Broken Bones From a Dog Attack in Indiana
Personal Injury | Dog Bites
Broken Bones From a Dog Attack in Indiana: Why the Dog Bite Statute May Not Cover Your Fracture
By JR Emerson | September 22, 2026 | 11 min read
The X-ray shows a broken wrist, or a broken hip, and the discharge paperwork says the cause was a fall. What it does not say is that a loose dog came around a blind corner on the Monon Greenway at full speed, and the fall was only the landing.
People in that situation make one of two opposite mistakes. Either they assume that with no bite there is no dog case, or they assume Indiana is a strict liability state and the owner is automatically on the hook. Both are wrong, and the gap between them is where fracture claims get lost.
Indiana's dog bite statute is narrow. It covers bites, and it covers a specific set of people. A fracture caused by a seventy-pound dog hitting you at a dead run is frequently outside it. That does not mean you have no claim. It means you have a different claim, proved with different evidence, on a shorter practical timeline. For the broader picture, see our Indiana dog bite practice.
Two Different Injuries, Two Different Claims
Dogs break bones in two distinct ways, and Indiana law treats them differently.
Fractures caused by the bite itself
A large dog's jaws can crush the small bones of the hand, fingers, wrist, and forearm. These arrive alongside puncture wounds, soft tissue crush injury, and contamination that drives infection risk. Bite fractures of the hand are frequently open fractures, which changes the surgical approach immediately.
Fractures caused by impact, with no bite at all
This is the category most content ignores. A dog charges, jumps, lunges on a leash, or bolts between your legs. You go down, and the fracture comes from the ground rather than from teeth. The pattern is predictable: a distal radius fracture from bracing the fall, a proximal humerus fracture from landing on the shoulder, and in older adults, a hip fracture.
These are not minor. Research published in JAMA Surgery found that fractures among adults 65 and older associated with walking leashed dogs rose from roughly 1,700 cases in 2004 to about 4,400 in 2017, with the hip the single most commonly fractured site at 17 percent. Harvard Health summarized that study. It looked at people walking their own dogs rather than at attacks, but it establishes the mechanism plainly: a dog does not have to bite anyone to break a bone, and the bones it breaks this way are often the consequential ones.
Key takeaway: the word "bite" is doing real work in the statute
Indiana Code 15-20-1-3 is written around the act of biting. If a dog knocked you down and broke your hip without its teeth ever touching you, that statute is not your claim. Indiana negligence law still is, and it can be a strong one. The mistake is concluding there is no case because the statute does not fit.
What Indiana's Dog Bite Statute Actually Says
Under IC 15-20-1-3, an owner is liable for all damages when a dog, without provocation, bites a person who is (1) acting peaceably and (2) in a location where that person may be required to be in order to discharge a duty imposed by the laws of Indiana, the laws of the United States, or United States postal regulations. Subsection (b) is the part that gives the statute its force: liability attaches even if the dog has never behaved viciously and even if the owner had no knowledge of prior vicious behavior. The statute is reproduced in full by the Animal Legal and Historical Center at Michigan State University College of Law.
Read those elements closely, because a great deal of published Indiana content skips past them. The statute requires a bite: not an attack, not a knockdown. And it requires a duty imposed by law. A United States postal carrier qualifies, as does a law enforcement officer performing a legal duty. A private courier is a harder question, because delivering packages for a private company is not obviously a duty imposed by the laws of Indiana or of the United States. Content telling drivers for private carriers they are automatically covered overstates the statute, and that overstatement leads people to skip the negligence investigation their case actually needs.
A separate criminal provision at IC 15-20-1-4 makes it a Class C misdemeanor to recklessly fail to restrain a dog that then enters someone else's property and bites or attacks a person without provocation, causing bodily injury. Note that this one does say "bites or attacks," and that it escalates to felony levels where a death results. A citation is not your civil claim, but it is a document.
One definition surprises people: under IC 15-20-1-2, "owner" includes anyone who possesses, keeps, or harbors a dog. The adult child watching the dog for the weekend, the roommate, and the boarding operation all fall inside it.
Fracture Cases Usually Run on Negligence, and That Is Not a Weaker Claim
When the statute does not apply, Indiana common law does, and it is more favorable to injured people than the phrase "one bite rule" suggests.
The Court of Appeals has said directly that animals are not necessarily entitled to one free bite before their owners are held liable in negligence. Hardsaw v. Courtney, 665 N.E.2d 603 (Ind. Ct. App. 1996). The more useful case for a fracture claim is Plesha v. Edmonds, 717 N.E.2d 981 (Ind. Ct. App. 1999): keeping a dog imposes a duty of reasonable care even where the owner knows of no vicious propensity, and an owner is bound to know a dog's natural propensities and use reasonable care against the injuries reasonably expected from them.
