Published August 2026 · Data current as of publication date · By Jason Plotkin, Esq., Maryland Bar 2006, Managing Attorney, Pinder Plotkin Legal Team
Million Dollar Advocates Forum member (2018) · Clio Legal Impact Award (2021)
National data, Maryland law, and what victims actually need to know — answered directly. This free report combines national CDC and insurance-industry data with a primary-source review of Maryland’s dog bite statute to answer what a claim is worth, who is liable, and what Maryland’s rebuttable-presumption rule means for a case.
Written by Jason Plotkin, Esq., who was selected by the National Business Institute to teach a national CLE course on dog bite injury claims in August 2026, and who is a childhood dog bite survivor himself.
U.S. insurers paid $1.86 billion across 28,450 dog-related injury claims in 2025 — the average cost per claim has risen 97% over the preceding decade. Source: Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), 2026
This report combines national CDC, insurance-industry, and peer-reviewed medical data with a primary-source review of Maryland’s dog bite statute to answer the questions people search for after a bite happens: what the case is worth, who is liable, and what a Maryland-specific rule most people have never heard of — the rebuttable presumption — actually means for a claim.
We’re finishing a short video walking through this report — why U.S. insurers paid $1.86 billion across 28,450 dog-related injury claims in 2025 (an average of $65,450 per claim, up 97% over the prior decade), and why Maryland isn’t a “one-bite” state. Check back soon, or call (888) 844-5373 for a free case review in the meantime.
Most Maryland dog bite claims are paid through the dog owner’s homeowners or renters insurance, not out of pocket — and the average paid claim nationally reached $65,450 in 2025. Case value depends on medical costs, scarring, lost wages, and how clearly liability is established under Maryland’s statute. Want a rough estimate first? Try the free Maryland Dog Bite Settlement Calculator.
U.S. insurers paid $1.86 billion across 28,450 dog-related injury claims in 2025, up from 22,658 claims in 2024 — more than a 25% increase in claim volume. The average cost per claim eased 5.5% year-over-year (from $69,272 to $65,450) even as total volume and dollars paid both rose, but the average is still up 97% over the preceding decade. More than half of dog bites happen on the dog owner’s property, and dog-related incidents now account for roughly one-third of all homeowners insurance liability claims nationally.
Standard homeowners and renters policies typically carry $100,000 to $300,000 in liability coverage; the owner is personally responsible for anything above that limit, which is why umbrella coverage — and an accurate accounting of medical costs, future treatment, and non-economic damages — matters to how a claim is actually valued.
Maryland is not a “one-bite rule” state, despite what several published guides claim. Under Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. §3-1901 (2014), a dog owner is presumed to have known their dog was dangerous once a bite is shown to have occurred, and owners are strictly liable if the dog was running at large at the time.
The statute was enacted in 2014 (Senate Bill 247) in direct response to the Maryland Court of Appeals’ 2012 decision in Tracey v. Solesky, 427 Md. 627, which had imposed strict liability specifically on pit bull owners. The legislature rejected that breed-specific approach and replaced it with a breed-neutral framework that applies to any dog — plus landlord liability under the pre-2012 common law standard continues to apply separately when a landlord knew or should have known about a dangerous dog on the property.
Legal standard: rebuttable presumption of owner knowledge — follows automatically once the injury is shown.
Owner’s defense: can attempt to rebut the presumption, but a judge cannot rule it rebutted as a matter of law before a jury verdict.
Legal standard: true strict liability.
Owner’s defense: only trespass, a crime against the owner, or provocation by the injured person.
No. This is the most common misconception about Maryland dog bite law. The 2014 statute presumes the owner knew of the danger the moment a bite occurs — the injured person does not have to first prove the owner had prior notice.
Location changes which part of the statute applies, not whether the owner can be liable. A bite on the owner’s own property falls under the rebuttable-presumption standard; a bite off-property, with the dog running at large, triggers strict liability with narrow exceptions for trespass, crime, or provocation.
Maryland is part of the national majority, not an exception — but “strict liability” is not one uniform rule from state to state, and Maryland sits toward the stronger end of that range.
The Animal Legal & Historical Center at Michigan State University College of Law counts 36 states with statutory strict liability frameworks, Maryland among them — but that label covers very different levels of protection. Georgia and Tennessee apply it only to a dog “running at large”; North Carolina’s version applies only to a dog running at large specifically at night; and states including California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, and Washington limit coverage to bites alone, excluding other attack-related injuries like a knockdown. A smaller group, including Kentucky and Pennsylvania, impose strict liability with no exceptions stated in the statute at all.
Maryland’s §3-1901 sits toward the stronger end of that range. It covers any “personal injury or death” the dog causes, not just bites, and it works on two tracks: a rebuttable presumption of owner knowledge that applies the moment an injury is shown, plus true strict liability — with only three narrow exceptions — when the dog was running at large. States without any strict liability statute default to common-law negligence, which typically requires the injured person to prove the owner had prior knowledge of the dog’s dangerous propensities — the actual “one-bite” rule people often mistakenly apply to Maryland.
Maryland is one of only four states plus D.C. that still follows pure contributory negligence: if an injured person is found even slightly at fault, they can be barred from recovering anything at all. That makes documentation of exactly how a bite happened critical from day one.
Establish the injury, treatment, and cost.
Document severity and where/how it happened.
Identifies the liable party and available coverage.
Creates an official record and rabies-status check.
Corroborates how the bite occurred — critical given contributory negligence.
Supports the statutory presumption of owner knowledge.
Most Maryland dog bite claims must be filed within three years of the injury, under Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. §5-101 — waiting risks losing the right to recover entirely, even with a strong case.
