Bitten by My Employer's Dog While Walking It

Attorney Answer

The dog's owner is also your employer, and that one fact decides which system your claim lives in — for an injury suffered while doing the job, the route against an employer is normally workers' compensation rather than an ordinary lawsuit. Walking the dog is work if walking the dog is part of what you are employed to do, and being bitten while doing it is a workplace injury even though the injury came from an animal rather than a machine.

Two sections set the compensation clocks. Workers' Compensation Law § 18 requires that notice of an injury for which compensation is payable be given to the employer within thirty days after the accident causing the injury, in writing, stating in ordinary language the time, place, nature and cause of the injury; the section also describes the grounds on which the board may excuse a failure to give that notice, including the employer's own knowledge of the accident or the absence of prejudice. Workers' Compensation Law § 28 bars the right to claim compensation unless a claim is filed with the chairman within two years after the accident, subject to the waiver the section itself describes. Four separate bites means four dates, and each one should be reported and recorded on its own rather than folded into a single vague complaint.

The rule that generally makes workers' compensation the exclusive route against an employer is described here in general terms — but it is the reason a bite by the boss's dog does not automatically become a suit against the boss. Whether an employee bitten by an employer's animal can also proceed against that person in another capacity, such as an owner of property or of the animal outside the employment, is exactly the question to put to a New York attorney with the facts in hand.

The dog statute still matters to that analysis. Agriculture and Markets Law § 123(10) provides: "The owner or lawful custodian of a dangerous dog shall, except in the circumstances enumerated in subdivisions four and eleven of this section, be strictly liable for medical costs resulting from injury caused by such dog to a person, companion animal, farm animal or domestic animal." And subdivision 12 provides: "Nothing contained in this section shall limit or abrogate any claim or cause of action any person who is injured by a dog with a vicious disposition or a vicious propensity may have under common law or by statute." The common-law rule that sentence preserves — responsibility where the animal had a known propensity to do what it did — is judge-made, and a dog that has bitten the same person four times is the kind of history it concerns.

If someone other than your employer is responsible — a household member who owns the dog, a property owner, another business — a separate action may exist, and CPLR 214 gives three years for "an action to recover damages for a personal injury except as provided in sections 214-b, 214-c, 214-i and 215". Which of these routes is yours is not something to decide alone, because pursuing the wrong one first can cost the other.

What you can do

1. Report each bite to your employer in writing, with the date, place and circumstances of each, and keep a dated copy.

2. Get medical treatment for every bite, including the ones that looked minor; infection and nerve questions in a hand or arm are time-sensitive.

3. Ask whether your employer carries workers' compensation coverage, and get the carrier's name and any claim number.

4. Keep the records that show this was work — your schedule, pay records, and any message asking you to walk the dog.

5. Take all of it to a New York attorney before you accept payment of a medical bill from your employer or sign anything about the incidents.

⏱ Time limits apply. Workers' Compensation Law § 18 keys its thirty-day notice to the accident causing the injury, § 28 keys the two-year claim period to the same date, and CPLR 214(5) sets three years for an action against someone who is not your employer. With four separate bites there are four sets of dates, and which period governs which claim depends on facts a page cannot see. Do not count from a calendar yourself — bring the dates and the medical records to a New York attorney promptly.