That distinction decides knockdown cases. You do not have to prove the dog was vicious. Lunging, bolting, and charging at a running child are ordinary dog behaviors, entirely foreseeable, and an owner who lets a large dog do them unrestrained on a public trail has a reasonable-care problem regardless of whether the animal ever showed aggression.
The distinction most content gets wrong
Local leash ordinances matter, and violating one can support a negligence per se theory. Plesha involved exactly that. But a leash violation proves a breach of the duty of care. It does not prove the owner knew the dog was dangerous. Indiana courts have been explicit that it is not reasonable to attribute dangerous propensities to a dog merely because it barks at strangers, because someone is afraid of it, or because an ordinance requires restraint. And in Baker v. Weather, 714 N.E.2d 740 (Ind. Ct. App. 1999), the court held that a dog escaping does not by itself establish a dangerous propensity. Two different elements, two different bodies of proof, and collapsing them is how a file gets built on the wrong evidence for a year.
JR Emerson on the animal control file
"From the bench at Whitestown Town Court, I spent years weighing the credibility of witnesses and physical evidence in contested matters. What that teaches you is how differently a written record made the same day reads compared to a recollection offered eight months later. In a dog case, the animal control file and the officer's narrative are usually the only contemporaneous documents that exist. If nobody called it in, there is no file, and the case becomes one neighbor's memory against another's."
Landlords are a separate question. Under Morehead v. Deitrich, 932 N.E.2d 1272 (Ind. Ct. App. 2010), a plaintiff pursuing a landowner for a tenant's dog must show both that the landowner retained control over the premises where the dog was kept and that the landowner knew of the dog's dangerous propensity. Both prongs, not one. Indiana courts have since distinguished Morehead where a landlord did retain control, so the analysis turns on the specific property and lease.
Told there is no claim because the dog never bit you?
That is the statute talking, not Indiana negligence law. Free injury review, and no fee unless we win.
Proving a Knockdown Fracture: The Evidence Nobody Collects
Bite cases generate paperwork automatically. Indiana requires a physician treating a dog bite injury to report it within 72 hours, so a record exists whether or not the injured person thought to create one. A knockdown fracture generates none of that. The chart says "mechanical fall." Animal control was never called because nobody was bleeding. The dog went home.
That is the whole problem. It is fixable, but only early. The sequence that works:
- Report it, even now. Carmel Police non-emergency is (317) 571-2580. For most of Hamilton County the non-emergency dispatch line is (317) 773-1282, Hamilton County Animal Control is (317) 776-4110, and the Humane Society for Hamilton County is (317) 773-4974. A late report is worth far more than no report, and it creates the notice record that matters if the same dog does this again.
- Correct the medical record. Tell the physician the mechanism specifically: a dog struck you, or pulled you down. Ask that it go in the chart. A note reading "fall while walking" will be the insurer's first exhibit.
- Identify the keeper, not just the owner. Remember IC 15-20-1-2. Whoever possessed, kept, or harbored the dog that day may be a defendant with their own policy.
- Photograph the location within days. Sight lines, the blind corner, the gate, the fence line, the invisible fence flags. Conditions change with the season and the mowing schedule.
- Chase the video immediately. Doorbell cameras and neighborhood systems in Hamilton County subdivisions overwrite on a short cycle, often inside two weeks. This is the most time-sensitive item on the list.
- Collect witness names the same week. On the Monon Greenway, the Nickel Plate Trail, and the Geist Greenway, the people who saw it are usually regulars walking the same route at the same hour. Findable for a week or two, gone after that.
- Build the prior history. Earlier animal control complaints, a dangerous animal declaration, prior citations, homeowners association correspondence. This is the notice evidence, and it separates a negligence case from a negligence case with leverage.
JR Emerson on the first two weeks
"In a knockdown case the client is in surgery or a rehab bed while the evidence quietly expires. Nobody is standing on the trail taking pictures. We treat the first two weeks as the investigation window, because the video either still exists or it does not, and no amount of good lawyering later recovers footage that was overwritten in October."
What Moves the Value of a Fracture Claim
Three things, and only one is the size of the medical bill.
Whether hardware went in. A fracture requiring open reduction and internal fixation is a different claim from one treated in a cast, and not only because the surgery costs more. Hardware carries the possibility of removal surgery later, retained hardware pain, and permanent restriction. Our post on how ORIF surgery affects an Indiana injury claim covers that.
Whether the injured person got back to baseline. For a working adult that means earning capacity. For an older adult it usually means independence, and a hip fracture that ends independent living is among the most serious outcomes in injury practice.
