What Happens When a Dog Attacks Another Dog in Massachusetts?

The owner of the attacking dog is liable, under the same strict liability statute that applies when a dog bites a person. M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 155 makes the owner or keeper liable “if any dog shall do any damage to either the body or property of any person,” and the word that does the work in a dog-on-dog case is property. You do not have to prove the other owner was careless, and you do not have to prove the dog had ever attacked anything before. What you can recover is your economic loss, which in practice means the veterinary bills and, if your dog was killed, its value. What you cannot recover in Massachusetts is money for your own grief, and the case that settles that point is one where the owners lost almost everything by asking only for grief. There is also a section a few pages later in the same chapter that appears to bar the claim outright and does not. To talk through what happened to your dog, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

The Statute Is the Same One, and It Is Shorter Than People Expect

Massachusetts dog liability is one sentence long. M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 155 reads:

“If any dog shall do any damage to either the body or property of any person, the owner or keeper, or if the owner or keeper be a minor, the parent or guardian of such minor, shall be liable for such damage, unless such damage shall have been occasioned to the body or property of a person who, at the time such damage was sustained, was committing a trespass or other tort, or was teasing, tormenting or abusing such dog.”

There is no negligence element in that sentence. There is no first-bite allowance. The statute does not ask whether the other owner knew the dog was aggressive, whether the dog had a history, whether the leash was faulty, or whether the owner did everything a careful person would do. If the dog did the damage, the owner or keeper is liable, subject to the two exceptions written into the same sentence. That is what strict liability means, and the mechanics of it are worked through for a human injury in Massachusetts dog bite law and owner liability.

What changes in a dog-on-dog case is not the standard. It is the noun. The statute covers damage to “the body or property of any person,” and your dog is not a person for this purpose. Your dog is the thing that was damaged.

Why “Property” Is the Word That Decides the Case

This is the step people expect to be difficult, and it is the step Massachusetts appellate law has already taken.

In Krasnecky v. Meffen, 56 Mass. App. Ct. 418, decided on 12 November 2002, two dogs owned by the defendants entered the plaintiffs’ residential property in the town of Ware and killed seven of their sheep. The plaintiffs sued on six counts. Count 1 was brought under G. L. c. 140, sec. 155. The Appeals Court affirmed judgment for the plaintiffs on that count. The statute reached what the dogs had done to the animals.

That is the holding that matters here, and it matters more because of what the plaintiffs tried to do with the rest of the case, which is covered below.

So the structure of a dog-on-dog claim in Massachusetts is straightforward. Sec. 155 supplies the liability. Your dog is the property the statute is talking about. The fight is not usually about whether there is a claim. It is about how much the claim is worth, and that is a question about damages rather than about liability.

Answer Capsule

Under M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 155 the owner or keeper of a dog is strictly liable for damage the dog does to “either the body or property of any person,” and a dog that injures or kills another dog has damaged that owner’s property. No prior bite, no history of aggression and no proof of carelessness is required. The two statutory defenses are that the damage was occasioned to someone who was committing a trespass or other tort, or who was teasing, tormenting or abusing the dog. Recoverable damages are economic: veterinary treatment, and the value of an animal that was killed. Massachusetts does not allow damages for emotional distress or for loss of a pet’s companionship and society, which the Appeals Court held in Krasnecky v. Meffen, 56 Mass. App. Ct. 418 (2002), where owners whose sheep were killed by dogs expressly excluded market value from their demand and recovered one dollar. M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 161A states that “no reimbursement shall be made for damage by a dog to dogs, cats and other pets,” but that provision limits the municipal reimbursement fund in sec. 161, which exists for livestock and fowl, and it does not affect the sec. 155 claim against the owner. A separate track runs alongside the money claim: any person may file a complaint with the municipal hearing authority under sec. 157 asking that the dog be deemed a nuisance dog or a dangerous dog. This is general information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice. Call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS; the first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

What You Can Actually Recover

The honest answer has two halves, and the second half disappoints people.

The first half is that your out of pocket loss is recoverable. Emergency veterinary treatment, surgery, medication, follow up visits, and where the animal did not survive, the value of the animal. If your dog needed a drain, an overnight stay and two weeks of antibiotics, that bill is the damage sec. 155 is talking about, and the other owner is liable for it without any showing of fault.

