## Facts

- An 11-year-old boy was bitten on the nose by a large dog that lunged over a cyclone fence while he stood in an alley near the tenants’ backyard; he required hospital treatment and plastic surgery.
- The dog was owned and kept by the landlord’s ground-floor tenants in a multi-unit building; multiple tenants had access to the backyard.
- The landlord was an absentee owner living several blocks away; a building manager collected rent, rented units, and oversaw the exterior and yard.
- Several months before the incident, the manager gave the tenants permission to erect a fence around the backyard.
- The manager received complaints that the dog was noisy and messy and spoke with the tenants about those problems.
- The landlord testified he did not know the dog was on the property (or that the fence had been erected) until after the injury.
- The plaintiff sued the landlord for (1) common-law negligence and (2) statutory liability under the Illinois Animal Control Act on a theory that the landlord “harbored” the dog.
- The trial court directed a verdict for the landlord on negligence for lack of evidence of knowledge of vicious propensity; the jury found for the plaintiff on the statutory claim, and the appellate court affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether an absentee landlord may be held strictly liable under the Illinois Animal Control Act as an “owner” by “harboring” a tenant’s dog based on the manager’s permission to keep the dog and erect a fence.

## Decision

- The Illinois Supreme Court reversed the judgment for the plaintiff.
- The court held the landlord was not an “owner” under the Act because he did not “keep” or “harbor” the dog and did not have it in his care or custody.
- The evidence did not justify submitting the statutory claim to the jury.

## Legal Principles

- Under the Illinois Animal Control Act, “owner” includes a person who keeps or harbors a dog, has it in his care, acts as custodian, or knowingly permits a dog to remain on or about premises occupied by him.
- “Harboring” requires more than mere ownership of the premises; it requires some degree of care, custody, control, or responsibility for the animal.
- An absentee landlord is not a statutory “owner” where the tenants possess and control the dog and the landlord lacks actual involvement amounting to keeping, custody, or harboring.
- The Act is not construed to impose strict liability on landlords solely because a tenant’s dog is present on the landlord’s property.

## Conclusion

The court held that strict liability under the Illinois Animal Control Act did not reach an absentee landlord who neither controlled nor cared for a tenant’s dog; without proof the landlord kept or harbored the dog (or otherwise fit the statutory definition of “owner”), the statutory claim failed and the plaintiff’s judgment was reversed.


Steinberg v. Petta, 501 N.E.2d 1263 (Ill. 1986)