Bitten by a dog while working with rescue animals in New York: two tracks, and which one your employer closes

Attorney Answer

A dog attack on the job puts you on two tracks. Workers' compensation pays treatment and lost wages without proof of fault, and it is generally your only remedy against your employer. A separate claim against the dog's owner or custodian exists only where that person is someone other than your employer — and at a rescue organization, that is the question that decides the case.

The compensation track has two deadlines that start the day of the attack. Workers' Compensation Law § 18 requires notice of the injury to the employer within thirty days after the accident, in writing, stating the time, place, nature and cause of the injury; the same section lets the Workers' Compensation Board excuse a failure to give that notice, including where the employer or the employee's immediate supervisor already knew about the accident, or where the employer has not been prejudiced. Workers' Compensation Law § 28 sets the outside limit: the right to claim compensation is barred unless a claim is filed with the chair within two years after the accident, subject to the exceptions the section itself carries.

The second track is New York's dog law, and the statute to know is Agriculture and Markets Law § 123, headed "Dangerous dogs." It builds a court proceeding: a person who witnesses an attack may complain to a dog control officer, a police officer, or a municipal judge or justice, who must hold a hearing and decide by clear and convincing evidence whether the animal is a dangerous dog — and, if so, may order evaluation and training, humane confinement, leashing, muzzling in public, or a liability policy. Its liability provisions matter more here than its remedies. Subdivision 10 makes the owner or lawful custodian of a dangerous dog strictly liable for the medical costs resulting from injury the dog causes to a person, except in the circumstances subdivisions four and eleven describe. Subdivisions six and seven add civil penalties where an owner negligently permits a dog to bite and cause physical injury. And subdivision 12 preserves everything else: nothing in the section limits or abrogates a claim a person injured by a dog with a vicious disposition or vicious propensity may have at common law, and the section's remedies are in addition to those.

That common-law claim — which turns on the animal's vicious propensities and on the owner's knowledge of them — is judge-made. Two features of your situation will drive it. The first is who the "owner or lawful custodian" was at the moment of the attack: if that was the organization employing you, compensation exclusivity likely stands between you and a suit, while an outside owner who surrendered or boarded the dog does not. The second is that New York courts have developed limits on claims by people whose work is handling animals, and how those limits reach a rescue worker is a contested question that needs a lawyer, not a page. What does not defeat the claim is a share of the blame: CPLR 1411(a) provides that culpable conduct attributable to the claimant, including contributory negligence or assumption of risk, does not bar recovery, and that damages are diminished in proportion to that conduct.

What you can do

1. Put the injury in writing to your employer and keep a dated copy — § 18 measures notice from the date of the attack.

2. Make sure every treatment record states that the bite happened at work.

3. Write down who owned the dog, who surrendered it, who had custody that day, and what anyone had said about the animal's history beforehand.

4. Ask whether an animal-control or police report was made and get the report number; a prior complaint about the same dog is powerful evidence.

5. Photograph the injuries over time and keep the bills and wage records.

6. Have a New York attorney who handles both compensation and animal cases decide whether a non-employer owner or custodian exists here.

⏱ Time limits apply. Workers' Compensation Law § 18 sets notice to the employer at thirty days after the accident, and Workers' Compensation Law § 28 bars a claim not filed with the chair within two years after the accident. A personal-injury action against a dog's owner or custodian who is not your employer runs separately under CPLR 214(5), "an action to recover damages for a personal injury except as provided in sections 214-b, 214-c, 214-i and 215," three years from the date of the attack. All run from the day you were bitten, and each carries exceptions in the statute itself. Which applies to you depends on facts this page does not have. Have a New York attorney check the dates against your own record now.