Every figure here is published third-party data with its source and year attached. Where a Florida-specific number does not exist, this page says so rather than substituting a national one.
Florida in 2025
The Insurance Information Institute and State Farm publish annual dog-related injury claim data. The 2025 figures, released April 2026:
| Florida | National | |
|---|---|---|
| Claims | 2,347 | 28,450 |
| Average cost per claim | $62,375 | $65,450 |
| Total paid | $146 million | $1.862 billion |
Florida ranks 2nd in the country by claim volume, behind California.
Source: Insurance Information Institute and State Farm, 2025 data, published April 2026.
Three things the table actually says
Florida’s average is below the national average. Second in the country by volume, and slightly below average by cost per claim. More claims, somewhat smaller average payouts.
The national average fell. Down 5.5% from $69,272 in 2024, while claim numbers rose more than 25%. Anyone describing dog bite settlements as climbing is not reading the current table.
These are insurance claims, not bites. A very large number of bites never become a claim — no insurance, no report, or nobody pursued it. The table is a floor, not a count.
The top ten, 2025
| Rank | State | Claims | Avg cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | 2,830 | $81,789 |
| 2 | Florida | 2,347 | $62,375 |
| 3 | Michigan | 1,432 | $68,018 |
| 4 | Ohio | 1,348 | $41,413 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | 1,324 | $68,786 |
| 6 | Texas | 1,313 | $70,885 |
| 7 | New York | 1,308 | $92,154 |
| 8 | Illinois | 1,283 | $79,596 |
| 9 | Indiana | 824 | $53,396 |
| 10 | New Jersey | 818 | $77,447 |
Read the framing correctly. This is a top-ten ranked by claim volume, with every remaining state aggregated into an “Other” row. It is not “the only ten states with data,” and it is regularly misreported that way.
What is not on this page
County-level Florida figures. Not published in this dataset. Claim volume broadly tracks population and density, but we are not going to invent a county breakdown that does not exist. What genuinely differs by county is the reporting process and the court, not a statistic.
Breed data. Deliberately. Beyond the methodological problems with breed identification in bite reporting, Florida law itself now assesses dangerousness by what an individual animal has done — local governments have been barred from regulating by breed, weight, or size since October 1, 2023.
Fatality figures for Florida. We have not sourced a reliable Florida-specific number and will not use a national figure as a state one.
What the average does not tell you
$62,375 blends a nipped finger that needed a tetanus shot with a child’s facial reconstruction. The distribution matters enormously and the published data does not show it.
Treat it as evidence that these claims are substantial, not as an estimate of any particular one. What actually drives value.