Dog Bite Lawyer in Great Neck, NY

New York’s dog bite law changed on April 17, 2025, and most of what is still published about it is out of date. If a dog bit you or your child on the Great Neck peninsula — the 11020, 11021, 11023 and 11024 ZIPs, a front walk off Baker Hill Road, the sidewalk along Middle Neck Road, a lobby near Cutter Mill Road — you now have two ways to hold the owner responsible instead of one. Yakov Mushiyev & Associates, P.C. handles serious injury cases throughout Nassau County and across Long Island, and has recovered over $50 million for injured clients.

Call 718.775.3110 for a free case review. No fee unless we win, we advance every case expense, and we come to you if travel is hard.

Dog Bite Lawyer Serving Great Neck and the Nine Villages

“Great Neck” is not one municipality. The peninsula holds nine incorporated villages — the Village of Great Neck, Great Neck Estates, Great Neck Plaza, Kensington, Kings Point, Lake Success, Russell Gardens, Saddle Rock and Thomaston — plus unincorporated ground governed directly by the Town of North Hempstead. Each village is a separate public corporation with its own code.

In a dog case that patchwork decides which restraint rule the dog was under and who takes the report. Four villages run their own police departments — Great Neck Estates, Kensington, Kings Point and Lake Success. Elsewhere the responder is the Nassau County Police Sixth Precinct, 100 Community Drive, Manhasset. Bites two blocks apart can generate paper in two different buildings, so we pin the exact address first, here and across the rest of our Great Neck injury practice.

Nassau County Dog Bite Lawyers Serving Great Neck and the Surrounding Villages

We publish no bite counts for Great Neck or for Nassau County; no reliable local figure exists. What we can describe is where these cases come from. The Great Neck Park District — a public corporation in its own right — runs the peninsula’s parks, where dogs and children share the same paths. Village streets are residential and largely fenced, putting the contact point at a gate, a driveway apron or the front-yard sidewalk line. Great Neck Plaza is dense and vertical, so a bite in an apartment lobby or elevator brings a building owner and managing agent in beside the dog’s owner.

Many people bitten here are working when it happens — delivery drivers, couriers, letter carriers, home-service workers who reach a door that opens before anyone has hold of the dog. If you were on the clock, a workers’ compensation claim and a third-party case against the owner may run at once.

Injuries We See in Great Neck Dog Bite Cases

Bites are puncture-and-tear injuries and the surface wound understates them: torn hand tendons, nerve damage with lasting numbness, deep puncture and joint infections, tissue avulsion, and secondary harm from being knocked down — wrist and hip fractures, head strikes on a curb or lobby floor. In an older adult the knockdown is often the more serious event. Seriously injured people from this area are typically transported to North Shore University Hospital, 300 Community Drive, Manhasset, the nearest state-designated Level I adult trauma center. Long Island Jewish and St. Francis are not on the state’s adult trauma list; Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park is the region’s Level I pediatric trauma center.

Scarring, disfigurement and children’s facial injuries

Scarring is often the largest part of the claim, not a cosmetic footnote. Bite scars widen, thicken and change color over one to two years, and a plastic surgeon will rarely evaluate revision until the scar matures — a timeline that collides with the insurer’s push to settle early.

Children are bitten on the face, head and neck far more often than adults, because their faces sit at the height of a standing dog. A facial scar on a young child is a lifetime injury with staged revision surgery ahead of it, and its value has to come from a treating surgeon’s opinion on future care, not from an emergency-room note. We photograph the wound at intake, at suture removal and at intervals after.

The New York Law That Applies

What changed on April 17, 2025

Nearly every New York dog bite page still online says the same thing: that a dog owner can be sued only on a strict liability theory, that you must prove the owner knew the dog was dangerous, and that ordinary negligence is simply not an available theory against a dog’s owner. That was accurate until April 2025. It is not the law now.

