Police Dogs, Animal Control and Governmental Immunity

If a police dog bites you, the dog-bite statute does not help you against the police department. Michigan’s immunity act shields cities, counties and the state from “tort liability” when they are carrying out a governmental function, and the courts have held that a dog-bite claim is tort liability and that running a police department or an animal shelter is a governmental function. The statute that makes private owners liable without fault says nothing about the government, and the courts will not read it as a waiver of immunity.

That leaves the individual officer or employee. A government employee is personally liable only for gross negligence, which the statute defines as conduct so reckless that it shows a substantial lack of concern for whether someone is hurt, and only if that conduct was the cause of the injury. A bite by a leashed, muzzled, trained dog that “spun” or “slipped” is not gross negligence; the courts have said so repeatedly. A dog that was deliberately sent to bite a suspect is a different matter entirely: that is a use of force, judged as an intentional act, and the officer is immune unless the deployment was malicious.

There are two openings. First, an animal-control agency that has turned its operation into a revenue source, or ceded its enforcement to a donor with a no-kill agenda, may be engaged in a “proprietary function,” which the immunity act does not protect; a 2025 decision let a wrongful-death claim against Detroit Animal Care and Control go forward to discovery on exactly that theory. Second, where an agency’s employees knew a particular dog was dangerous and still returned it to the street, the gross-negligence route against those employees is live, and that same decision let it proceed. These cases are hard and must be pleaded correctly from the first filing.

The statute does not abrogate the GTLA. The Governmental Tort Liability Act provides that “a governmental agency is immune from tort liability if the governmental agency is engaged in the exercise or discharge of a governmental function,” except as the act itself provides. MCL 691.1407(1). In Tate v. City of Grand Rapids, 256 Mich. App. 656 (2003), a police tracking dog ran at a bystander who had knelt with his arms over his head and bit his shoulder despite the handler’s repeated commands to heel. The plaintiff argued that strict liability under MCL 287.351 is not “tort liability.” The Court of Appeals disagreed: “M.C.L. § 287.351 does not itself establish liability for dog bites; rather, it merely replaces the negligence standard applicable to the existing common law tort (liability imposed regarding an animal known to be vicious) with a strict liability standard (liability imposed regardless of such knowledge),” and “[t]he GTLA unambiguously grants immunity from all tort liability, i.e., all civil wrongs for which legal responsibility is recognized, regardless of how the legal responsibility is determined, except as otherwise provided in the GTLA.” Id. at 660–661. The officers were engaged in a governmental function because “the focus must be on the general activity, not the specific conduct involved at the time of the tort,” and investigating a felonious assault is a governmental activity even though the dog disobeyed its handler. Id. at 661. Chief Judge Whitbeck added that immunity is abrogated only by express enactment or necessary inference, and the dog-bite statute neither mentions government nor defines “owner” to include it. Id. at 663–664 (Whitbeck, C.J., concurring).

The Supreme Court has since defined “tort liability” in the GTLA as encompassing “all legal responsibility arising from noncontractual civil wrongs for which a remedy may be obtained in the form of compensatory damages,” and in doing so said of Tate that “[w]e do not necessarily disagree with Tate’s general understanding of the phrase ‘tort liability,'” only that its definition was “incomplete.” In re Bradley Estate, 494 Mich. 367, 381, 397–398 (2013). A statutory dog-bite claim is a noncontractual civil wrong remedied by compensatory damages, so Tate‘s conclusion stands on the Supreme Court’s own definition. Every later decision applies it. Mondak v. Taylor Police Department (2017) (unpublished); Alexander v. City of Detroit (2022) (unpublished) (the statute “neither defines ‘owner of the dog’ nor mentions the state or its political subdivisions”); Richardson v. Oakland County Animal Shelter (2020) (unpublished) (“There is no statutory exception to governmental immunity pertaining to dangerous animals in the possession of a governmental agency. However reasonable or beneficial such an exception might be, it does not exist in Michigan”); Lynum v. Detroit Police Department (2023) (unpublished); Mata v. Van Buren County (2021) (unpublished); Graff v. City of Lincoln Park (E.D. Mich. 2026). Common-law negligence and vicarious-liability claims against the agency fall with the statutory claim. Mondak; Tate.