Far more severe than the “minor injury” framing suggests. Roughly 800,000 of the 4.5 million annual U.S. dog bites require medical attention, and children under 10 carry a disproportionate share of the most serious injuries — up to 80% of severe pediatric bites involve the head, neck, or face.
Roughly 334,000 people are treated in hospital emergency departments annually for dog bite injuries. Among children aged 0–9, 73% of injuries with an attributed site were to the face, head, or neck, compared to just 30% for all other ages. Roughly 58% of dog bite hospitalizations involve a surgical procedure, and infection risk sits around 10% of all dog bites, most commonly Pasteurella multocida or Staphylococcus bacteria.
Note: the $18,200 hospitalization-cost figure is from AHRQ’s most recent national statistical brief on dog bite hospital stays (2008 dollars) — the most recent breakdown of its kind available; it has not been re-issued since.
The most recent official Maryland-specific data — published by the Maryland General Assembly’s Department of Legislative Services — shows emergency-department visits for dog bites held roughly flat from 2005 to 2010, while hospitalizations for dog bites rose 32% over the same stretch, a sign that Maryland bites, when they happen, are trending more severe rather than more frequent.
Maryland hospital emergency departments treated 4,880 to 5,447 dog bite cases per year between 2005 and 2010, a rate of roughly 530 to 560 visits per 100,000 dogs in the state — essentially flat, a 5.5% decline over the period. Inpatient hospitalizations, by contrast, climbed from 181 in 2005 to 233 in 2011, a rate increase from 19 to 25 discharges per 100,000 dogs — a 32% rise. The same report found the Maryland Insurance Administration logged 19 dog-bite-related insurance complaints between 2009 and mid-2013, most resolved in the claimant’s favor, and that the state recorded a single dog bite fatality between 2005 and the report’s 2013 publication.
Separate, clean, get evaluated, report, and document — in that order. What happens in the first hours affects both medical outcome and the strength of any later claim.
No — and that’s why Maryland repealed its breed-specific standard in 2014. The American Veterinary Medical Association’s Task Force on Canine Aggression has concluded breed-specific ordinances are both ineffective and difficult to enforce fairly, since a dog’s tendency to bite depends on at least five interacting factors, not breed alone: heredity, early experience, later socialization and training, medical and behavioral health, and the victim’s own behavior.
Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. §3-1901 is breed-neutral statewide, and nearly every jurisdiction Pinder Plotkin serves follows that same approach: Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Harford County, Cecil County, Anne Arundel County, Howard County, Montgomery County, and the City of Laurel currently have no breed-specific dog ordinances.
Jason Plotkin is the Managing Attorney of Pinder Plotkin Legal Team, a Maryland personal injury firm focused on auto accidents, dog bites, and workers’ compensation, with offices in Baltimore (Nottingham), Laurel, and Bel Air. He has been named a Super Lawyer every year from 2020 to 2027, is a member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, an organization limited to attorneys who have won million- and multi-million-dollar verdicts and settlements, and a recipient of Clio’s Legal Impact Award.
Jason writes about dog bite claims from two vantage points: as the author of The Parent’s Guide to Child Dog Bite Claims in Maryland, and as a childhood dog bite survivor himself — which is also why he wrote The Pickle, the Patch, and the Puppy, a children’s book that helps young bite survivors process the fear that can outlast the wound. He also built the free Maryland Dog Bite Settlement Calculator so families can get an early, no-obligation estimate of what a claim might be worth.
In August 2026, the National Business Institute selected him to create and teach “Attorneys’ Guide to Dog Bite Injuries,” a national continuing legal education course training other attorneys on liability frameworks, investigating a bite, insurance coverage traps, and representing child victims. This report reflects his firm’s primary-source review of Maryland’s dog bite statute, cross-checked against the Maryland General Assembly’s official statute text and the Maryland Court of Appeals’ published opinion in Tracey v. Solesky, 427 Md. 627 (2012). This report contains no client-specific case results or outcomes.
For press or speaking inquiries, contact Jason directly via his press & media page.
National incidence, injury, and financial data are drawn from the CDC, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (HCUP), and peer-reviewed studies in JAMA, JAVMA, and Injury Prevention, cited in full below. Maryland-specific incidence data is drawn from the Maryland General Assembly’s Department of Legislative Services (Nov. 2013), the most recent statewide report available. Maryland legal analysis is based on the official statute text and the Maryland Court of Appeals’ published opinion in Tracey v. Solesky, independently verified rather than drawn from any single secondary source.
Dog bite claims are rising, the injuries behind them are more severe than most people assume, and Maryland’s actual legal standard — a rebuttable presumption of owner knowledge plus strict liability for dogs running at large — is misunderstood even in some published guides on this exact topic. Maryland’s contributory negligence rule means the facts of how a bite happened need to be documented and understood correctly from the start.
If you or a family member has been bitten by a dog in Maryland, getting qualified legal guidance early — before evidence disappears and before an insurance adjuster frames the story for you — is the single most important step you can take.
Download the Free PDFThis report is the data and law behind two of our practice pages: Maryland Dog Bite Lawyers and Maryland Child Dog Bite Lawyer.
We handle dog bite cases across Maryland, with offices in Baltimore (Nottingham), Laurel, and Bel Air.
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These are working tools, not contact forms dressed up as calculators. Each walks you through roughly the questions we would ask on a first call and gives you a range at the end. Treat that range as the start of a conversation, not a valuation — no calculator knows how an adjuster will read your medical records, and none of them can price Maryland’s contributory negligence rule, which can bar your recovery entirely if you are found even slightly at fault. That rule is why two claims with identical injuries can be worth very different amounts here.
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