By Felix Kong｜Licensed Insurance Agent
Looper Insurance Agency Limited (GA1034)
Published: 2026-08-25｜Last updated: 2026-08-25
Since the Food Business (Amendment) Regulation 2026 opened the door to dogs in Hong Kong restaurants, floor staff have a point of contact that did not exist before. An employee bitten in the course of employment suffers a work injury under the Employees' Compensation Ordinance (Cap. 282) — a statutory liability of the employer that does not depend on the dog owner and does not disappear because "the dog wasn't ours". This article works through a real Hong Kong case (anonymised, figures rounded): a 52-year-old server bitten by a customer's dog, with roughly HKD 277,000 awarded. The employer lost not because it had no rule, but because it had never written the rule down.
Table of Contents
The facts: a table of four, and a dog
The employer's defence: "staff are not allowed to touch the dogs"
Why the court did not accept it
How the HKD 277,000 was built
When the "serious and wilful misconduct" defence actually works
Four things a restaurant owner must do
FAQ
1. The Facts: A Table of Four, and a Dog
A 52-year-old restaurant server was attending a table of four customers, one of whom had brought a dog. During service the dog bit the server, causing multiple injuries to the hand. She subsequently attended hospital twenty-two times and was left with psychological injury.
What matters legally is not how aggressive the dog was. It is that the injury occurred during working hours, at the workplace, in the course of the work. Those three elements are enough to engage the employer's liability under Cap. 282.
Under the Employees' Compensation Ordinance (Cap. 282), an employer must compensate an employee injured or killed in an accident arising out of and in the course of employment, regardless of who caused the accident. A third party's fault — here, the dog owner's — does not extinguish the employer's statutory liability; the insurer may pursue the third party by subrogation afterwards, but the two are separate questions. Failing to maintain valid employees' compensation insurance under section 40(1) is a criminal offence, carrying a maximum fine of HKD 100,000 and two years' imprisonment.
2. The Employer's Defence: "Staff Are Not Allowed to Touch the Dogs"
The employer denied liability on a simple basis: the restaurant had a rule prohibiting servers from playing with or touching customers' dogs. The employee had broken the rule, so no compensation should follow.
The employee's answer was equally simple: she had never heard of any such rule, and in any event she was not playing with the dog when the bite occurred.
That turned the case into a pure evidential question: can you prove the rule ever existed?
3. Why the Court Did Not Accept It
On the evidence, the court found the prohibition existed only in spoken form. It was not in the staff handbook. There was no training record. No employee had signed to acknowledge it. There was no other supporting material.
A safety rule with nothing written down, nothing signed and no training record is, to a court, close to no rule at all. Restaurant owners rarely dispute this once it is pointed out — they simply never thought a matter of common sense needed a paper trail. In work injury litigation, an employer's safety policy is proved almost entirely by documents rather than testimony. That is the most transferable lesson in the case: half the value of a rule lies in its content, and half in the record of it.
The court added a further point: even if the rule had existed, it would not necessarily have helped, because the threshold for defeating compensation on the basis of employee misconduct is set separately — see section 5 below.
4. How the HKD 277,000 Was Built
Head of compensation | Detail | Amount (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
Permanent loss of earning capacity | Assessed at 9% | HKD 120,000+ |
Temporary incapacity | Sick leave of nearly 22 months, periodical payments | Monthly |
Medical expenses | Twenty-two hospital attendances | As incurred |
Total | approx. HKD 277,000 |
(Total compensation awarded by a Hong Kong court. The case is anonymised and figures are rounded for illustration; actual compensation is assessed under the Ordinance.)
Compensation under Cap. 282 falls into three broad heads: a lump sum for permanent loss of earning capacity, periodical payments for temporary incapacity (generally four-fifths of the difference between monthly earnings before the injury and earnings or earning capacity after it), and medical expenses, which are subject to a daily cap.
One point is consistently underestimated: the length of the sick leave often drives the total more than the injury itself. The 9% lump sum here was around HKD 120,000, but nearly two years of periodical payments plus medical expenses more than doubled the total. For a restaurant, a floor server out for two years is not only a compensation cost — it is a staffing and rostering cost that runs alongside it.