In Flanders v Goodfellow, 2025 NY Slip Op 02261 (Apr. 17, 2025), the Court of Appeals overruled Bard v Jahnke, holding that “to the extent we previously held that a plaintiff may not assert a common-law negligence cause of action against the owner of a domestic animal for harms caused by that animal, we now overrule that precedent.” The Court put your position plainly: “A plaintiff who suffers an animal-induced injury therefore has a choice. If the owner knew or should have known the animal had vicious propensities, the plaintiff may seek to hold them strictly liable. Or they can rely on rules of ordinary negligence.” Both may be pleaded together, as the plaintiff in Flanders did. It is the common law of the State, so it governs in Nassau County exactly as in Queens.

What the negligence route unlocks

Under the old rule a dog with a clean history was close to a free pass, no matter how careless its owner had been. That is over. An owner who let a dog off leash where leashing is required, used a frayed leash that parted, left a gate latch broken, or simply could not physically control a large dog that lunged can now be liable — with no prior bite and no proof of vicious propensities at all. The question has shifted from what the dog did before to what the owner did that day: how long the leash was and who held it, whether the dog outweighed the handler, how long the latch had been broken.

Vicious propensities — still worth proving

The older theory did not go away, and where the proof exists it is the stronger of the two, because it does not ask a jury to weigh the owner’s conduct at all. What shows an owner knew or should have known: prior bites or attempted bites, prior complaints from neighbors or a mail carrier, a “Beware of Dog” sign the owner posted, muzzling in public, a dog kept chained away from visitors, straining or lunging at the leash, growling and baring teeth, and prior animal control or police reports. One investigation supports both theories, and you may plead both.

Non-owner defendants — Hewitt v Palmer Veterinary Clinic

Where the defendant had custody or control but did not own the animal — a veterinary practice, a groomer, a boarding kennel, a building — Hewitt v Palmer Veterinary Clinic, 35 NY3d 541 (2020), still governs, and it already permitted an ordinary negligence claim against such a defendant without proof of the dog’s vicious propensities. Flanders did not displace Hewitt; it brought owners into line with it. Here that matters most in co-op and apartment buildings, where whoever controls the lobby is not who owns the dog.

Agriculture and Markets Law § 123 — narrower than it sounds

You will see Agriculture and Markets Law § 123 called New York’s dog bite statute. It is not a general damages statute. Section 123(10) makes the owner of a dog adjudicated dangerous through the statute’s own proceeding strictly liable for medical costs resulting from injury the dog caused — that is the scope, and it does not reach pain and suffering, scarring or lost wages. Subdivision (12) is what helps you: nothing in the section limits or abrogates any claim an injured person has under common law or by statute. The statute supplements. The recovery still comes from the common-law claims, which after Flanders are two.

Leash rules here come from the Town and the villages, not from New York City

The New York City leash rule at 24 RCNY Health Code § 161.05 belongs to the Health Code of the City of New York. It has no application in Nassau County. Great Neck is not in New York City, and no City Health Code provision reaches a dog on this peninsula.

What governs comes from the Town and the villages. Under Town of North Hempstead Code Chapter 14, § 14-9(A), a dog on public or private property must be “effectively restrained in the immediate custody and control of its owner or possessor by a chain or leash not exceeding six feet in length,” and an owner of an unrestrained dog is guilty of a violation “with or without the knowledge, consent or fault of such person.” In the Village of Great Neck Plaza, Code Chapter 73 bars a dog from any street, sidewalk, park, public place or private property unless restrained by a chain or leash of no more than six feet (§ 73-7), and § 73-8 requires owners to “exercise due care in preventing such dog, cat or other animal from running loose or at large” — language written in the vocabulary of negligence.

For the other villages the honest answer is the useful one: the rule differs village by village on the peninsula and must be checked against the code for the exact location. We do not quote an ordinance we have not read. There is no county-level leash ordinance we could locate; dog control here is a town and village matter. After Flanders, violating the applicable restraint provision is direct evidence of carelessness a jury may weigh — not automatic liability, whatever other pages promise.

