"Does Your Dog Bite?" What, If Any, Duty Does A Dog Owner Owe To A Trespasser?

 by:  Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher)

I loved the Pink Panther movies, and one of the more memorable scenes in the series involved Inspector Clouseau trying to pet an innkeeper's dog (or, more accurately, a dog that he thought belonged to the innkeeper:

  

Other than the fact that both involve a dog bite, this clip does not have much to do with the recent Appellate Division opinion in Ahrens v. Rogowski, but it is a funny clip and worth sharing.

In Ahrens, the Appellate Division was presented with the less humorous case of a woman who was bitten by a dog when "trespassing" on the dog owner's property. I put "trespassing" in quotes because, when I think of trespassing, I think of someone sneaking onto property late at night with nefarious motives, and that is not what happened in Ahrens. Nonetheless, plaintiff was trespassing in the legal sense when she was bitten by the property owner's dog and the Appellate Division was faced with what duty, if any, the owner owed her as a result.