Number of Dog Bite Claims Stays About the Same in United States

A recent report on the financial consequences of dog bites shows that there were 16,459 dog bite claims in the United States in 2012, a number actually less than the it was ten years earlier, when there were 16.919 claims.  No specific information was provided about the number of dog bite claims in Tennessee.

The data comes from the Insurance Information Institute("III"), a company that gathers and shares data about all sorts of insurance claims.  According to the III, he average cost per claim was $29,752.

State Farm, a major insurance company that sells homeowner’s insurance (the type of liability insurance that is typically available to victims of dog bites) paid 3,670 dog bite claims in 2012.  The total amount of money paid by State Farm on those claims was $108,000,000.  Thus, State Farm’s average cost per claim was quite close to the national average of all claims.

Of course, the number of claims and the monies paid by insurance companies do not begin to take into account all of the claims or  losses as a result of dog bite claims.  First, the numbers only reflect what insurance companies have paid, and a significant number of dog attack claims are never pursed because the owner of the dog cannot be identified or the dog owner is uninsured and otherwise unable to pay damages.

 

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