5. When the "Serious and Wilful Misconduct" Defence Actually Works
Many owners have heard that an employer need not pay if the employee was careless. The Ordinance does contain such an exception, but it is narrow.
Under the Employees' Compensation Ordinance, compensation is not payable where the injury is attributable to the employee's own serious and wilful misconduct — but that exception does not apply where the accident results in death, or in serious and permanent incapacity. In other words, the more serious the injury, the harder it is to defend on the basis that the employee brought it on themselves. In practice, courts look for clear, documented misconduct, not a general submission that the employee "should have been more careful".
In this case the court found no evidence of any serious or improper conduct by the employee, so the defence was unavailable.
6. Four Things a Restaurant Owner Must Do
Once dogs are admitted, these four are the minimum:
Write it down and get it signed. Put "staff must not initiate contact with customers' dogs", "staff handling food must not have contact with dogs" and "wash and disinfect hands after any contact" into the staff handbook, and have employees sign for it. These are also requirements under clauses 1.14 and 1.15 of the FEHD guidelines.
Keep training records. Clause 1.24 requires staff training covering interaction with dogs, behavioural responses and emergency response. Keep the attendance sheet, the date and the content.
Record incidents immediately. Clause 1.26 requires a dog bite incident to be reported in the prescribed form to the Director within two working days; that same record is your first evidence when notifying your insurer.
Declare payroll accurately. EC premium is set on estimated annual earnings and adjusted after expiry against actual earnings. Under-declared payroll reduces a claim proportionally — the single most common trap for Hong Kong SMEs.
FAQ
Q: If a customer's dog bites our staff, does the dog owner pay?
A: No. An employee injured in the course of employment is the employer's statutory liability under Cap. 282, and your employees' compensation policy responds without waiting for the dog owner. The insurer may pursue the owner by subrogation afterwards, but that does not affect your obligation to your employee.
Q: We have a rule that staff must not touch customers' dogs. Does that protect us?
A: Not if it is only spoken. In the case above the employer said the rule existed but could not produce a staff handbook entry, a training record or a signed acknowledgement, and the court found the rule did not exist. For a rule to carry legal weight it needs documentation, acknowledgement and training records.
Q: How much does a dog-bite work injury cost?
A: It depends on the injury and the length of sick leave. In the case above, 9% loss of earning capacity with almost 22 months of sick leave and medical expenses came to around HKD 277,000. Compensation comprises a lump sum for permanent loss of earning capacity, periodical payments for temporary incapacity (generally four-fifths of the earnings difference), and medical expenses.
Q: How is EC premium calculated?
A: On estimated annual earnings, adjusted after expiry against actual earnings. Market EC policies generally carry a minimum premium (from around HKD 1,000), plus the Insurance Authority premium levy of 0.1%. Under-declaring earnings reduces claims proportionally.
Q: What happens if we have no EC cover?
A: Failing to insure under section 40(1) of the Ordinance is a criminal offence with a maximum fine of HKD 100,000 and two years' imprisonment. Beyond the criminal exposure, the compensation still has to be paid out of your own pocket — which is where the real cost sits.
Next Step
If your premises already holds a dog permission, or you are preparing for the next application phase, the useful first move is not more cover — it is checking three things: your EC earnings declaration, your public liability limit and exclusions, and whether your staff handbook has been updated. We can review all three with you.
Related Articles
Free Quote
Looper Insurance Agency Limited (GA1034) offers free quotations for employees' compensation, public liability and SME package insurance.
Phone: 2633 6813
Email: cs@looperin.com
Website: www.looperin.com
Disclaimer: This article is for reference only and does not constitute insurance or legal advice. The case is anonymised and figures rounded for illustration; actual compensation is assessed under the Employees' Compensation Ordinance and coverage is subject to policy terms and conditions.
Conclusion
Lorem ipsum
Felix Kong
CEO
繼續閱讀
