Attacked in a park by a dog its owner set on you

Attorney Answer

Alabama's dog-bite statute almost certainly does not apply to this, and that is not bad news — what happened here is worse than a dog bite case.

Ala. Code § 3-6-1 looks at first like broad liability for a dog owner, and then the clause after “but” takes most of it away:

If any dog shall, without provocation, bite or injure any person who is at the time at a place where he or she has a legal right to be, the owner of such dog shall be liable in damages to the person so bitten or injured, but such liability shall arise only when the person so bitten or injured is upon property owned or controlled by the owner of such dog at the time such bite or injury occurs or when such person has been immediately prior to such time on such property and has been pursued therefrom by such dog.

The statute reaches a bite only on the owner's own property, or in pursuit from it. A public park is outside it entirely.

So the claim is not a statutory dog-bite claim. On what you describe it is an ordinary negligence claim about how the animal was controlled — and, more seriously, a claim founded on the owner directing the dog to attack. Setting an animal on someone is not negligence at all; it is intentional conduct, and that matters twice over, because contributory negligence is no defense to it.

Alabama still applies contributory negligence. If the claimant's own negligence helped cause the injury they recover nothing at all — not a reduced share. It is an affirmative defense the other side must prove, it needs more than simple heedlessness, and it is no defense to wanton conduct.

Expect the other side to say you provoked the dog or that handling two dogs yourself contributed. The command to attack, if it can be established, is what makes that argument far less powerful than it would otherwise be.

What you can do

1. Write down exactly what was said before the attack, and by whom, while the words are fresh. 2. Identify anyone who was in the park and saw or heard it. 3. Report it to animal control and to the police — setting a dog on a person is not only a civil matter. 4. Photograph every injury as it heals, and keep all treatment records including for the head injury. 5. Speak to an Alabama attorney promptly; the framing of this claim matters more than usual.

⏱ Time limits apply. Ala. Code § 6-2-38(l) gives two years: “all actions for any injury to the person or rights of another not arising from contract and not specifically enumerated in this section must be brought within two years.” Evidence goes sooner — footage is overwritten and memories fade — so the practical deadline is usually much earlier than the legal one.

An Alabama attorney can tell you quickly how the facts here line up, and most will look at a matter like this at no cost.