My wife has been after me to buy a dog. I live in a three-family house, and one of my tenants has a dog. I am curious as to what my liabilities might be if my dog or my tenant’s dog bites the mailman or someone walking by the house?

As far as your dog is concerned, in Massachusetts you have strict liability for any person who is injured as a result of a dog bite from your dog unless the dog bite was as a result of a trespass or other tort or if the person who the dog bit was teasing, tormenting or abusing the dog. Those, of course, are questions of fact which would have to be resolved in a trial. You should check with your insurance agent to be sure that your insurance policy will cover any lawsuit that might involve your dog biting someone. What strict liability means is that whoever got bit does not have to prove that you were negligent. They just have to prove that you owned a dog. As far as your tenant is concerned, you again could be sued if the dog bit another tenant in the building if in fact a jury found that you were negligent in taking actions that would be reasonable in light of your duty as a landlord to protect tenants from reasonably foreseeable risks of harm. That generally would require that the dog had previously bitten someone else or has an apparent bad temperament. A recent case held that if the dog was a pit bull, a landlord would be on notice of the aggressiveness of that particular breed and that in and of itself could wind up imposing liability on the landlord for the tenant’s dog biting another tenant in the building. Again, you should check with your insurance agent to determine whether or not those risks are covered by your insurance policy.

If you have questions about this or any other legal matter, please contact Tom Bennett at (617) 531-6574 or tvb@barronstad.com.