Nevada’s Outdated Dog Bite Law is Failing Victims — and Letting Owners Off the Hook

On a summer afternoon in August 2022, a 9-year-old boy was visiting a friend’s home near Desert Inn Road in Las Vegas when a 3-year-old pit bull mix got out from inside the house. In moments, the dog attacked, leaving the child with severe injuries to his neck and head.

He was rushed to Sunrise Hospital but did not survive. Authorities ruled the death an accident. The dog was euthanized the next day. And under Nevada law, the owners faced no criminal liability — even though the incident might have been prevented with proper supervision and care.

The tragedy exposed a deeper flaw in Nevada’s dog bite laws: they are structured to protect dog owners far more effectively than they protect victims.

How Nevada’s One-Bite Rule Works

Nevada does not follow a strict liability standard for dog bites. Instead, the state relies on common law principles rooted in what’s called the one-bite rule — a legal doctrine that places the burden on bite victims to prove that a dog owner knew or should have known their dog was dangerous.

Under this framework, a dog owner is generally not automatically liable for an attack — even if the dog bites someone. Instead, the injured person must prove that the owner had prior knowledge of the dog’s dangerous tendencies.

This might come from a previous bite, aggressive behavior reported to animal control, or eyewitness accounts of the dog lunging at people. Without such evidence, proving negligence becomes extraordinarily difficult for victims.

As one legal guide explains, victims must demonstrate that “the dog owner failed to act with reasonable care to prevent the incident,” which often requires hiring investigators, locating witnesses, and accessing animal control records — expenses that multiply rapidly for families already dealing with medical bills from serious injuries.

The Scale of the Problem

The stakes of Nevada’s legal approach are not theoretical. The Las Vegas area experiences dog bites at an alarming frequency.

Clark County Animal Protection Services receives approximately four dog bite reports daily. In the second and third quarters of 2024 alone, the agency tallied 760 reported bites across unincorporated Clark County — and this figure does not include incidents reported to Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Henderson animal control agencies, which would push the total significantly higher.

Children under 10 suffer a disproportionate share of serious facial injuries from these attacks, often from family pets or neighbors’ dogs. Delivery drivers and gig-economy workers are increasingly targeted as e-commerce surges. Yet despite the frequency and severity of these incidents, Nevada victims face a demanding legal burden that most strict liability states do not impose.

Two Competing Legal Systems

The contrast between Nevada’s approach and strict liability states reveals how profoundly different legal frameworks shape outcomes for bite victims.

In states like California, Florida, and Illinois, dog owners are automatically responsible for injuries caused by their dog’s bite, regardless of whether the dog has shown aggressive behavior in the past or whether the owner was negligent.

A victim does not need to prove the owner knew the dog was dangerous — only that a bite occurred and caused injury. In California specifically, Civil Code Section 3342 imposes strict liability on a dog owner whose dog bites a person, regardless of whether the dog has ever done so before. The victim’s path to compensation is far more straightforward.

Nevada’s legal structure accomplishes the opposite. Here, the victim has to demonstrate that the dog owner knew or should have known the dog had a propensity for aggression or had bitten someone before. This evidentiary burden falls entirely on the person who was harmed — not on the owner who brought a dangerous animal into their home or community.

The result, as legal experts note, is that one-bite rules provide the most protection for dog owners, while strict liability rules give more legal clout to bite victims.

Nevada’s Workaround

Nevada law does provide a partial mechanism for holding repeat offenders accountable. Once a dog has bitten someone, the dog can be classified as “dangerous” or “vicious” depending on the severity of the incident. 

Under Nevada Revised Statutes 202.500, a dog may be declared dangerous if it behaves menacingly toward people or animals on two separate occasions within 18 months, while a vicious dog is one that inflicts serious injury or death without provocation.

Once designated as dangerous or vicious, owners face requirements to take preventive measures — such as secure enclosures, liability insurance, or muzzling in public. Failure to comply can establish liability if another bite occurs.

But this structure contains a perverse incentive: the system only activates after a dog has already bitten someone. The first victim bears the full legal burden and often receives minimal compensation from a system designed to protect the owner, not the injured party. Subsequent victims have a stronger legal standing, but only because someone else was already harmed.