The second half is that Massachusetts does not compensate you for how the attack felt.

Krasnecky is the case, and the way the plaintiffs litigated it is the lesson. Their complaint described the sheep as “companion animals” and sought damages for emotional distress and for loss of companionship and society. The damage demand on their strict liability count, in the Appeals Court’s words, “explicitly excludes market value or nominal damages.” They were not asking for what the sheep were worth. They were asking for what the loss meant to them.

The court held that the damages they sought “are unavailable to them as matter of law, and that, at most, the only damages to which they are entitled are the nominal damages that they have been awarded.” Judgment entered for the plaintiffs on the sec. 155 count in the amount of one dollar.

Two things follow from that, and they pull in opposite directions.

The first is the limit. A Massachusetts owner cannot recover for grief over an animal. The Appeals Court reasoned in part that it would be anomalous, absent legislation, to permit more extensive recovery for the death of an animal than for the death of a person. Whatever one thinks of that reasoning, it is the law until the Legislature changes it, and no honest description of this claim can leave it out.

The second is the practical instruction, and it is the more useful of the two. The plaintiffs in Krasnecky recovered one dollar because they asked for one thing and that thing was not available. The economic loss was there to be claimed and was written out of the demand. A claim for an animal injured or killed by another dog should be built on the veterinary invoices and the animal’s value, documented, itemised and produced, because that is the part of the claim the statute plainly covers.

The Section That Looks Like It Ends Your Claim

Anyone who reads further into Chapter 140 will hit this, and it is the reason this article exists.

M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 161A says, among other things: “No reimbursement shall be made for damage by a dog to dogs, cats and other pets.”

Read alone, that sentence appears to say Massachusetts does not pay for one dog hurting another. It does not say that, and the giveaway is the word reimbursement.

Sec. 161A sits at the end of a small statutory scheme about livestock. Sec. 161 gives a person whose livestock or fowl are worried, maimed or killed by a dog outside the dog owner’s premises a route to claim against the city or town: inform the animal control officer in a city, or the chair of the board of selectmen in a town, who then determines whether a dog did the damage and appraises it if it does not exceed $100. Where the damage exceeds $100, it is appraised on oath by three people, one of them appointed by the person claiming the damage. The appraisers return a certificate to the municipal treasurer, the clerk examines the bills, and the treasurer pays the order out of city or town funds.

Sec. 161A is the list of things that fund will not pay for. It will not reimburse an owner for damage done by their own dog. It will not reimburse an owner who was themselves keeping an unlicensed dog three months or older at the time. It will not reimburse for damage to animals the state classes as wild unless they are kept under a permit. It caps awards at fair cash market value. And it will not reimburse for damage to dogs, cats and other pets.

Every one of those is a rule about the town’s cheque. None of them is a rule about the dog owner’s liability under sec. 155, which is a separate claim against a separate party arising under a different section. A pet owner cannot go to the town for the money. A pet owner can go to the dog’s owner, and that is the ordinary route in any event.

The Other Track: the Municipal Hearing

The money claim is one process. Whether anything happens to the dog is a different one, and it runs in parallel.

Under M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 157, “any person may file a complaint in writing to the hearing authority that a dog owned or kept in the city or town is a nuisance dog or a dangerous dog.” The hearing authority investigates, holds a public hearing in the municipality, and either dismisses the complaint, deems the dog a nuisance dog, or deems it a dangerous dog, with a list of remedies attached to the last of those findings.

Two features of sec. 157 are worth knowing before filing, because they come up constantly in dog-on-dog complaints.

The statute expressly protects a proportionate reaction. No dog may be deemed dangerous if it “was reacting to another animal or to a person and the dog’s reaction was not grossly disproportionate” to circumstances that include the dog protecting or defending itself, its offspring, another domestic animal or a person from attack or assault. A dog that responded to being rushed is not, on that fact alone, a dangerous dog.

