Birmingham Dog Bite Lawyer

Mixed Statute

Birmingham does not run its own animal control department. Since January 2015 the Greater Birmingham Humane Society has provided animal care and control under contract to Jefferson County and its municipalities, operating a 24-hour line on 205-591-6522 and a bite report form on its own site. Jefferson County awarded a $21 million construction contract in August 2024 for a purpose-built Jefferson County Animal Care and Control Facility on Lakeshore Parkway, with GBHS building an adjoining hospital and adoption centre — so where you file a Birmingham bite report is likely to change address before it changes hands.

The legal point that shapes a Birmingham case, though, is where the bite happened rather than who takes the report. Ala. Code § 3-6-1 reaches a bite only if the person was on property the dog's owner owns or controls, or was chased off it moments before. In a city with the density of rental housing, shared driveways and apartment courtyards that Birmingham has, that property line is frequently ambiguous, and whether a shared hallway or courtyard counts as property the owner controls can decide whether the statutory claim exists at all — or whether it runs against the landlord instead of the tenant.

Alabama's contributory negligence rule then makes the same evidence do double duty. Any argument that you were somewhere you should not have been, or that you approached the dog, is an argument to defeat the claim outright rather than reduce it. In a Birmingham apartment or duplex case, a photograph showing exactly where fences, gates and unit boundaries ran is usually worth more than a description of the wound.

Report a Birmingham-area bite through the Greater Birmingham Humane Society's Animal Care & Control division, which covers Jefferson County and its municipalities under contract — the 24-hour line is 205-591-6522 and there is a bite report form on the GBHS site. Before you leave the scene, photograph the property boundary: fences, gates, driveway edges and unit doors. Ala. Code § 3-6-1 only reaches bites that happened on property the dog's owner owns or controls, so in shared-housing settings that geography can decide whether Alabama's statutory claim applies at all.

Read the full statute breakdown: Alabama Dog Bite Laws → · Typical payouts: Alabama Settlement Amounts →