What has to be repaid. Health insurers, ERISA plans, Medicare, and Medicaid may all assert reimbursement rights, and if the injury happened on the job, the employer or its worker's compensation carrier holds a lien on any third-party recovery under IC 22-3-2-13. Indiana's collateral source statute at IC 34-51-3 limits what a defendant may tell a jury about other payments, but it does not erase the obligation.
Comparative fault under IC 34-51-2 is where the defense spends its energy. Damages are reduced by your percentage, and recovery is barred entirely if your fault exceeds 50 percent. Note the precision, because most content gets it wrong: not 51 percent, and not "mostly at fault." Expect arguments that you were not watching, that you reached toward the dog, or that your own dog started it. Punitive damages exist under IC 34-51-4 but require conduct well beyond ordinary carelessness.
A fictional example
A 71-year-old woman walking the Nickel Plate Trail in Fishers is hit at the knee by a loose dog off an adjoining unfenced yard. Intertrochanteric hip fracture. Surgery, four days inpatient, three weeks of rehabilitation, six weeks of home health. No bite, no blood, no animal control call that day.
Medical billing: $78,400. Home health: $9,200. Retired, so no wage claim. She uses a walker outdoors permanently and stops driving. Coverage: a $300,000 homeowners limit. Theory: negligence, not IC 15-20-1-3, because there was no bite. Notice evidence: two earlier animal control complaints about the same dog in the county file.
The fight: the carrier assigns her 25 percent for inattention and the health plan asserts a $41,000 lien. Whatever the gross number is, that reduction and that lien decide what she receives, and the lien is negotiable while the fault percentage goes to a jury. An illustration, not a prediction. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
The video is overwriting while you decide.
If a dog put you or a parent on the ground, the evidence window is measured in days. We will tell you honestly whether there is a claim.
Deadlines, and the People Who Get a Different One
The general rule is two years from the date of injury under IC 34-11-2-4. Three situations change that.
A child was hurt. Under IC 34-11-6-1, the period is generally tolled during a legal disability, so for a minor the clock effectively runs from its removal. That is more time, not a reason to wait. Doorbell footage of a child knocked down in 2026 will not exist in 2032.
A government entity is involved. If the attack happened on school corporation property, in a city or county park, or involved a dog kept by a public agency, the Indiana Tort Claims Act adds a notice deadline that runs long before the two-year statute. Notice to a political subdivision, meaning a city, county, township, or school corporation, is due in 180 days under IC 34-13-3-8. Notice to the state is due in 270 days under IC 34-13-3-6. Because classification is not always obvious, serve notice within 180 days in any government case. Missing it generally bars the claim outright regardless of merit.
You were working. Worker's compensation is the exclusive remedy against your employer under IC 22-3-2-6, but it does nothing to the claim against the dog's owner. That third-party claim is separate, is usually where the meaningful recovery is, and carries the comp lien under IC 22-3-2-13. Both tracks have to be opened and they run on different clocks.
How We Handle Dog Attack Fracture Claims
At Emerson Divorce and Accident Injury Attorneys, L.L.C., the first question in a dog case is which liability theory fits, because the answer changes what we look for in week one. A bite to a postal carrier is a statutory claim and the investigation is short. A hip fracture on a trail with no bite is a negligence claim, and it lives or dies on animal control history, video, witnesses, and a medical record that describes the mechanism accurately.
So the perishable work comes first: reporting where nothing was reported, requesting the county animal control file, canvassing for cameras before they cycle, and correcting the mechanism in the chart. Then the ordinary work of a serious injury case: documenting the fracture through healing, building the future care picture, identifying every policy that could respond including the keeper's as well as the owner's, and negotiating liens so the net figure is real.
Jill Bracken-Emerson leads the personal injury practice and is an Indiana Super Lawyers honoree. JR Emerson handles liability, evidence, and procedure. Our 44 years of combined experience is concentrated in the courts where these cases are heard. Hamilton County juries trend conservative on damages relative to Marion County and respond to organized, document-forward presentation, which is why the paper trail built in the first month decides so much.
When you call (317) 969-8000, Katie or Penny will usually answer. They know every active case in the office and can start a file the same day. JR or Jill often answer themselves. Both are long-time Noblesville residents practicing from the primary office in the Carmel Arts and Design District, with offices in Fishers and Zionsville. Injury cases are handled on contingency: $0 up front, nothing unless we recover.
We handle these claims for clients in Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville, Westfield, Zionsville, and Indianapolis, and throughout Hamilton, Boone, and Marion Counties.
Frequently Asked Questions
A dog knocked me down and broke my wrist but never bit me. Do I have a claim in Indiana?
Frequently yes, but not under the dog bite statute. IC 15-20-1-3 is written around biting, so a knockdown injury falls outside it. The claim runs on ordinary negligence instead. Indiana courts have held that keeping a dog imposes a duty of reasonable care even where the owner knew of no vicious tendency, and that an owner must anticipate a dog's natural propensities. Lunging, bolting, and jumping on people are natural propensities.
