Canine mutiny: Dog owners fight insurers

Dog owners are biting back at the insurance industry.

There is a push by lawmakers and animal-welfare groups to ban the growing insurance-industry practice of refusing to write homeowners’ policies for people who own dogs of certain breeds. Some big insurers, including Allstate and Farmers Insurance, won’t cover homes in some states if certain breeds are present. Others exclude the breeds from liability coverage or charge extra for it.

The so-called vicious-breed lists include such popular pooches as German shepherds, akitas and Siberian huskies, along with Alaskan malamutes, chows, doberman pinschers, American pit bull terriers and their cousins.

The practice is spurring complaints by dog owners that their homeowners’ and renters’ policies have been dropped, or they have been denied coverage, because their dog is on the list. They say the rules unfairly link well-behaved family pets with aggressive miscreants responsible for high-profile attacks.

At least nine states, including Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wisconsin, now have bills pending that would prevent insurance companies from dropping or refusing customers because of their dog’s breed.

Insurers argue that government public-health studies and their own claims histories indicate that some breeds are more dangerous than others, and therefore pose higher risk of claims for injury and loss.

More than 100 counties and cities have passed ordinances since 1991 banning or restricting ownership of specific breeds — especially pit bulls — or requiring that owners carry large amounts of liability insurance.

Dog owners and animal-rights groups have challenged many of these laws in court, and some laws have been struck down. In March, an appeals court in Ohio ruled that local and state laws banning or restricting ownership of pit-bull dogs were unconstitutionally vague.

Some pet advocates and insurance officials say companies started blacklisting breeds shortly after a series of highly publicized dog attacks, such as the Diane Whipple case. Whipple, 33, was mauled to death in 2001 by a neighbor couple’s Presa Canario, a fighting breed that is often snubbed by insurers. The case is regarded as a landmark because the dog owners were convicted of manslaughter in connection with the vicious attack.

Dogs bite an estimated 4.7 million people in the United States annually, 800,000 seriously enough to require medical attention. About 40 percent of victims are children.

Dog bites were responsible for $317.2 million in claims in 2005, an average of more than $21,000 each. They comprise 15 percent of liability claims, and about 4 percent of total claims, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Homeowner and rental policies typically provide between $100,000 and $300,000 of liability coverage for dog bites.

Some insurers cite a 2000 study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of 20 years of fatal attacks by dogs. It found that pit-bull-related breeds and rottweilers were involved in more than half of the 238 dog-attack deaths between 1979 and 1998. But the study’s authors, including Julie Gilchrist, say that policymakers have drawn flawed conclusions from it.

Gilchrist said the study wasn’t designed to determine the most dangerous dog breeds and didn’t establish bite-fatality rates for the breeds it named.

“You can’t say that one breed is more likely to bite (than another),” she said.