Florida Dog Bite Law FirmA loose dog runs at you. You put a hand out, step back off a kerb, and land badly. A fractured wrist, a broken hip, a concussion. The dog never touched you with its teeth.
Somebody — often the owner, sometimes an adjuster, occasionally a lawyer who only glanced at it — tells you that Florida’s dog bite law does not apply because you were not bitten.
The first half of that is right. The conclusion is wrong, because Florida has a second dog statute, and it is not about bites at all.
Florida has two dog statutes, not one
Almost everything written about Florida dog law is about § 767.04, the bite statute. It opens with “the owner of any dog that bites any person,” and if no bite occurred, it does not engage.
Sitting alongside it is a shorter, older provision:
“Any damage done by the owner’s dog to a person.” Not any bite. The word that limits § 767.04 is simply absent here.
That single difference is why a knockdown, a trip, a collision, or a fall caused by a dog sits inside Florida’s statutory scheme rather than outside it.
What this looks like in practice
The injuries that come through this door are frequently worse than bite injuries, because falls break things that teeth do not:
- A dog charges a cyclist on a shared path; the rider goes down at speed
- A large dog jumps up on an older person on a sidewalk, causing a hip fracture
- A dog on a retractable lead cuts across a runner’s legs
- A loose dog runs at a pedestrian who steps into the road to avoid it
- A dog lunges and pulls its handler into someone
- A dog bolts through an open gate and collides with a passer-by
- Someone falls on stairs or a kerb backing away from an advancing dog
Broken wrists, hips, shoulders, and ankles. Head injuries. In older adults, a hip fracture is a life-altering event, and it very often begins with a dog that never bit anyone.
Why most states leave you worse off here
This is the part worth understanding, because it explains why the advice you were given may have come from somewhere reasonable — just not from Florida.
Michigan’s dog bite statute, MCL 287.351, is bite-only. So are many others. In those states a knockdown falls out of the statute entirely and back onto ordinary common-law negligence, where you must prove the owner was careless. That is a real burden: it means proving what the owner knew, what they should have done, and that they failed to do it.
Florida wrote a statute that reaches further. If you were told you have no claim because there was no bite, that advice describes how it works in a lot of places. It does not describe Florida.
What you still have to prove
Be clear-eyed about this, because the internet is not.
Section 767.01 says what it says: the owner is liable for any damage done by the dog. What it does not do is spell out, on its face, how much you must show about the owner’s conduct — and how Florida courts apply that language to a given set of facts is a legal question, not something to settle from the text alone.
What that means for you practically: do not assume you have no case, and do not assume the case proves itself. Both errors are common and both are expensive. The claim is real, the statute is real, and how it is pleaded matters. That is a conversation to have about your specific facts.
What is not in doubt:
- The damages are the same. Medical bills, lost income, future care, pain and suffering, and permanent impairment are recoverable for a fracture caused by a dog exactly as they would be for one caused by a bite.
- The insurance is the same. These claims are typically paid by the owner’s homeowners or renters policy, the same policy that would respond to a bite.
- The sign defense does not travel. The “Bad Dog” sign provision lives inside § 767.04 and is written around a dog that bites. It is not part of § 767.01.
- The deadline is the same, and it is short.
The deadline
Non-bite cases tend to be reported late, because people do not think of a fall as a “dog case” until months have passed and the medical bills have arrived. By then witnesses have moved, the dog’s owner may have moved, and any animal control record has gone cold. More on the deadline and why it is contested.
What to document
Non-bite cases live or die on proving the dog caused the fall, because there is no wound tying the two together. A bite is self-evidencing. A fractured wrist is not.
- Say the dog caused it, out loud, to the first medical professional you see. “I fell” and “a dog ran at me and I fell” produce very different medical records, and that record is often the single most persuasive document in the case.
- Photograph the scene — the path, the gate, the kerb, where the dog came from, where you landed.
- Identify the dog and the owner if you possibly can. Photograph the dog, the address, the vehicle, anything.
- Get witness names and numbers on the spot. People who stop to help will not be findable next week.
- Report it to animal control, even without a bite. It creates a dated, independent record that the dog was loose or out of control.
- Keep the damaged items — the bike, the helmet, the torn clothing, the broken glasses.
If you were told you have no case
Get a second look. The statute that covers you is not the one everybody writes about, and being told “no bite, no claim” is one of the most common ways a legitimate Florida claim quietly dies.
It costs nothing to describe what happened and find out whether § 767.01 reaches it.