The statute also protects a dog whose enclosure was breached. Where “the person or animal that was attacked or threatened by the dog had breached an enclosure or structure in which the dog was kept apart from the public,” and was not authorised by the owner of the premises to be inside it, that reaction cannot support a dangerous dog finding. The statute names a gated, fenced-in area with the gate closed, whether locked or unlocked. A dog that came through a closed gate into another dog’s yard has walked into this provision.

And no dog may be deemed dangerous based on its breed, or solely for growling or barking.

What the hearing authority can order, how the appeal to the district court works, and where euthanasia actually sits on the list of remedies are all set out in will a dog be put down for biting someone in Massachusetts, which covers that process in full. The same article covers the rabies quarantine, which is triggered by a bite to another animal and not only by a bite to a person, and which is usually the first official thing that happens after an incident.

You May Not Kill a Dog That Is Attacking Your Dog

This needs saying plainly, because the statute people reach for does not say what they think.

M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 156 permits a person to kill a dog in two situations. The first is a dog “which suddenly assaults him while he is peaceably standing, walking or riding outside the enclosure of its owner or keeper.” The second is a dog found outside its owner’s enclosure and not under immediate care “in the act of worrying, wounding or killing persons, live stock or fowls.”

Pets are not on that list. Live stock and fowls are farm animals, and the scheme in sec. 161 and sec. 161A that pays for them confirms it by excluding dogs, cats and other pets in terms. A dog attacking your dog is not, under sec. 156, a dog you are authorised to kill, unless the attack has turned on you and the first clause applies.

Sec. 156 also imposes a duty on anyone who does kill or wound a dog under it: report it promptly to the owner, an animal control officer or a police officer. Prompt killing of a wounded dog, or a prompt report of the wounding to the owner or to a dog officer, is made evidence of sufficient regard for the animal’s suffering.

The Defenses the Other Owner Will Raise

There are only two written into sec. 155, and in a dog-on-dog case they take a particular shape.

Trespass or other tort. The statute removes liability where the damage was occasioned to a person who “was committing a trespass or other tort” at the time. If your dog was loose and in the other owner’s yard, expect this argument. Whether your dog being off leash is itself the relevant tort, and how the municipal leash order in your city or town bears on it, is the sort of question that turns on local detail; the statewide and municipal framework is in Massachusetts dog leash laws.

Teasing, tormenting or abusing. The statute removes liability where the damage was occasioned to a person who was teasing, tormenting or abusing the dog. Note the wording carefully. In a dog-on-dog case the damage is occasioned to your property rather than to your body, and the conduct the statute asks about is that of the person bringing the claim.

One protection in sec. 155 does not help here. The statute creates a presumption against trespass and provocation where the action is brought on behalf of a minor under seven years of age, and places the burden of proof on the defendant. That presumption attaches to a minor plaintiff. It is not a presumption about a dog.

A sign on the fence does not add a defense. What a “beware of dog” sign does and does not do in Massachusetts is covered in beware of dog sign liability.

What to Do in the First Few Days

The evidence in these cases degrades quickly, and most of it is in the hands of people who were present for about ninety seconds.

Get the veterinary care first and keep every invoice, including the emergency clinic, the follow up visits and the medication. Photograph the injuries before they are shaved, sutured and bandaged, and again afterwards. Write down what happened while it is fresh, including the time, the street, the direction each dog came from, and whether either dog was leashed. Get the other owner’s name, address and telephone number. Get contact details for anyone who saw it, because a neighbour who watched from a porch is worth more than either owner’s account. Report the incident to your local animal control officer, which creates a dated official record whether or not you go on to file a sec. 157 complaint.

If your dog was killed, keep the acquisition records, the registration or pedigree paperwork if there is any, and any training certificates or invoices. Those documents go to value, and value is the part of the claim Massachusetts law will actually pay.

If the other owner has homeowner’s or renter’s insurance, a claim for damage caused by their dog would ordinarily be made against the liability section of that policy. Coverage is not automatic, exclusions differ between policies, and what a particular policy does here is a question about that policy. Where an insurer handles a claim unfairly, the Massachusetts consumer protection route is described in the 93A demand letter.

There is a deadline. A Massachusetts tort claim is generally subject to a three year limitations period, and the detail of how that period is counted is in the statute of limitations for personal injury claims.