The landlord, and who else may answer

A landlord is not liable merely because a tenant’s dog bit someone. A landlord who knew the dog was on the property and had the ability to remove it — through the lease, house rules, or the power to refuse renewal — is a different matter, and that is a real avenue in the peninsula’s rental buildings and two-family houses. The same analysis reaches a co-op or condo board that knew. This overlaps our Great Neck premises liability work and the firm’s premises liability practice.

Comparative fault is pure here

Expect to be told you provoked the dog or reached over a fence. Under CPLR 1411(a), New York applies pure comparative fault: conduct attributable to you reduces recovery in proportion to your share and does not bar the claim. The greater-than-50% bar at CPLR 1411(b) applies to personal injury actions subject to article 51 of the Insurance Law — motor vehicle cases. A dog bite is not one, so the pure rule still governs, unlike a Great Neck car accident.

Why a Long Island Dog Bite Case Is Different From a New York City One

The substantive law is statewide — Flanders and Hewitt apply in Mineola and in Queens alike. The local layer is not. One Health Code rule covers all of New York City; on this peninsula there is a Town chapter, village animal chapters, and villages whose rules must be pulled individually before anyone says what standard the owner was under. That is why our Fresh Meadows dog bite page stands separately.

Housing differs too, and that changes the insurance. Much of Great Neck is single-family and owner-occupied, so the responsive policy is usually a homeowner’s policy, sometimes with an umbrella layer above it; near the station it is a renter’s policy plus the building’s coverage. Some policies exclude breeds or cap animal liability. Suit is filed in Supreme Court, Nassau County, Mineola; District Court handles civil claims up to $15,000 only. We do this work across the peninsula and in Manhasset and New Hyde Park.

What To Do Right Now

1. Get medical care the same day. Puncture wounds close over bacteria, and infection is what turns a hand bite into surgery.
2. Report the bite to the right authority for that address — one of the four village police departments, or the Nassau County Police Sixth Precinct in Manhasset — and to the town or village animal control authority. Which is correct depends on whether you were inside a village or in unincorporated Town territory.
3. Ask for the dog’s rabies vaccination status and proof of it. If the dog cannot be identified or the status confirmed, the decision on post-exposure treatment is your doctor’s, and it is time-sensitive.
4. Identify the owner — name, address, phone — plus the handler if that was someone else, and the landlord or business if it happened on their property.
5. Ask for the homeowner’s or renter’s insurance carrier and policy number. It is the most valuable thing you can collect at the scene.
6. Photograph the injury before it heals: that day, in good light, with something for scale — then weekly.
7. Photograph the scene — the gate and its latch, the fence line, the leash, the open door, the lobby.
8. Get witness names. Nearby doorbell and security cameras overwrite in days.
9. Give no recorded statement to the owner’s insurer and sign nothing before you speak with a lawyer.

Deadlines in a Great Neck Dog Bite Case

Against a private owner, a landlord or a business, the period is three years under CPLR 214(5). Where a bite causes death the wrongful death period is shorter — see our Great Neck wrongful death page. Where the injured person is a child, the timing rules are not an adult’s and should be reviewed rather than assumed.

Once a government is a defendant those numbers stop controlling. A claim involving the Great Neck Park District, the school district, the Town or the County requires a notice of claim under General Municipal Law § 50-e within 90 days, served personally or by registered or certified mail; the electronic option exists only in a city over one million. County notices go to the Office of the Nassau County Attorney, One West Street, Mineola — not the County Clerk.

A claim against one of the nine villages runs on a shorter, contested clock. General Municipal Law § 50-i and CPLR 9802 set different periods for starting suit, one as short as a single year, and the conflict is unresolved. We will not print a number, because the wrong one ends a case. Treat a village claim as the most urgent municipal claim there is.

