointe Insurance Co. (2000) (unpublished). Sue both the organization and the owner, and tender to both carriers.

Bite at a car: homeowners, not auto. The homeowners policy excludes liability arising out of the use of a motor vehicle, and the auto policy covers it; the Court of Appeals holds that “the automobile liability coverage provision and the homeowners’ insurance exclusion are the corollary of each other,” so that one of the two policies applies and the only question is which. Century Mutual Insurance Co. v. League General Insurance Co., 213 Mich. App. 114, 117 (1995). A woman who leaned into the insureds’ car and was bitten by their dog had a homeowners claim, because the injury did not “arise out of” the use of the vehicle under the three-part test the court adopted: the accident must arise out of the inherent nature of the automobile as such; it must arise within the natural territorial limits of the automobile while its use has not terminated; and the automobile must not merely contribute to the condition that produces the injury but must itself produce it. Id. at 121. The car “was the mere situs of the injury,” and the only theory pleaded was the dog-bite statute. Id. at 121–122. The same result followed where a dog lunged through a partly open car window. Acea v. Automobile Club Insurance Ass’n (1997) (unpublished). The Court of Appeals treats Century Mutual as binding under MCR 7.215(J)(1) and applies its test to every “arising out of use” dispute. Grange Insurance Co. of Michigan v. MS Escort Truck Services, LLC (2018) (unpublished). For the victim, the holding cuts both ways: the homeowners carrier cannot invoke the vehicle exclusion for a bite that merely happened at a car, and a plaintiff who wants the auto policy (because the owner rents and has no homeowners coverage) must plead and prove a theory of negligent vehicle use, not just a bite.

Business pursuits. A bite inflicted while the owner was using a personal dog in the course of employment invites the business-pursuits and business-premises exclusions. In Home-Owners Insurance Co. v. Fourment (2017) (unpublished), the insureds’ dog bit a customer at the pet store where they worked, during a product demonstration; the carrier asserted both exclusions but was estopped (below), so their application was never decided. The employer’s CGL policy is the second target in that scenario, through the employer’s vicarious liability for its employees’ negligence. Ball v. Fourment (2017) (unpublished); see Chapter 5.

Intentional acts. The intentional-act exclusion requires an intent to cause the injury, not merely an intentional act, and intent is ordinarily a question of fact. The Supreme Court so held where an insured shot toward an approaching hunting dog intending to stop it, not to kill it: “it remained a question of fact as to whether in so doing he intended to destroy it.” Putman v. Zeluff, 372 Mich. 553, 556 (1964). The distinction matters when the defense is that the owner commanded or released the dog; coverage turns on what the owner intended to happen to the victim.

Animal and breed exclusions. Policies increasingly exclude or limit liability for animals, for listed breeds, or for a dog with a bite history, by endorsement. Michigan courts read animal exclusions literally; a first-party exclusion for loss caused by “animals owned or kept by any insured or tenant” applied regardless of the insured’s knowledge that the animals were there. Nolan v. Auto Owners Insurance Co. (2011) (unpublished). The endorsement, not the declarations page, answers the question, and the policy form in effect on the date of the bite is the one that governs.

A late reservation of rights forfeits the coverage defense. In Fourment, the homeowners carrier learned the facts of the pet-store bite within two weeks, offered the victim its $1,000 medical-payments coverage, defended its insureds for ten months without reserving rights, advised them of their $300,000 limits and their exposure above them, and only after an adverse case-evaluation award issued a coverage-position letter invoking the business-pursuits and premises exclusions. The Court of Appeals held that the carrier “failed to provide timely notice of its reservation of rights,” that its conduct “strikes us as unusually egregious,” that a presumption of prejudice arose which the carrier did not rebut, and that it was estopped from asserting its coverage defenses; summary disposition was ordered declaring a duty to defend and indemnify. The victim, as the insureds’ judgment creditor, “has the right to recover against Home-Owners to the same extent that the Fourments could recover” and may assert the estoppel herself. Fourment. The claim file, the date the carrier learned the operative facts, and every letter to the insured are discoverable and should be obtained in any case where coverage is denied after a defense has begun.

The victim’s rights against the insurer. Michigan does not permit the injured person to sue the liability insurer directly or to mention insurance in the action against the owner, MCL 500.3030, but a liability policy must provide that the insured’s insolvency does not release the insurer and that the judgment creditor may proceed against the insurer once judgment is entered. MCL 500.3006. The route is judgment against the owner, then an action or garnishment against the carrier for the amount within limits, and a declaratory action if coverage is disputed, in which the victim is a proper party. Fourment; Stinnett (estate as party to the insurer’s declaratory action); Wisniewski.

Landlord and tenant. A pet addendum under which the tenant indemnifies the landlord for “any and all claims arising out of” the pet’s presence is enforceable and is not an unlawful exculpatory clause under the Truth in Renting Act; a landlord that settled a common-area bite claim for $30,000 at case evaluation recovered it from the tenant, who had no renters insurance. Wendzel v. Feldstein (2015) (unpublished). For the victim, the clause explains why the landlord’s and tenant’s interests diverge in settlement, and the renters-insurance affirmation in a pet addendum does not create coverage that the tenant never bought.

Governmental dogs. A municipal self-insurance fund or liability pool does not waive the agency’s immunity; the coverage question does not arise unless a claim survives Chapter 10’s analysis.