History of Dog's Aggression No Longer Required in Missouri Bite Claims
When viewed as a whole, man’s best friend is a fairly dangerous creature. With a population of 310 million people in the United States in 2010, dogs bit approximately 4 million of us. Humans have been domesticating the dog (Canis lupus familiaris), for countless centuries, however, the typical canine remains very close to its wild and feral nature. The modern animal we refer to as a ‘dog’, is in reality, a domesticated grey wolf. The pets we keep today as dogs, come from a family of animals which include the jackal, foxes, coyotes, and wolves. The wild nature of man’s best friend is demonstrated continuously through their bites in the United States.
Missouri has recently enacted a new dog bite law that attempts to address the large number of ongoing dog bites throughout the state. For the past fifty years, Missouri operated under a statute which gave most dog owners a free pass to liability if their canine had never before exhibited any aggressive or dangerous behavior. The exceptions were for owners of a few limited breeds of inherently dangerous dogs, such as the pit bull, Rottweiler, or German Sheppard. People bitten by dogs with no previously known aggressive behavior were forced to suffer under the philosophy: I’m sorry, but you were the first, so the dog owner is not responsible because he did not know.
The new Missouri dog bite statute attempts to remedy this situation. Missouri Revised Statute section 273.036 has completely removed the requirement that a Missouri dog bite victim prove that a dog had been aggressive or dangerous before they were bitten. The new Missouri dog bite law provides that a dog owner is liable for all damage their dog inflicts on any person, or their property, if the victim was on public property, or lawfully on private property, and the victim did not provoke the dog into attacking. Missouri residents, who join in the 4 million people bitten by dogs each year in the United States, are now a little more secure in their right to hold dogs’ owners liable for their unprovoked attacks.
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