Is Indiana a strict liability state for dog attacks?
Only in a narrow band of cases. Under IC 15-20-1-3, strict liability applies when a dog bites, without provocation, a person acting peaceably who is somewhere they may be required to be in order to discharge a duty imposed by Indiana law, federal law, or United States postal regulations. Everyone else pursues a negligence claim. Content that calls Indiana a strict liability state without that qualification is describing a statute that covers a minority of real cases.
Does it help my case that the dog was off leash in violation of a local ordinance?
It helps, and it can support a negligence per se theory. But be precise about what it proves. A leash violation goes to whether the owner breached the duty of reasonable care. It does not by itself establish that the owner knew the dog was dangerous, and Indiana courts have said it is not reasonable to attribute dangerous propensities to a dog merely because an ordinance requires restraint. Those are separate elements proved with separate evidence.
What if the dog had never hurt anyone before?
You can still recover. The Indiana Court of Appeals has said that animals are not necessarily entitled to one free bite before their owners are held liable in negligence. The question is whether the owner exercised reasonable care in keeping and controlling the animal, and an owner is expected to anticipate ordinary dog behavior even without any history of aggression.
Who pays for a broken bone caused by someone else's dog?
Most commonly the dog owner's homeowners or renters liability coverage, which typically applies whether the incident happened at home or elsewhere. Some policies carry breed exclusions or exclude coverage after a prior incident, so the policy language has to be read rather than assumed. If the attack happened at a business or rental property, a commercial or landlord policy may also respond.
The person walking the dog was not the owner. Does that matter?
It can help. Under IC 15-20-1-2, "owner" includes a person who possesses, keeps, or harbors a dog. A dog sitter, an adult child, a roommate, or a boarding operation can fall inside that definition, which may mean an additional responsible party and an additional insurance policy. Identifying who actually had the dog that day is part of the early investigation.
My hospital record says "fall." Does that ruin my claim?
No, but it is a problem worth fixing promptly. Emergency charting often records the mechanism as a mechanical fall because that is what caused the fracture, and a defense carrier will lean on that language hard. Tell your treating physician what actually happened and ask that the mechanism go in the record. A correction made in week two carries far more weight than an explanation offered at deposition.
Nobody called animal control the day it happened. Is it too late?
Report it anyway. A late report is worth much more than no report, and it creates the notice record that matters if the same dog injures someone else. Carmel Police non-emergency is (317) 571-2580. For most of Hamilton County the non-emergency dispatch line is (317) 773-1282, and Hamilton County Animal Control, whose file you will want, is at (317) 776-4110. Separately, ask whether a report already exists, because Indiana requires a treating physician to report a dog bite injury within 72 hours, so a bite case may have generated a record without your knowledge.
How long do I have to file a dog attack claim in Indiana?
Generally two years from the date of injury under IC 34-11-2-4. A minor's claim is typically tolled under IC 34-11-6-1. If a government entity is involved, a much shorter notice deadline applies first: 180 days for a political subdivision under IC 34-13-3-8 and 270 days for the state under IC 34-13-3-6. Because classification is not always obvious, serving notice within 180 days is the safe practice in any government case.
Can I sue the landlord if a tenant's dog broke my bone?
Sometimes, but Indiana requires two things rather than one. Under Morehead v. Deitrich, 932 N.E.2d 1272 (Ind. Ct. App. 2010), you must show both that the landowner retained control over the premises where the dog was kept and that the landowner knew of the dog's dangerous propensity. A landlord who leased out a single-family home and kept no control was not liable there. Attacks in common areas of an apartment property, where the landlord does retain control, are analyzed differently.
I was delivering packages when the dog got me. Am I automatically covered by the statute?
Not automatically. IC 15-20-1-3 covers a person discharging a duty imposed by Indiana law, federal law, or United States postal regulations. A United States postal carrier fits that description directly. Delivery for a private company is a harder argument, because it is a job requirement rather than a duty imposed by law. Assume the negligence investigation still has to be done. If you were on the clock, your worker's compensation claim and your claim against the dog's owner are separate and both need to be opened.
What if the insurance company says I was partly at fault?
You can still recover as long as your share of fault does not exceed 50 percent, under IC 34-51-2, and your damages are reduced by your percentage. Note the wording: recovery is barred when fault exceeds 50 percent, not at 51 percent. In a case with a large medical bill, the difference between 20 percent and 55 percent is the difference between a meaningful recovery and none, which is why the liability investigation matters even when the dog was obviously loose.
This article is general information about Indiana law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Indiana statutes change and how any provision applies depends on the specific facts of your case. Statutes and case law described here were verified as of September 2026.