My name is Archer. I am the grand dog of Justice Dillon and am your guest columnist for this edition of the Practice Page. I enjoy doing tricks, playing frisbee, tracking scents, swimming, taking walks, chasing squirrels, squeaky toys, and eating an occasional Puppuccino at Starbuck’s. I place my head outside of the car window to track the scents and know the way home. I have a page on Instagram. And I am part of a long-term study at the Canine Cognitive Center at the Veterinary College of the University of Arizona, where I periodically enjoy games and puzzles which track my vocabulary, memory, and reasoning as I get older and older. The school has awarded me a Barkelor’s Degree and a Muttster’s Degree for my efforts, and I am currently working toward my Dogtorate in Canine Cognition.

I live in a place called Tucson, Arizona. The dog days of summer are over. I frequently spend time at my living room window, guarding my humans and home from threatening people sent by the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, and Federal Express. Every other person who comes to the house is welcomed, with vigorous tail wags. I would even let a burglar into the home to loot my humans’ valuables. But when I hear the distinct sound of the delivery trucks and see uniformed people from those trucks come to the front door, I bark my head off until they go back to their trucks and have a 100% success rate of making them leave as a result of my persistent barking from within the house.

As a “collar scholar” at a university with ruffly 65 years of life experience (dog years), I have a special interest in animal liability law and can comment about a recent significant change to New York law on the subject, including matters involving dog bites. Since year 1816, which is about 50 dog generations ago, the law of New York has been that the human companions of a domestic animal, who either know or should have known of an animal’s vicious propensities, were liable for the harm the animals might cause as a result of those propensities (Vrooman v. Lawyer, 13 Johns 339 [1816]; see also Collier v. Zambito, 1 N.Y.3d 444, 446 [2004]). “Vicious propensities” include any act that might endanger the safety of humans or their property in a given situation (Dickson v. McCoy, 39 N.Y. 400, 403 [1868]). Knowledge of vicious propensities could be shown by proof of prior acts of a similar kind of which the human had notice (Benoit v. Troy & Lansingburgh R.R. Co., 154 N.Y. 223, 225 [1897]). Those propensities could include not just dog bites, but a prior attack, the growling, snapping, or baring of teeth, the manner of prior restraints, or a proclivity to act in a way that puts others at risk of harm (Bard v. Jahnke, 6 N.Y.3d 592, 597 [2006]). The vicious propensities rule displaces the standard elements of common law negligence and imposes strict liability upon humans only when prior actual or constructive knowledge of those propensities is established (Hastings v. Suave, 21 N.Y.3d 122, 125 [2013]; Collier v. Zambito, 1 N.Y.3d at 448).

Those strict liability rules date back to a time when your state was more agricultural than it is today, when humans and animals had more frequent and daily contact. Sometimes events would occur where humans would get injured from the shove of a bull, the back-kick of a horse, or from an understandable bite of a dangerous postal worker. The “one bite rule,” which was always an oversimplification of strict liability law taught by your law schools, assumed that an animal owner could not know of vicious propensities until after the animal had taken its first bite. Absent a showing of the prior notice elements of strict liability, humans would not be liable on that legal ground, or in common law negligence either.

The recent decision which fundamentally changed New York’s animal liability law for us four-leggers was rendered by your court of appeals on April 17, 2025 in the case of Flanders v. Goodfellow, __ N.Y.3d __, 2025 WL 1127772 (April 17, 2025). Flanders involved a dangerous postal worker delivering a package to the home of the human defendants at the front porch. As the postal worker was handing the package to a human, a large pooch bolted from the front door and bit the trespasser. The postal worker, not understanding the event from the dog’s point of view, commenced an action alleging two causes of action against the dog’s humans, one being strict liability based on prior vicious propensities and the second being common law negligence. The human defendants in Flanders obtained summary judgment in their favor on the strict liability and negligence causes of action, which made its way to the court of appeals. The court of appeals not only reversed that determination but used the occasion to greatly change the state’s substantive law on domestic animal liability.

In Flanders, the court of appeals departed from two centuries of dogged precedent by holding that going forward, plaintiffs may hold owners of domestic animals liable under either a strict liability theory when it might factually apply, or in ordinary negligence upon proving that the owner failed to exercise due care under the circumstances toward persons who might be foreseeably injured (Flanders v. Goodfellow, at *6, 8). The court explained its reasonings. It noted that “the [strict liability] rule gives owners of domestic animals little reason to familiarize themselves with any potential proclivities that might lead the animal to cause harm, and in turn, to take reasonable steps to prevent any harm that may result.” It also noted that certain recent judicial decisions have somewhat narrowed and distinguished animal liability law, making it easier for the court to depart from its former general precedent. And the court noted that the change in the law aligned New York with the bulk of other states (Flanders v. Goodfellow, at *6-7). As a result, the establishment of prior vicious propensities for the application of strict liability is no longer singularly necessary to a plaintiff’s case. Liability may now alternatively be established under regular common law negligence principles, which depend on the sui generis circumstances of each case.

The new case law favors human plaintiffs at the expense of us canines and the humans who live with us. A natural outgrowth from the Flanders case is that humans with dogs and other domestic animals in New York can no longer rely on the “one bite rule” defense, as a common law degree of care has become relevant to animal-related negligence actions. The “one bite rule” might now be better described as the “no bite rule” for us dogs, even against dangerous postal, Fed Ex, and UPS workers who gravely and repeatedly threaten the security of our homes. Go figure.

Fortunately, I have never bitten any person in 65 dog years and have no plans to ever actually do so, because as my human family knows, I am all bark and no bite.

ARCHER is a DNA-examined mix, mainly Australian sheep dog and cattle dog, American shepherd, Staffordshire terrier, and boxer, and is the grand dog of Justice Mark C. Dillon who is of the Appellate Division, Second Department, an Adjunct Professor of New York Practice at Fordham Law School, and a contributing author to the CPLR Practice Commentaries in McKinney’s.