How We Build a Great Neck Dog Bite Case

We start with identification, because everything follows it: the dog, the owner, the handler at the moment of the bite, the property, the policy. Then we pull the report from whichever of the five agencies took it, request prior animal control and police records for that dog and address, and canvass neighbors who have complained before.

In parallel we build the negligence case Flanders restored: the leash and its condition, the gate and latch, the handler’s size against the dog’s, the restraint provision governing that address, and what the owner did in the seconds before contact. On damages we work with the treating surgeon on scar maturation and staged revision, document infection and nerve findings, and address the psychological side honestly — disrupted sleep and a lasting fear of dogs are real components, especially in children. Where a fall did the worst of it, the case is worked like any Great Neck fall case. Start at the Great Neck injury hub or our personal injury practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I sue a dog owner for ordinary negligence in New York?

Yes. On April 17, 2025 the Court of Appeals decided Flanders v Goodfellow, 2025 NY Slip Op 02261, overruling Bard v Jahnke and restoring the common-law negligence claim against the owner of a domestic animal. You may pursue strict liability based on the owner’s knowledge of vicious propensities, ordinary negligence based on the owner’s carelessness, or both. Articles saying negligence is unavailable were correct until April 2025 and are wrong now.

Do I have to prove the dog bit someone before?

Not for the negligence claim. That is the practical effect of Flanders: an owner who let a dog off leash where leashing is required, used a failing leash, left a gate latch broken, or could not control a large dog can be liable though the dog had no history. Prior bites, complaints, warning signs, muzzling, straining at the leash and prior animal control reports still matter, because they support the strict liability theory.

Does the New York City leash law apply in Great Neck?

No. The rule at 24 RCNY Health Code § 161.05 is part of the Health Code of the City of New York and has no application in Nassau County. In Great Neck the restraint rules come from Town of North Hempstead Code Chapter 14, which requires a leash or chain of no more than six feet, and from village codes such as Great Neck Plaza Chapter 73. Other villages have their own rules, so the governing provision must be checked for the exact location.

Who actually pays a Great Neck dog bite claim?

Usually an insurance policy rather than the owner personally — a homeowner’s policy, a renter’s policy, or a building’s liability coverage, sometimes with an umbrella layer above it. Some policies exclude certain breeds or cap animal liability, so identifying the carrier early shapes the case. Agriculture and Markets Law § 123 gives strict liability only for medical costs, and only where the dog has been adjudicated dangerous.

How long do I have to bring a Great Neck dog bite case?

Three years under CPLR 214(5) against a private owner, landlord or business. If a municipality is a defendant, a notice of claim is required within 90 days under General Municipal Law § 50-e and the suit deadline is far shorter; a claim against one of the nine Great Neck villages runs on a shorter and contested clock that a lawyer should review immediately. A child’s claim follows different timing rules.

Other Great Neck Case Types

• Car Accident Lawyer Great Neck
• Truck Accident Lawyer Great Neck
• Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Great Neck
• Bicycle Accident Lawyer Great Neck
• Pedestrian Accident Lawyer Great Neck
• Bus Accident Lawyer Great Neck
• Slip and Fall Lawyer Great Neck
• Premises Liability Lawyer Great Neck
• Construction Accident Lawyer Great Neck
• Wrongful Death Lawyer Great Neck
• Great Neck Personal Injury Lawyer — main page

Authoritative Resources

• Flanders v Goodfellow (N.Y. Court of Appeals, April 17, 2025)
• Agriculture and Markets Law § 123 — dangerous dogs
• Town of North Hempstead Code Chapter 14 — Dogs
• Village of Great Neck Plaza Code Chapter 73 — Animals
• CPLR 214 — three-year personal injury period
• CPLR 1411 — comparative fault
• Supreme Court, Nassau County — Mineola

This page is general information about New York law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. New York’s auto injury statutes were amended effective May 26, 2026, and claims against Nassau County, the Town of North Hempstead and the incorporated villages run on short and differing deadlines that may apply differently to your case. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Speak with a lawyer about your specific situation.