The Lawletter Vol. 51 No. 1
Trish Sifka, Senior Attorney
Dog bite injuries do not just occur in neighborhoods. If a dog bites an employee while at work, the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Action may be the plaintiff’s exclusive remedy, even if being a dog trainer, sitter, or other kind of dog care or handling is not the plaintiff’s occupation or primary duty. Generally, the Virginia Workers' Compensation Act (“VWCA”), Va. Code Ann. § 65.2-100 et seq., provides the exclusive remedy for workplace injuries arising out of and in the course of employment. (Emphasis added.) As recently held by the Virginia Court of Appeals, if the work conditions and employee duties create a particular or a peculiar risk of dog bite injury, the plaintiff employee’s personal injury action will be barred. Vidunas v. Camp Mont Shenandoah Ltd., No. 2008-24-3, 2025 Va. App. LEXIS 700, at *9, 2025 WL 3083717 (Nov. 5, 2025).
Plaintiff Catherine Vidunas was the barn manager for Defendant Camp Mont Shenandoah, Limited, "a small, traditional, all-girls camp." Id. at *1. Defendant Ann Warner was Vidunas’s employer and the majority stockholder for the camp. Id. At the time of the injury in the summer of 2021, Vidunas provided horse care and stable maintenance, selected horses, assisted in organizing and planning equestrian events, and responded to any miscellaneous requests from Warner and the riding director. Id. at *2. During that summer, Vidunas knew that Warner would regularly bring her two dogs, Rollin and Otis, and walk them around the campsite with her. It was known that the border collie, Otis, had previously bitten someone when he was a puppy, but had not been a problem until the day in question. The day before a horse show in August 2021, Warner asked Vidunas to “trot” a certain horse to determine potential “lameness.” Id. at *2. Warner showed up with Otis to jog beside the horse during this trot exercise. While the riding director led the horse from the front, “Vidunas followed the horse ‘clucking’ with a ‘raised voice,’ waving and clapping her hands, and smacking the horse's rump,” while running. Id. at *2-3. As Otis witnessed Vidunas running up behind and chasing his owner, Warner, Otis ran over and bit Vidunas in her calf, thereby causing injury necessitating medical attention. Id. at *3.
Vidunas filed a personal injury suit based on the defendants’ negligence causing her injuries. Id. at *3-5. The defendants filed a plea in bar which was later amended in an appeal before the circuit court in August 2024, which asserted that the VWCA barred the action. Id. Notably, the VWCA will not apply unless both conditions of, “arising out of” and “in the course of,” employment are satisfied. Id. at *5-6. "The 'arising out of' requirement focuses on 'the origin or cause of the injury'." Id. at *6. There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conditions of employment “under which the employer requires the work to be performed.'" Id. (quoting Lopez v. Intercept Youth Servs., Inc., 300 Va. 190, 197, 861 S.E.2d 392 (2021) (quoting R&T Invs., Ltd. v. Johns, 228 Va. 249, 252, 321 S.E.2d 287 (1984))). In other words, the actual risk is "'peculiar to the work and not common to the neighborhood.'" Id. (quoting Taylor v. Mobil Corp., 248 Va. 101, 107, 444 S.E.2d 705 (1994) (internal citations omitted)). “The risk ‘need not have been foreseen or expected, but after the event it must appear to have had its origin in a risk connected with the employment, and to have flowed from that source as a rational consequence’." Id. (quoting Simms v. Ruby Tuesday, Inc., 281 Va. 114, 123, 704 S.E.2d 359 (2011) (quoting Bradshaw v. Aronovitch, 170 Va. 329, 335, 196 S.E. 684 (1938))).
Vidunas claimed that the dog bite injury did not “arise out of" her employment as a barn manager, by relying on Virginia’s Supreme Court decision in Lipsey v. Case, 248 Va. 59, 445 S.E.2d 105 (1994), in which the VWCA did not bar a negligence suit where a dog bit a horse farm employee. However, the similarity between Vidunas’s situation and Lipsey was considered “superficial.” Vidunas, 2025 Va. App. LEXIS 700, at *6-7. Lipsey was an unpaid student horse trainer who was bit by another student’s dog while on her lunch break at the student residence house at the farm. Id. Instead, the unpublished court of appeals decision in Prince William County School Board v. Fogarty, No. 1866-98-4, 1999 Va. App. LEXIS 513 (Aug. 31, 1999), was the most persuasive authority. Vidunas, 2025 Va. App. LEXIS 700, at *7. Fogarty was an assistant principal who was bitten “when her supervising principal thrice instructed her to meet his dog at the school during working hours” Id. (citing Fogarty, slip op. at 2, 1999 Va. App. LEXIS 513, at *2-3).
Moreover, some unpublished spider bite cases further illustrated the distinction. Id. at *7. The VWCA applied especially where the work conditions showed that the employee was regularly subjected to spiders at the workplace due to office construction. Id. at *9 (citing James Madison Univ. v. Housden, No. 1252-19-3, 2020 Va. App. LEXIS 63 (Mar. 10, 2020)). Thus, the court held that “an animal bite arises out of employment if the employer requires the employee to work under conditions where such a bite is peculiarly likely.” Id. Lipsey did not assert that the employer’s work conditions or instructions did not include physical contact with dogs. Id. Yet, “Warner not only instructed Vidunas to trot the horse, she required that Vidunas do so in Otis and Rollins's presence.” Id. at *8. Warner also “required her to run behind a horse, making loud noises and slapping the horse's rump, while the employer ran alongside with her dog. Those were the conditions of Vidunas's employment.” Id. at *9-10. The case was dismissed with prejudice.
