California Dog Bite Settlement Calculator
Estimate a dog bite settlement under California law. The calculator applies this jurisdiction's own comparative fault rule and damages ceilings, and every figure below is the one our verified data holds, with the statute behind it and the date we checked it.
What California law does to your claim
Four things in state law shape a dog bite claim: how long you have to file, what the state's dog bite statute makes an owner liable for, what happens if you were partly at fault, and whether the state puts a ceiling on what a jury can award. Here is what we hold for this one.
California uses pure comparative fault. Recovery is reduced by the claimant's share of fault with no threshold that bars a claim.
Li v. Yellow Cab Co., 13 Cal. 3d 804 (1975)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
The owner is liable when the dog bites a person in a public place or lawfully in a private place, including the owner's property, whatever the dog's past or the owner's knowledge. Cal. Civ. Code § 3342(a) reads: “The owner of any dog is liable for the damages suffered by any person who is bitten by the dog while in a public place or lawfully in a private place, including the property of the owner of the dog, regardless of the former viciousness of the dog or the owner’s knowledge of such viciousness.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of California law on dog bites, and how courts have applied it is not stated here.
Cal. Civ. Code § 3342(a)·Last reviewed 2026-10-17
None on record means our verified data holds no figure of this kind for this state. It is not a finding that no limit could apply to your claim.
What partial fault costs you in California
The same claim, fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, run through the calculator above four times, with nothing changed but the share of fault assigned to the claimant. The numbers are the engine's output, not an editorial claim about what these cases are worth.
One case, run through the calculator above four times with only the claimant's share of fault changed, under California law. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. These shares illustrate the rule; they are not an estimate of your own fault.
Every California deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the California periods in our verified data, with the statute behind each one. A deadline is the outside limit, never a target, and other rules can shorten it.
Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 335.1·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorCal. Civ. Proc. Code 340.5 requires filing by the earlier of 1 year after the claimant discovers the injury or 3 years after the injury itself. We publish the 1-year discovery period. A 90-day notice of intent is also required.
Cal. Civ. Proc. Code 340.5·Last reviewed 2026-07-28
Open the medical malpractice calculatorCal. Civ. Proc. Code § 335.1·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorCal. Lab. Code § 5405·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorCal. Civ. Proc. Code § 335.1·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorCal. Civ. Proc. Code § 335.1; Cal. Civ. Code § 3342·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the dog bite calculatorCalifornia against the rest of the country
Every count below is read from our state-law data across all 51 jurisdictions, so it moves when the data does. What you will not find here is an average settlement figure: the only one we could compute is a model, and a model presented as a measurement is not a fact.
- 11 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply the pure comparative negligence rule, and California is one of them.
- Its 2 years to file is the same as the most common deadline in the country, which 23 jurisdictions use. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 6 years.
- We have read the official text of 27 jurisdictions' dog bite statutes. 9 make the owner liable for a bite as such, 11 for injury or damage the dog causes more broadly, and the other 7 turn on something more specific: a presumption about what the owner knew, a dog found dangerous, a dog off its owner's premises or running at large, or medical costs. California's is one of the 9 about a bite.
- 7 of the 51 jurisdictions limit non-economic damages (pain and suffering) in our data and California is not among them, so an estimate here is not held down by a ceiling we hold.
Comparisons are drawn from the legal levers that actually move a case value, not from closed-case data, which we do not hold. See the full methodology
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California Dog Bite questions
Every document behind our state injury law figures, each linked with the date we last read it, is listed on our State Injury Law research sources page.