Michigan Dog Bite Settlement Calculator
Estimate a dog bite settlement under Michigan 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 Michigan 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.
Michigan reduces damages by the claimant's share of fault. Above 50% fault, MCL 600.2959 bars non-economic damages but leaves economic damages recoverable, so Michigan is a hybrid that none of our four rule values describes. We apply the 51% bar, which never overstates a Michigan recovery and may understate it above 50% fault. A Michigan attorney can explain how the split applies to your case.
The owner is liable when the dog bites a person without provocation on public property or lawfully on private property, whatever the dog's past or the owner's knowledge. MCL 287.351(1) reads: “If a dog bites a person, without provocation while the person is on public property, or lawfully on private property, including the property of the owner of the dog, the owner of the dog shall be liable for any damages suffered by the person bitten, 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 Michigan law on dog bites, and how courts have applied it is not stated here.
MCL 287.351(1)·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 Michigan
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 Michigan 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 Michigan deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Michigan 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.
MCL § 600.5805(2)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the personal injury calculatorMCL §§ 600.5805(8), 600.5838a·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorMCL § 600.5805; § 600.2922·Last reviewed 2026-07-29
Open the wrongful death calculatorMCL § 418.381·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorMichigan 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 Michigan is one of them.
- Its 3 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. Michigan'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 Michigan 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
Michigan calculators
Michigan 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.