Florida Dog Bite Settlement Calculator
Estimate a dog bite settlement under Florida 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 Florida 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.
Florida runs a 2-year period for negligence claims and a 4-year period for claims founded on statutory liability, and Fla. Stat. 767.04 creates statutory dog-bite liability. Which period governs was not resolved from a primary source, so no figure is published here. Ask a Florida attorney about your filing deadline before you rely on any number.
Florida changed from pure to modified comparative fault in 2023. Recovery barred at 51% or more plaintiff fault.
Fla. Stat. § 768.81(6); HB 837, ch. 2023-15, Laws of Florida·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, whatever the dog's past; the bitten person's own negligence reduces the owner's liability by its share. Fla. Stat. § 767.04 reads: “The owner of any dog that bites any person while such person is on or in a public place, or lawfully on or in a private place, including the property of the owner of the dog, is liable for damages suffered by persons bitten, regardless of the former viciousness of the dog or the owners’ knowledge of such viciousness. However, any negligence on the part of the person bitten that is a proximate cause of the biting incident reduces the liability of the owner of the dog by the percentage that the bitten person’s negligence contributed to the biting incident.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of Florida law on dog bites, and how courts have applied it is not stated here.
Fla. Stat. § 767.04·Last reviewed 2026-10-16
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 Florida
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 Florida 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 Florida deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Florida 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.
Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorFla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(c)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorFla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(e)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorFla. Stat. § 440.19·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorFla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(a)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the slip and fall calculatorFlorida runs a 2-year period for negligence claims and a 4-year period for claims founded on statutory liability, and Fla. Stat. 767.04 creates statutory dog-bite liability. Which period governs was not resolved from a primary source, so no figure is published here. Ask a Florida attorney about your filing deadline before you rely on any number.
Open the dog bite calculatorFlorida 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.
- 24 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar, and Florida is one of them.
- Filing deadlines for this case type run from 1 year to 6 years across the country. We hold no verified deadline for Florida, so this page does not state one.
- 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. Florida'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 Florida 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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Florida 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.