What Actually Changed in Utah’s Dog Bite Law in 2025 and 2026

Statutory update · October 2026

Search any Utah law firm’s website for “dog bite” and you will find some version of the same sentence: every person owning or keeping a dog is liable in damages for injury committed by the dog. It is a clean statement of strict liability, it is what Utah Code section 18-1-1 said for a very long time, and it is not what the statute says today.

Two recent changes matter. In 2025, the Legislature added a new exception for trespassers. In 2026, it reworked the arbitration track that dog attack cases can be routed into. Neither change is dramatic on its face. Both change how these cases are actually handled.

What the 2025 amendment did

Senate Bill 101, sponsored by Senator Karen Kwan with Representative Andrew Stoddard, passed as Chapter 311 of the 2025 General Session and took effect May 7, 2025.

It added one new exception. Under section 18-1-1(3)(b), an owner is not liable for injury or death caused by the dog if the injured person was a trespasser “in violation of Subsection 76-6-206(2)” — Utah’s criminal trespass provision — and the injury occurred on the owner’s private property while the dog was “reasonably secured within a fence or other enclosure.”

The same bill amended section 57-14-301, Utah’s landowner liability statute, to match. An owner is now not subject to liability for serious physical injury or death to a trespasser where the injury “is caused by the owner’s dog in accordance with Subsection 18-1-1(3)(b).” The two statutes were deliberately harmonized so the exception could not be routed around through premises liability.

What the 2025 amendment did not do

This is where most of the commentary gets it wrong, including some I have read on other firms’ sites.

The language making an owner liable “regardless of whether (i) the dog is vicious or mischievous; or (ii) the owner knows the dog is vicious or mischievous” was already in the statute before 2025. S.B. 101 did not add it. Utah abandoned the common-law “one free bite” rule long ago, and the 2025 bill left that core untouched. Apart from the new trespasser exception, the only change to subsection (1) was replacing the word “person” with “individual.”

The law enforcement dog provision in subsection (2) is also not new, and it is routinely described inaccurately. It is not a carve-out for “certified police dogs” generally. It is an immunity for the state, counties, cities, towns, and peace officers, and it applies only if all four of the following are true:

• the dog and its handler are trained and certified under the Law Enforcement Canine Team Certification Act;
• the agency has adopted a written policy on the appropriate use of dogs in official duties;
• the handler’s actions did not violate that policy; and
• the injury occurred while the dog was being “reasonably and carefully” used in an apprehension, arrest, location of a suspected offender, or in maintaining public order.

The third condition is the one worth noticing. If the handler departed from the agency’s own written policy, the immunity does not apply.

The trespasser exception is narrower than it sounds

“The owner isn’t liable if you were trespassing” is not what the statute says, and reading it that way will cost a defendant a motion.

Three things have to be true at once. First, the injured person has to have been trespassing in violation of section 76-6-206(2). That is a criminal statute with its own elements, and it does not reach most people who get bitten. A delivery driver, a mail carrier, a meter reader, a neighbor returning a package, a child invited over by the owner’s child — none of them is a criminal trespasser.

Second, the injury has to occur on the owner’s private property. Third, and most importantly, the dog has to have been reasonably secured within a fence or other enclosure at the time.

That last element does most of the work. The Legislature chose “reasonably secured,” not “secured,” which means a containment that fails is not automatically fatal to the defense — but it still has to have been reasonable in the first place. A gate with a broken latch, a fence the dog had cleared before, a dog tethered on a run that reached the sidewalk: each is a question of fact about whether the securing was reasonable, and each is litigated on photographs taken early. Conditions like these get repaired within a week of a bite. If you are the injured person, photograph the enclosure, the gate, and the latch immediately.

Strict liability still meets comparative fault

Section 18-1-1(1)(b) routes damages to section 78B-5-818, Utah’s comparative fault statute. Strict liability establishes that the owner is responsible. It does not stop a factfinder from assigning a share of the fault to the injured person, and a claimant whose own share reaches 50% recovers nothing.

