Negligence Claims Beyond the One Bite Rule in New York, NY What Flanders v Goodfellow Changed in 2025

What the Court of Appeals actually decided

Flanders v Goodfellow was decided April 17, 2025 in a unanimous opinion by Judge Halligan. The plaintiff, a postal carrier, was bitten on December 8, 2018 while delivering a package. The Court held first that affidavits from two other postal workers describing the dog barking, snarling, baring its teeth and slamming into the window glass raised a triable question of constructive knowledge of a vicious propensity, so summary judgment was improper. It then held that Bard v Jahnke, 6 NY3d 592 (2006), is overruled to the extent it barred a common-law negligence claim for harm caused by a domestic animal.

Two tracks, drawn from the Restatement

The framework the Court described draws on sections 509 and 518 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. Section 509 is the strict liability track: an owner who knows or has reason to know of a dangerous propensity abnormal to the class answers for harm it causes. Section 518 is the negligence track, addressing an animal not known to be abnormally dangerous, where liability turns on a failure to exercise reasonable care to prevent foreseeable harm. An injured person may plead one theory or both. The Court noted that roughly thirty-six states already recognized negligence as an alternative theory as of 2015, so New York's position had become unusual rather than typical.

The propensity language the Court kept

Nothing in the decision weakened the strict liability route. It reaffirmed Collier v Zambito, 1 NY3d 444, which describes a vicious propensity as the tendency to do any act that might endanger the safety of persons and property in a given situation, and which held that a triable issue may be raised even without a prior bite where a dog has been known to growl, snap or bare its teeth. It also cited Hastings v Sauve, 21 NY3d 122, for the proposition that a vicious propensity includes any behavior reflecting a proclivity to act in a way that puts others at risk of harm, and Doerr v Goldsmith, 25 NY3d 1114, which confirmed that dogs are not treated as farm animals.

Why the negligence route matters in a dense city

The practical difference shows up where the animal has no documented history. Under the older rule, a claim arising from a leash allowed to run out at a crosswalk, an unsecured apartment door, a gate propped open in a vestibule, or a handler managing several dogs at once failed for want of propensity evidence no matter how careless the conduct. On the negligence track those facts are the case, framed by the duty analysis the Court traced back to Palsgraf v Long Island R. R. Co., 248 NY 339. Hewitt v Palmer Veterinary Clinic, 35 NY3d 541, had already allowed a negligence claim against a defendant with specialized animal knowledge.

Decisions that have to be read with the date attached

Several Second Department opinions describe New York as recognizing no claim for negligent handling of a dog. Castillo v Berne, decided August 14, 2024, said so while also holding that a dog's breed standing alone does not establish a landlord's awareness of a vicious propensity. Cantore v Costantine, decided November 15, 2023, held that Hewitt did not extend ordinary negligence to all premises owners. Both predate Flanders on the negligence question. Slotnick v Chaikin, decided May 28, 2025, and Agro v Olivieri, decided April 10, 2024, remain useful for what they say about the strict liability elements and about ordinary canine behavior.

The elements a negligence pleading has to carry

A negligence theory does not remove the burden of proof, it relocates it. The claim requires a duty, a breach in the form of unreasonable conduct in keeping or handling the animal, causation and damages, and the evidence is behavioral and situational: the length of the lead, the state of a gate or door, the number of animals in one person's charge, the sight lines, prior warnings about the same conduct. Comparative fault remains available to the defense, since CPLR 1411 reduces recovery in proportion to a claimant's own culpable conduct and CPLR 1412 makes it an affirmative defense that must be pleaded and proved.

What the statute contributes, and what it does not

Agriculture and Markets Law 123(10) remains a narrow strict liability rule for medical costs against the owner or lawful custodian of a dangerous dog, and subdivision 12 states expressly that nothing in section 123 limits or abrogates any other claim available at common law or by statute. So the medical-cost provision, the strict liability propensity claim and the negligence claim can coexist in one file, each with different proof and a different reach. The filing period for all of them against a private defendant is the three years set by CPLR 214(5).