Couriers, carriers and meter readers are named in the bite statute itself, not by argument. When the route is the job, a second system of rules also applies before any of it reaches a homeowner's policy.
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Six boxes, about thirty seconds. You pick when to be called back, and that is when the phone rings.
Or call (213) 953-1047Civil Code section 3342 attaches liability to the owner of a dog for a bite suffered in a public place or while the person is lawfully in a private place, and it then defines lawful presence to include a person performing a duty imposed by the laws of this state or by the laws or postal regulations of the United States, as well as a person on the property by invitation express or implied. For someone delivering to a porch, reading a meter or serving papers, that clause moves the ordinary entry dispute out of the way. What remains is ownership of the animal, the location, and the injury.
Delivery in this city rarely stops at a single front door. Packages travel through controlled-access gates, interior courtyards, subterranean parking, mail rooms and long exterior corridors, a consequence of the housing stock: the Los Angeles Housing Department describes rent stabilization as covering approximately 624,000 units in 118,000 properties, generally buildings of two or more units built on or before October 1, 1978 (RSO coverage). Inside the City, Municipal Code section 53.06.2 requires a dog off its keeper's premises to be on a substantial chain or leash no longer than six feet under a competent person's control, and a shared corridor or courtyard is not the unit. Municipal Code section 53.34 treats animals at large separately and makes the violation a misdemeanor where the animal bites, with an ownership prohibition of up to three years available following conviction.
Where an ordinance was violated, Evidence Code section 669 presumes failure to exercise due care if the violation proximately caused the injury, the injury resulted from the nature of occurrence the enactment was designed to prevent, and the injured person belonged to the class the enactment protected. Subdivision (b)(1) allows rebuttal by proof that the person did what might reasonably be expected of a person of ordinary prudence acting under similar circumstances who desired to comply with the law. Whether the dog was loose in a gated area, tied outside a lobby, or held on a long retractable line is therefore a factual question with a legal consequence, and it is answered by photographs and the responding officer's notes rather than recollection.
An injury on the route also runs through workers' compensation. Labor Code section 3600 sets the conditions under which compensation is the exclusive remedy against an employer. That exclusivity is directed at the employer, not at the dog's owner. Labor Code section 3852 provides that a compensation claim does not affect the injured worker's right of action against a third party who caused the injury, and it also allows the employer to claim against that third party for amounts paid. So a delivery worker bitten by a resident's dog may have a compensation claim and a separate claim against the animal's owner running at the same time, on separate paperwork.
Labor Code section 3856 addresses the order of payment where there is a suit against the third party. Where the employee prosecutes the action alone, the court first orders paid from any judgment the reasonable litigation expenses and a reasonable attorney's fee based solely on services rendered in effecting the recovery for both the employee and the employer, and then, on the employer's application, allows as a first lien the amount of the employer's expenditure for compensation together with amounts to which the employer may be entitled as special damages under section 3852. Subdivisions (a) and (c) set out the parallel sequences when the employer sues alone or the two proceed together. The practical point is that the compensation carrier's interest is dealt with inside the third-party recovery, in a defined order, rather than being ignored.
County Veterinary Public Health states that all persons with knowledge of a bite are required to report it, that all mammal bites are reportable other than those from small rodents and rabbits, that the current location of the biting animal is one of the most important parts of the report, and that Pasadena, Long Beach and Vernon take reports for their own jurisdictions at their own numbers (Reporting Animal Bites). A route worker who reports through an employer app has usually not made that report. The County rabies manual describes quarantine under County Code section 11.04.210 of at least fourteen days, reduced to ten for dogs and cats, with a confinement fee under section 11.04.225 recovered where the bitten person was neither the owner nor the custodian of the animal and was not engaged in illegal activity (quarantine provisions).
The address and unit, not the block. Photographs of the gate, the latch and the sight line from the entry point. The scan or timestamp record showing when the stop occurred. Names of any building staff who responded. Whether animal control or police attended and under what report number. The rabies license and vaccination status of the dog, which Health and Safety Code section 121690 requires in rabies areas after the dog reaches four months for licensing and three months for vaccination.
Compensation for the third-party claim is measured under Civil Code section 3333 as all the detriment proximately caused, whether or not it could have been anticipated. Where fault is divided among several people, Civil Code section 1431.2 makes liability for non-economic damages several only and proportionate to each defendant's own share of fault.
This page summarizes published statutes, ordinances and agency guidance for general information. It is not legal advice about any route, employer or incident. Specific questions belong with the attorney who advertises on this site.
Delivery Driver Dog Bite Lawyer in Los Angeles. Call (213) 953-1047 and a Los Angeles lawyer reviews the claim and the deadline that applies. Nothing is signed on that call.
Call (213) 953-1047A Public Health Reports study using Los Angeles County Department of Public Health surveillance data recorded 23,103 reported dog bites from 2009 through 2011, 88% of 26,169 reported animal-to-human bites; Pasadena, Long Beach, and Vernon were excluded because they had separate health departments and rabies-control protocols.
Why it matters: The dated data shows why the correct reporting jurisdiction matters and why an incident record should identify the exact city and agency rather than use “Los Angeles” as a catch-all.
Source: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Los Angeles Municipal Code section 63.44 bars animals from City parks except in listed situations, including licensed dogs led by a leash not more than six feet long and licensed dogs under the control of a competent person inside designated dog exercise and training areas. The ordinance names specific sites, among them Laurel Canyon Park from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and from 3:00 p.m. until park closing, the fenced area at Silver Lake Recreation Center, roughly ten acres of the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area on Victory Boulevard near White Oak Avenue, about ninety acres of Runyon Canyon Park, and a 1.4-acre fenced portion of Barrington Park.
Why it matters: Whether a dog was permitted to be off leash at the moment of an attack depends on the exact park, the exact fenced area and sometimes the time of day, so the location detail in a park incident carries more weight here than a general statement about dog parks.
Source: codelibrary.amlegal.com
The County rabies manual states that County Code section 11.04.210 sets a quarantine of at least fourteen days, reduced to ten days for dogs and cats, with release possible after five days if a veterinarian examines the animal on the fifth day or later and certifies no clinical signs of rabies. Section 11.04.220 allows the confinement at home or in a licensed boarding kennel, and section 11.04.225 sets a fifty-dollar confinement fee that is recovered when the bitten person was neither the owner nor the custodian of the animal and was not engaged in illegal activity.
Why it matters: The quarantine file is a dated public record of where the animal was kept in the days after a bite, and the confinement fee line can indicate how the agency recorded the bitten person's relationship to the animal.
Source: publichealth.lacounty.gov
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