Landlords Can Now Be Liable for Pit Bull Attacks
Attorney
(866) 735-1102 Ext 540
It has long been the law in Massachusetts, and in many other states, that if your dog causes injury, you are liable regardless of whether or not you were negligent. This is called "strict liability" and imposes automatic liability on the dog "owner".
However, if you were suing a landlord that was not the dog owner, you had to show that the dog had "vicious propensities" prior to the attack and that the landlord knew or had reason to know of those propensities.
In the case of Nutt v. Florio, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has ruled that where the dog at issue was a pit bull, the issue of the landlord's negligence may go to the jury for a determination of whether or not "the dog had dangerous propensities, whether the defendants knew or should have known about them, and, if so, what actions would have been reasonable, in light of their duty as landlords to protect tenants from reasonably foreseeable risk of harm."
In effect, the court is saying that if a pit bull is involved, you don't necessarily have to show that the dog attacked in the past. The landlord's knowledge that a dog is or may be aggressive may impose a burden on a landlord to be alert for their tenants' safety, particularly where there are complaints from other tenants, or other evidence of "potential" aggression. As stated by Lawyers Weekly, a landlord may now be liable for injuries even though the landlord was not the animal's owner and there was no evidence that the animal had ever attacked anyone before.