Brokers: Is your client’s dog “friendly?”

When two dog owners pass each other while walking their dogs, it is common to hear one ask of the other’s dog, “Friendly?”

Perhaps that’s what personal lines home insurance brokers should be asking their dog-owning clients, since lawsuits against owners of dogs who bite could have an impact on their home insurance.

“Under certain circumstances any dog can bite, no matter the breed or the size,” Gabriel Lessard of Gluckstein Personal Injury Lawyers writes in a blog post on Mondaq. “In fact, it has been reported that there are about 500,000 dog bites each year in this country, and children are most likely to be the victims.

“These bites can cause serious injuries requiring medical attention, such as shots, stitches, physical rehabilitation and even surgery. An attack can be traumatizing, leaving life-long emotional scars.”

In a recent case from B.C., Rae v. Gadalla, the Supreme Court of B.C. observed the amounts injured people are receiving for dog bites. The typical range of awards go from around $2,500 for superficial wounds that resolve quickly up to between $30,000 and $55,000 for more serious bites that leave permanent emotional or physical scars.

Economical confirms on its website that a home insurance policy covers dog owners for liability arising from dog bites. But beware of caveats to the policy, the carrier warns:

“Depending on your insurer and your policy, there may be some cases where dog bites aren’t covered — if your dog has a history of biting or is categorized as a ‘high-risk’ breed, for example. Every insurer has its own rules (and some don’t list exceptions like these at all), so you should always contact your insurance company if your dog bites someone.”

Rae v. Gadalla takes a detailed look at what it means for the dog owners to know their dog is predisposed to biting someone.

First of all, the law assumes dogs are harmless. If they bite someone, the owners are not necessarily liable unless they had advanced knowledge their dog would bite.

“The doctrine of scienter presumes that domesticated animals, such as dogs, are harmless, and liability requires proof that a defendant actually knew, prior to the events underlying a claim, that the animal in question had the propensity to cause the type of damage that it did to the plaintiff,” as B.C. Supreme Court Justice Warren Milman explains in Rae v. Gadalla.

Related: This kind of homeowner’s liability claim has real teeth

In October 2018, Robert Rae, who was 83 at the time, took the elevator in his condo building when he ran into a feisty Yorkshire Terrier named Flex. The dog’s owners, Dr. Samir Hanna Gadalla and his wife, Rofah Boulis Abdel-Malik, had Flex on a leash in the elevator. Nonetheless, Flex barked at Rae throughout the rise and bit him on the back of his lower left leg as he was leaving the elevator.

The court heard conflicting reports of what happened in the elevator. Rae said the dog barked at him and bit him as he was leaving the elevator. The dog owners unsuccessfully argued Rae had accidentally stepped on Flex in the elevator, provoking the attack.

Rae testified his wound did not heal right away. Court documents show it became swollen and infected. Two weeks later, Rae went to hospital. In all, the wound had largely healed in four months. But the injury prevented him from resuming his exercise routine in the gym for the next three months. And he was unable to go swimming in the pool for the next six months.

Rae sought between $30,000 and $35,000 in compensation. The court awarded him $5,000, noting that the high-end dog-bite awards tended to be when children were involved and for serious and permanent physical disfigurement and psychological injuries.

But the court agreed that the dog-owners knew Flex’s biting history, based on encounters with two witnesses who testified about their encounters with Flex. One had said that Flex bit him as he was leaving the elevator; the other said Flex lunged at him while they were passing in the hallway, baring his teeth.

“I agree with Mr. Rae that the defendants had both actual and constructive knowledge of Flex’s propensity to behave in that manner,” Justice Milman wrote. “Such knowledge came to them through the events described by Mr. Tian and Mr. Rabey, which the defendants, I am satisfied, must have discussed with one another around the time they occurred.”

Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/Liliboas