If the attack happened in Boston or Worcester, the practice-area pages for those cities carry the local detail.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I sue if another dog attacked my dog in Massachusetts?

A: Yes. M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 155 makes the owner or keeper of a dog liable for damage the dog does to “either the body or property of any person,” and an injured or killed dog is damage to its owner’s property. The Appeals Court applied that section to animals killed by dogs in Krasnecky v. Meffen, 56 Mass. App. Ct. 418 (2002). You do not need to prove the other owner was negligent.

Q: Do I have to show the other dog had bitten something before?

A: No. Sec. 155 contains no first-bite allowance and no requirement that the owner knew of any dangerous tendency. Liability attaches to the fact of the damage, subject only to the two exceptions in the statute, which are that the person bringing the claim was committing a trespass or other tort, or was teasing, tormenting or abusing the dog.

Q: Can I recover for what my dog meant to me?

A: No. In Krasnecky v. Meffen the Appeals Court held that damages for emotional distress and for loss of a companion animal’s companionship and society were unavailable as matter of law, and left the plaintiffs with nominal damages of one dollar. Massachusetts compensates the economic loss, which is the veterinary treatment and the value of an animal that was killed.

Q: Does M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 161A mean pets are not covered at all?

A: No, and this is the most common misreading of the chapter. Sec. 161A limits the municipal reimbursement fund created by sec. 161, which exists to pay owners of livestock and fowl out of city or town money. Its sentence that “no reimbursement shall be made for damage by a dog to dogs, cats and other pets” closes that municipal route to pet owners. It does not touch the separate claim against the dog’s owner under sec. 155.

Q: Who is liable if the dog was being walked by someone else?

A: Sec. 155 names the “owner or keeper,” which reaches a person who was keeping or in control of the dog as well as the registered owner, and where the owner or keeper is a minor it places liability on that minor’s parent or guardian. Who qualifies as a keeper is worked through in the owner liability article.

Q: My dog was in the other dog’s fenced yard when it happened. Does that end my claim?

A: It is the argument you should expect. Sec. 155 removes liability where the damage was occasioned to a person committing a trespass or other tort at the time. The same fact pattern also matters on the other track: sec. 157 provides that a dog cannot be deemed dangerous where the animal it attacked had breached an enclosure in which the dog was kept apart from the public, including a fenced-in area with the gate closed, whether locked or unlocked.

Q: Can I have the other dog declared dangerous?

A: You can ask. Under sec. 157 any person may file a written complaint with the municipal hearing authority that a dog kept in that city or town is a nuisance dog or a dangerous dog, and the authority must investigate and hold a public hearing. Breed cannot be the basis of a dangerous finding, barking or growling alone cannot be either, and a dog that reacted to another animal in a way that was not grossly disproportionate is protected. What the authority can order is set out in will a dog be put down for biting someone in Massachusetts.

Q: Was I allowed to intervene physically to stop the attack?

A: M.G.L. c. 140, sec. 156 authorises killing a dog in two narrow situations, one of which is a dog that suddenly assaults a person who is peaceably standing, walking or riding outside the dog’s enclosure, and the other of which concerns a dog worrying, wounding or killing persons, livestock or fowls. Pets are not in the second category. If you were bitten while separating the dogs, that is a claim for your own injury under the same sec. 155, in addition to the claim for your dog.

Q: Is Jimmy Knows AI giving me legal advice?

A: No. This is general information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney client relationship. Whether any of it applies to your situation depends on facts this page does not know. To discuss a specific incident, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.

Talking to a Lawyer

Most dog-on-dog cases are small in money terms and clear in legal terms, which is an unusual combination and it is worth understanding before deciding what to do. Liability under sec. 155 does not depend on proving carelessness, so the argument is rarely about whether the other owner is responsible. It is about the size of the bill and whether it gets paid.

The two things that decide the outcome are documentation and the deadline. Veterinary invoices, photographs, the animal control report and any records that go to the animal’s value are the claim. The three year limitations period is the outer edge of the time available, and waiting near it costs you witnesses rather than saving you anything.

To talk through what happened, call Jim Glaser Law at (617) JIM-WINS. The line is answered 24 hours a day. The first telephone consultation is offered without charge.