Detroit Dog Bite Lawyer

Strict Liability

Detroit runs its own animal control rather than routing through Wayne County, and it has since the city created a dedicated division at the end of 2019. Detroit Animal Care and Control sits inside the General Services Department and enforces Chapter 6 of the 2019 Detroit City Code, operating seven days a week with roughly two dozen animal control officers and a separate group of animal control investigators assigned by council district. Bites go to (313) 922-DOGS — 922-3647 — where an investigator takes the report and opens a file. That council-district assignment is worth knowing: the investigator handling your case is tied to where the bite happened, which makes follow-up considerably more tractable than in metros where reports disappear into a central queue.

What matters most in a Detroit case, though, is a Michigan rule rather than a city one. Because MCL 287.351 imposes liability on the owner of the dog and not on a temporary keeper, and because Michigan judges provocation objectively under Brans v. Extrom, the two facts that decide most Detroit claims are who legally owned the dog and exactly what happened in the seconds before the bite. Neither is something the animal-control file reliably captures. The bite report establishes that it happened and when; the ownership question and the provocation sequence are yours to document, and both decay fast. Detroit's rental market makes the ownership question live more often than people expect — the person holding the leash in a multi-unit building is frequently not the person the statute reaches.

Report a Detroit bite to Detroit Animal Care and Control at (313) 922-DOGS (922-3647). DACC is a division of the General Services Department enforcing Chapter 6 of the 2019 Detroit City Code, and its animal control investigators are assigned by council district, so the same investigator generally stays with your case. Two things the report will not do for you: it will not establish who legally owned the dog — and under MCL 287.351 only an owner is strictly liable, not a temporary keeper — and it will not preserve your account of the seconds before the bite, which is what Michigan's objective provocation standard turns on. Write both down the same day.

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