A High Bar for Injured Victims

Nevada courts do permit victims to pursue claims based on negligence — but the burden remains formidable. A victim can establish negligence by demonstrating the owner’s failure to take proper precautions, such as allowing their dog to roam off-leash in an area where it was required to be on a leash, or maintaining a broken fence that allowed the dog to escape.

However, proving negligence requires evidence that a reasonable person would have acted differently — a subjective standard that invites defense arguments about what constitutes “reasonable care” and whether the victim provoked the dog. These defenses may reduce compensation, yet rarely eliminate liability, meaning even successful claims often result in partial recovery rather than full compensation.

The practical effect is devastating for most victims. A family with a child bitten by a neighbor’s dog must hire attorneys, conduct investigations, obtain animal control records, and locate witnesses — all while facing defense arguments that the dog was provoked or the child trespassed. For working-class families, this legal gauntlet is often prohibitively expensive.

A Patchwork of Inconsistent Protection

Nevada does impose some statutory duties on dog owners through municipal codes. For example, Washoe County and Carson City Municipal Codes impose legal duties on owners to control or restrain their pets, and municipal codes require owners to report bites to local animal services immediately. Violation of these codes can create “negligence per se,” where the breach becomes strong evidence of negligence.

But this patchwork approach creates geographic inconsistency. A victim in one part of Clark County may have stronger legal protections than a victim in Las Vegas proper, depending on which codes apply to their specific location. This fragmented system fails to provide uniform protection for residents across the metro area.

The Hidden Cost of Nevada’s Approach

Nevada’s one-bite rule reflects a centuries-old legal doctrine rooted in common law assumptions that no longer match modern reality. The rule assumes dog ownership is rare and attacks are exceptional. In reality, approximately 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs annually, and Las Vegas experiences multiple bites every single day.

The one-bite rule also assumes that victims have resources to investigate, litigate, and prove negligence. In practice, it allows negligent owners to escape accountability for their first offense while leaving victims to bear the financial and emotional burden of proving the owner’s knowledge of danger.

Perhaps most troubling, the one-bite rule creates a perverse incentive structure: owners have no legal motivation to take precautions before their dog bites someone. Only after an attack has occurred and the dog has been formally designated as dangerous does the law impose requirements. This is reactive justice — not preventive protection.

What Would a Victim-Centered Approach Look Like?

Strict liability states like California and Florida have concluded that the modern solution is to hold dog owners accountable regardless of prior notice. These states recognize that people have a fundamental right to move through their community without fear of being attacked by someone else’s pet.

A shift toward strict liability in Nevada would mean:

• Dog owners become automatically liable for injuries caused by their dog’s bite, without victims needing to prove prior knowledge of aggression.
• The burden of preventing attacks shifts from victims to owners — aligning incentives with public safety.
• Victims can pursue compensation more efficiently, without requiring expensive investigations into an owner’s prior knowledge.
• Families injured by dog attacks need not navigate a complex legal system designed to protect owners rather than victims.

This is not a radical proposal. Dozens of states have already implemented strict liability. And Nevada itself has demonstrated that it values victim protection in other contexts — for example, through statutes governing liability in premises cases and injury claims.

Whom Does Nevada’s Legal System Serve?

The current one-bite rule serves dog owners well. It allows them to keep potentially dangerous animals without fear of liability, provided no one has previously reported aggressive behavior. It requires bite victims to prove negligence through expensive litigation. And it reserves full legal accountability only for repeat offenders — after someone has already been harmed.

For bite victims — particularly children who suffer facial injuries and families devastated by fatal attacks — Nevada’s legal system is profoundly inadequate.

The boy who died in August 2022 was visiting a friend’s home. His parents had no way to know the dog had dangerous tendencies before the attack. Under Nevada law, they could not hold the owner liable — because there was no prior evidence of aggression. The dog had been given its one free bite, and it was fatal.

Other families in Las Vegas face the same reality every single day. Until Nevada reforms its one-bite rule and shifts to a victim-centered legal framework like strict liability, that reality will not change.

The question for Nevada policymakers is simple: Do we want a legal system that protects dog owners from liability, or one that protects residents from dangerous animals? Right now, Nevada has clearly chosen the former. It’s time to reconsider.