California Dog Bite Laws

Knowing and respecting the dog bite laws is very important all over the world. Now let抯 bring it home to California. In California dog owner is liable for the damages suffered by individual who is bitten by the dog while in a school, public place, or lawfully in a private place. The owner of the dog is also liable even if the dog bites on the dog owner抯 property.

Whether owner new the dog was vicious or not it does not matter. A person is considered to be lawfully upon the private property when he is on the property in the performance of any duty imposed upon him by the laws of the State of California or by the laws or postal regulations of the United States, and also when the person on the private property on invitation from the property owner, the invitation could be expressed or implied.

It should be noted that if someone break into a private home and bitten by a dog would not have a cause of action. If your dog rushes off and bites a person knocking on your door and bites the person that is there for the purpose of converting you to his or her religion or may be to sell you a subscription to a television satellite code, then you will not have a cause of action, because of implied invitation. If you live in a house apartment that is fence locked or just closed and putting up a sign that advising that no one is invited implied or expressly then you are unlikely to be liable of any dog bite or attack, although exceptions to this rule also apply.

Still under the California law if you are bitten by a dog on where you have a right to be, you automatically win on liability, it will only require of proving damages. If you are bitten by a dog after ignoring a sign that says no invitation is made to enter my property expressly or impliedly then a different standard applies. The standard is one of negligence, was the owner's conduct reasonable.

It is not probably reasonable training an attack dog to attack any human being upon entering the property. Because there should also be the mail man exception, the mail man has to drop off the owner's mail and if he抯 bitten by your dog would have a lawsuit against the dog owner, regardless if there is a sign in there or not.

A vital way to avoid liability if you are a dog owner might be to put up a sign that says, that says 搕here is no implied invitation to this property, keep off, all others in consideration for entering this property you assume the risk of getting bitten by a dog? You should know that it would not eliminate the risk of liability for a dog biting a human being, especially if it is at night while there is no light on your sign, but otherwise if it is the day light while the sign can be read, it would help minimize or eliminate the liability.