Animal control is a governmental function. “[P]rotection of the public from vicious, dangerous or diseased animals is a nonproprietary governmental function,” and a pound master’s decisions whether a dog is vicious and how to dispose of it are discretionary; a willful failure to impound a dog after complaints is not an intentional tort or a nuisance. Christopher v. Baynton, 141 Mich. App. 309, 311–314 (1985) (mail carrier mauled by a dog the city had been warned about). A municipal shelter’s foster-placement program for impounded dogs is impliedly authorized by the animal-control ordinance and is therefore a governmental function. Alexander. Police responding to an attack in progress owe no private duty to the victim absent a special relationship, and a toddler cannot have relied on them. Goree v. City of Grand Rapids (1999) (unpublished) (public-duty doctrine).

On-duty officers and firefighters. A police officer bitten by another agency’s K-9 during an arrest has no claim at all: MCL 600.2966 immunizes governmental agencies and employees from all tort liability for injuries to police officers and firefighters that arise from the normal, inherent and foreseeable risks of the profession, without regard to gross negligence, and the dog-bite statute is not an exception to it any more than to the GTLA. Mata.

Gross negligence that is the proximate cause. A governmental employee acting within the scope of authority in the course of employment is immune unless “the officer’s, employee’s, member’s, or volunteer’s conduct amount[s] to gross negligence that is the proximate cause of the injury or damage.” MCL 691.1407(2)(c). Gross negligence is “conduct so reckless as to demonstrate a substantial lack of concern for whether an injury results.” MCL 691.1407(8)(a). The decisions apply the standard strictly. Two K-9 officers who ran leashed dogs through a fireworks crowd in pursuit of suspects, on their shortest leashes with choker collars and K-9 identification, were not grossly negligent when one dog bit a bystander’s leg in passing; “short of barring all police dogs from public events,” the court could not see what the plaintiff would have had them do. Mondak. A handler who took his K-9 to the veterinarian muzzled and leashed and held it on the floor in a headlock, the technician’s own preferred method, was not grossly negligent when the dog slipped the muzzle and bit her arm; a different muzzle or a shorter leash “at best, would only amount to ordinary negligence.” Lynum. A handler who left his K-9 on its bed in a keycard-secured office was not grossly negligent when a fellow officer brought his three-year-old through the back door and the dog bit her. Graff. Shelter employees who took two minutes to reach an inmate worker being attacked in a kennel, and had not provided protective gear, were not grossly negligent. Richardson.

A statutory count against the officer is self-defeating. The dog-bite statute imposes “liability without fault,” so a claim under it “amount[s] to an assertion that the officers should be held liable for their mere ownership of the dog, without regard to their conduct,” and alleges no gross negligence at all; the officers were immune from it as a matter of law. Mondak. The claim against the individual is pleaded as gross negligence with specific facts, or it is nothing.

Off duty is still in the course of employment. A K-9 handler responsible for the dog around the clock was acting in the course of employment when the dog bit a visitor at his vacation cottage two and a half hours from the county, because the county “expressly and unequivocally placed that responsibility on [him] as a condition of his employment” and the dog “is not equivalent to a patrol vehicle that can simply be left unattended.” Foster v. Szlaga (2016) (unpublished) (over a dissent that would have required discovery on whether the handler was in fact required to keep the dog with him). A handler taking the dog to its annual checkup was likewise in the course of employment. Lynum. The Foster dissent is the plaintiff’s discovery plan: the department’s K-9 policy, the handler’s actual obligations, and whether the department required or merely permitted the dog’s presence.

The handler is not the statutory “owner.” The statute reaches “the owner of the dog,” and the courts have declined to treat a handler who possesses, keeps and cares for a department’s dog as its owner. “We find nothing in the plain language of the statute that would support an interpretation that simply possessing, keeping, and taking care of a dog constitutes ownership for purposes of MCL 287.351(1).” Foster. Where the department testified that it owned the dog, the plaintiff’s bare assertion that the handler was the “constructive owner” did not create a fact question, Foster; Graff (city’s earlier litigation statement that it was “not the owner,” offered without record support, given no weight). The point is academic in practice: an owner-handler would still be immune from the statutory claim unless grossly negligent, Mondak, so the gross-negligence count is the claim in either event. See Chapter 5.