This is where provocation lives now. Teasing the dog, ignoring a posted warning, reaching over a fence, continuing to approach after a growl — these are fault allocation arguments rather than complete defenses. They are also almost always established in the first ten seconds of the incident, which is why they need to come out in the first client conversation rather than in a deposition.

Prior bites moved columns. They did not stop mattering.

Because the statute says liability attaches regardless of what the owner knew, it is tempting to conclude that the dog’s history is irrelevant. For liability, it is. For damages, it is often the most valuable evidence in the file.

Punitive damages in Utah require clear and convincing evidence of willful and malicious conduct or knowing and reckless indifference. An owner who knew the dog had bitten before, kept it in the same unsecured yard, and did nothing is the paradigm case. So the animal control file, the prior complaints, any dangerous-dog designation, and the neighbors’ history with that animal all still belong in the case. They have simply moved from proving liability to proving the value of the claim.

The arbitration track: section 18-1-4

Utah has a dedicated arbitration statute for dog attack cases. It was amended most recently by Chapter 310 of the 2026 General Session, and it is the part of this area of law that is least understood.

The election belongs to the injured person, and the window is short. A claimant may elect binding arbitration only if a complaint including the bodily injury claim was already timely filed, and the notice electing arbitration is filed within 14 days after the complaint has been answered, while the action is still pending. Miss the 14 days and the option is gone.

What the election buys and what it costs:

The trial de novo provisions are where the statute gets its teeth, and they cut both ways. A plaintiff who appeals and fails to obtain a verdict of at least $5,000 that is also at least 30% greater than the arbitration award pays the other side’s costs, including expert witness and deposition costs, capped at $6,000. A defendant who appeals and fails to obtain a verdict at least 30% lower than the award pays the same. Either side can also be hit with attorney fees if the court finds the appeal was filed to harass or to run up the cost of the case.

The outcome caps are asymmetric in a way that is easy to miss. If the plaintiff requests the trial de novo, the verdict cannot exceed $50,000. If the defendant requests it, the verdict cannot exceed $15,000 above the available insurance limits, and cannot exceed $65,000 in any event. A defendant who appeals an award is therefore accepting exposure above the policy that the plaintiff gave up by electing arbitration in the first place.

When arbitration is the right call — and when it is a serious mistake

It fits a narrow and real category of case: clear liability, documented but modest injuries, an insured owner, and a defense posture that makes ordinary litigation uneconomic. A well-supported $35,000 claim against a $300,000 homeowner’s policy is expensive to try and straightforward to arbitrate.

It is the wrong call on anything that might be worth more than the cap. Facial scarring in a child, degloving injuries, anything requiring reconstruction, anything with a credible punitive damages component — electing arbitration on one of these forecloses the recovery the case deserves, and the punitive damages bar follows the case even if it later goes to trial. Damages in dog bite cases also tend to reveal themselves late, particularly scarring in children and psychological injury in anyone. Electing before the medical picture is stable is a decision made on incomplete information.

And because recovery is capped at available coverage, the election is worth very little against an uninsured owner. Before anyone elects anything, confirm the coverage and confirm its shape. Homeowner’s and renter’s policies frequently carry animal liability sublimits well below the policy’s general limit, and breed exclusions remain common in Utah. A policy with a $25,000 animal sublimit makes the statutory $50,000 ceiling academic. I know that one from my own case: the owner had insurance, and the policy excluded his breed.

What to do in the first week

• Photograph the enclosure — the fence, the gate, the latch, the gap. The 2025 exception turns on a physical condition that gets repaired fast.
• Report the bite. Many Utah cities require a report within 24 hours, and the report creates a dated record identifying the dog and the owner.
• Request the animal control file on that dog. Prior complaints are where the punitive damages case lives.
• Find the policy and ask specifically about animal sublimits and breed exclusions before anyone talks about numbers.
• Watch the calendar. Four years is the general limitations period for a personal injury claim in Utah, but the arbitration election closes 14 days after the answer, and that deadline arrives years earlier.