Maine Dog Bite Settlement Calculator
Estimate a dog bite settlement under Maine 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 Maine 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.
Maine bars recovery if plaintiff is 50% or more at fault.
14 M.R.S. § 156·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
18-C M.R.S. § 2-807(2)·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
Off the owner's or keeper's premises, the owner or keeper of a dog that injures a person is liable, and the injured person's fault reduces damages for physical injury only if it exceeded the owner's or keeper's. The section otherwise makes an owner or keeper liable for damage caused by their negligence. 7 M.R.S. § 3961(1), (2) reads: “When an animal damages a person or that person's property due to negligence of the animal's owner or keeper, the owner or keeper of that animal is liable in a civil action to the person injured for the amount of damage done if the damage was not occasioned through the fault of the person injured.” and “Notwithstanding subsection 1 , when a dog injures a person who is not on the owner's or keeper's premises at the time of the injury, the owner or keeper of the dog is liable in a civil action to the person injured for the amount of the damages. Any fault on the part of the person injured may not reduce the damages recovered for physical injury to that person unless the court determines that the fault of the person injured exceeded the fault of the dog's keeper or owner.” We read this statute only, so it is not a complete account of Maine law on dog bites, and how courts have applied it is not stated here.
7 M.R.S. § 3961(1), (2)·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 Maine
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 Maine 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 Maine deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Maine 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.
14 M.R.S. § 752·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculator24 M.R.S. § 2902·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculator18-C M.R.S. § 2-807(2)·Last reviewed 2026-07-29
Open the wrongful death calculator39-A M.R.S. § 306·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorMaine 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.
- 10 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply modified comparative negligence with a 50% bar, and Maine is one of them.
- Its 6 years to file is longer than the 2 years that 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. Maine's is one of the other 7.
- 7 of the 51 jurisdictions limit non-economic damages (pain and suffering) in our data and Maine 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
Maine calculators
Maine 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.