A dog bit someone: what the law says in five countries
Italy, France, Germany, Spain and California all make the keeper of an animal answer for a bite without proof of carelessness. They disagree about who counts as the keeper, what the escape route is, and whether the rule covers anything other than a dog and a bite.
The problem
A dog bites someone walking past the gate, or a cat scratches a car, or an animal gets out and causes an accident. The owner says the animal has never done anything like it before, that it got loose, that it was provoked, and that none of it is their fault. The person who was bitten wants to know who pays for the hospital visit and the repair.
What they agree on
Every system here answers the same way on the point people expect to be hardest: the keeper of the animal is liable without the injured person having to prove that the keeper did anything careless. There is no need to show the gate was badly latched, the lead was too long, or the dog was badly trained. The connection between the animal and the harm is what the claim rests on, and the keeper is the one who has to get out of it.
"It had never done that before" is not a defence in any of the five. California's Civil Code § 3342 puts it in the text — an owner is liable "regardless of the former viciousness of the dog or the owner's knowledge of such viciousness" — and the four European provisions get there by simply not asking the question. Nor does the animal having escaped help. Italy's art. 2052 makes the keeper answer "sia che fosse sotto la sua custodia, sia che fosse smarrito o fuggito"; France's art. 1243 says "soit que l'animal fût sous sa garde, soit qu'il fût égaré ou échappé"; Spain's art. 1905 says "aunque se le escape o extravíe". Three codes, one sentence, in the same words.
None of these provisions is the rule about leads, muzzles, microchips or dangerous-breed registers. Those obligations come from administrative law and local by-laws in every one of the five, and breaking them is a separate matter from paying for the injury. Nor does any of them decide the criminal side, or what happens to the animal afterwards. And in all five the size of the claim — medical evidence, witnesses, the account of how the encounter actually happened — is where the case is really decided, which is why a concrete incident belongs with a lawyer in that country rather than with a page like this one.
Where they part company
| Jurisdiction | What its law does | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Italia | The Italian and Spanish texts describe the exit as a switch: liability applies "salvo" the caso fortuito, or "sólo cesará" on force majeure or the victim's fault. The German page, by contrast, treats the victim's own conduct through § 254 as a reduction, not an escape. | Whether provoking a dog wipes the claim out or trims it is a different question with a different answer. In Germany a person who touched a strange animal without permission or approached a leashed dog carelessly should expect the award to be cut. In Italy and Spain the same conduct is argued as the thing that severs the link altogether, and it has to be established as such — it is not an automatic outcome in either. |
| Deutschland | Germany is the only one of the five where the answer changes according to what the animal is for. § 833 sentence 1 is strict liability for the keeper. Sentence 2 then removes it where the damage was caused by a domestic animal "das dem Beruf, der Erwerbstätigkeit oder dem Unterhalt des Tierhalters zu dienen bestimmt ist" — a working animal — and the keeper either observed the care required in dealings or shows the damage would have happened even with that care. | The family dog, the cat and the leisure riding horse get no exculpation at all. A farm dog, a herd animal or a draught animal does. The same bite can therefore produce two different legal questions in Germany depending on the animal's role in the keeper's life or livelihood, and nothing equivalent exists in the Italian, French, Spanish or Californian text. |
| Germany also picks a different defendant. § 833 attaches to the Tierhalter — the person who keeps the animal on a lasting basis, in their own interest and with their own power of decision — not to whoever happens to be holding the lead. The person who has taken the animal on to handle is dealt with separately by § 834, and that person has an exculpation the keeper does not. | Italy, France and Spain put the temporary handler inside the same article: "chi se ne serve per il tempo in cui lo ha in uso", "celui qui s'en sert, pendant qu'il est à son usage", "el que se sirve de él". So a dog walker, a holiday sitter or someone riding another person's horse is squarely within the strict rule in those three and outside § 833 in Germany. Suing the wrong person is a real risk in a cross-border case. | |
| España | Article 1905 fixes the liability on the poseedor — the possessor — rather than on the owner, and names exactly two ways out: the damage came from force majeure, or from the fault of the person who suffered it ("culpa del que lo hubiese sufrido"). | It is the shortest and most closed list of the five. Italy's art. 2052 uses one open-textured category instead — "salvo che provi il caso fortuito" — which is wide enough to take in the victim's own reckless conduct but is not limited to it. France's art. 1243 names no exception whatever on its face. Reading the four European texts side by side, what actually differs is not whether the keeper is strictly liable but how much room the article leaves them to argue. |
| California | § 3342 is not an animal-liability rule. It is a dog rule and a bite rule. The section covers "any person who is bitten by the dog", and its own page is explicit that a dog which knocks a cyclist over or frightens someone into the road falls outside it and back onto ordinary negligence under § 1714. | The four European provisions cover any animal and any damage from it. Italian art. 2052 answers for a horse out of a paddock causing a road accident and for a pet destroying a vegetable garden with the same sentence. In California those situations are a different claim with a different standard, which is why the strictness of § 3342 is narrower than its reputation. |
| California makes the victim's status a condition of the claim rather than a defence to it. Subdivision (a) requires the person to have been "in a public place or lawfully in a private place, including the property of the owner", and then defines lawful presence on the owner's own land to include being there in performance of a duty imposed by state law or by United States postal regulations, or on the owner's express or implied invitation. | The postal carrier and the meter reader are inside the section by name. A trespasser is outside it, and the claimant carries that point as part of their own case. In Italy, France and Spain the injured person proves nothing about why they were there; the keeper raises their conduct, and has to prove it. | |
| California is the only one with a written carve-out for public authorities. Subdivisions (b) to (d) bar an action against a governmental agency using a dog in police or military work in defined circumstances — but only where the agency has adopted a written policy on such use, and never where the victim was not a party to, participant in, or suspected of the acts that prompted the dog's use. | The exemption is conditional on the agency's own paperwork existing, and it collapses entirely for a bystander. No comparable provision appears in the Italian, French, German or Spanish articles, where a public keeper is a keeper like any other. |
The provision in each country
Each card links to the page that reproduces the official text and explains it in that country's own language.
Where there is no answer in the code
A jurisdiction listed here is a finding, not a gap. Either its answer lives outside the corpus — special legislation, case law, municipal rules — or its law simply has no such rule.
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United Kingdom
In law we don't carry
Animals Act 1971
Dog attacks in England and Wales are governed by the Animals Act 1971 and the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Neither is among the Acts this section carries — the UK corpus here holds the Children Act 1989, the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Housing Act 1988, the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, the Partnership Act 1890 and TOLATA 1996 — so there is no section to place beside the other five.
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New York
In law we don't carry
Agriculture and Markets Law
New York's dog-bite rule lives in the Agriculture and Markets Law and in case law about an animal's vicious propensities. The New York corpus behind these pages covers the Domestic Relations Law, the General Obligations Law, the Partnership Law and the Real Property Law, none of which contains an animal-liability provision. The absence is a limit of the corpus, not a finding that New York has no rule.
That's the law in seven places. Now let's settle your problem.
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This page compares provisions of several legal systems in general terms and links to the official text of each. It is not legal advice, it does not tell you which country's law governs your situation, and it takes no account of the circumstances of your case. For a live dispute, consult a qualified lawyer in the jurisdiction concerned.