Lease Addendum for Landlord's Protection from Dog Bite Liability
If a dog bite victim cannot recover compensation from the tenant who owned the attacking dog, the victim usually will focus on holding the landlord responsible for the accident. As stated in Landlord Liability for Dog Bites, there are a number of ways that a landlord, landowner, property management company or even security company can be held liable for canine-inflicted injuries that happen on and even off the premises. (For the sake of brevity, this article will refer to all of these as the "landlord.")
The lease or rental agreement can protect the landlord from claims by dog bite victims, but the protection is not absolute. (For the sake of brevity, "lease" will refer to a lease or a rental agreement.) The victim was not a party to the lease, so it cannot prevent him from suing. However, it sometimes can be the winning factor in a suit and always will benefit the landlord in a variety of ways. For example, a properly drafted lease will accomplish the following:
- Clearly prohibit dogs other than guide dogs
- Establish that the landlord was not informed of any viciousness on the part of the tenant's dog
- Prove that the tenant did not tell the landlord about any defect like a broken gate or fence
- Require renter's insurance with proper terms and adequate coverage amounts
- Establish reasonable guidelines for bringing new pets onto the premises
- Make the tenant liable for any damage done by his pets and those of his guests
- Force the tenant to defend and indemnify against any lawsuits because of damage by his pets or his guests' pets
- Enable the landlord to evict the tenant who has a dangerous animal of any kind
Attorney Kenneth M. Phillips has authored a Lease Addendum: Pets. It covers all of the foregoing points and therefore can protect a landlord from the claims of some victims of canine-inflicted injury. New tenants should receive the Addendum when they enter into the lease; existing tenants should be asked to sign it at the start of the next rental term (i.e., a month-to-month tenant would sign it at the beginning of his next month, while a year-to-year tenant would do so at the beginning of the next year of the term).
The Lease Addendum: Pets can be downloaded from this website. Please note that it cannot be considered a substitute for insurance, or for the guidance of your own attorney (who should be called upon to review it and compare it with the lease that you currently are using). Nothing and nobody can guarantee that you will not be sued, but you can decrease the odds against you by using this Lease Addendum: Pets or something very similar to it, drafted by your own lawyer.