Deliberate deployment is an intentional tort. When an officer intentionally releases a dog on a resisting suspect, the claim is assault and battery, governed by the good-faith immunity of Odom v. Wayne County, 482 Mich. 459 (2008). “A police officer’s decisions regarding how to respond to a citizen, how to safely defuse a situation, and how to effectuate the lawful arrest of a citizen who resists are also clearly discretionary,” and “[a]n action may lie only if the officer has utilized wanton or malicious conduct or demonstrated a reckless indifference to the common dictates of humanity.” Norris v. Lincoln Park Police Officers, 292 Mich. App. 574, 579 (2011). The deployment on a motorist who had driven at 80 miles an hour on a rim and kicked an officer was discretionary police judgment, and “[e]lements of intentional torts may not be transformed into gross negligence claims.” Id. at 581–582. Norris governs an admitted intentional deployment; it does not reach the accidental or uncommanded bite, which is analyzed under the gross-negligence standard above. Estate of Stanley-Jones v. Weekley (2018) (unpublished) (distinguishing Norris).

Proprietary function. The GTLA does not immunize “actions to recover for bodily injury or property damage arising out of the performance of a proprietary function,” defined as “any activity which is conducted primarily for the purpose of producing a pecuniary profit for the governmental agency, excluding, however, any activity normally supported by taxes or fees.” MCL 691.1413. In Phillips v. City of Detroit (2025) (unpublished), a man walking home from work was killed by three roaming dogs that Detroit Animal Care and Control had known since 2021 to be dangerous (at least three prior bites, including a five-year-old; an investigator’s dangerous-dog determination) and had nonetheless returned to their owners. The complaint alleged that DACC, dependent on funding from a nonprofit and its national no-kill affiliates, had ceded enforcement in exchange for pecuniary benefit and collected fines from reckless owners rather than enforcing the ordinances. The Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of the city’s pre-discovery motion: the allegations were sufficient to plead the proprietary-function exception, “the mere fact that animal care and control, writ large, may be a governmental function does not mean that the proprietary-function exception cannot apply to how that function is—or is not—being performed in this case,” and the city’s loss-operation affidavit, offered only in reply and covering the wrong years, could not be tested before discovery. In Alexander, where a fostered shelter dog bit a visitor to the foster home, the court affirmed an order for limited discovery into adoption fees and the nonprofit arrangement before immunity was decided, and held that the plaintiff’s failure to plead the exception was curable by amendment as of course because no answer had been filed.

Gross negligence of animal-control employees who knew. Phillips also held that allegations that named employees knew of repeated prior bites and a prior dangerous-dog determination and still declined to enforce the ordinances sufficiently pleaded gross negligence, and that the court could not say as a matter of law that the dog owners rather than the employees were “the proximate cause”: the dogs themselves cannot be the proximate cause, and an owner’s negligence does not automatically render the governmental actor too remote. The decision is a prematurity ruling and decides nothing on the merits, but it is the roadmap for the fatal-attack and repeat-offender cases, and it is the answer to Christopher‘s “discretionary” rule, which predates the 1986 amendments that replaced the discretionary/ministerial test with the gross-negligence standard.

Federal claims. A commanded bite in the course of an arrest is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment and is judged for reasonableness; an uncommanded bite is not a seizure at all, because a seizure requires force “intentionally applied.” Dunigan v. Noble, 390 F.3d 486, 493 (6th Cir. 2004) (bystander pushed toward a tracking dog that bit her three times; no seizure by the handler). A municipal failure-to-train claim requires a prior pattern of constitutional violations, and a handler’s management of a dog inside a secured police building is not governed by clearly established excessive-force law. Graff. The federal route is for the deliberate-deployment case with a bad arrest or a documented pattern, not for the accidental bite.