Fox Business Anchor Sues Whole Foods After Pit Bull Attack Allegedly Causes Permanent Damage

Fox Business anchor Jackie DeAngelis has filed a lawsuit against Whole Foods over a pit bull attack that allegedly left her permanently scarred and struggling with limited use of her left hand.

DeAngelis, 46, argues that the grocery chain failed to uphold its own animal policy by allowing what she claims was an illegitimate service dog into its Columbus Circle location in Manhattan.

The attack reportedly occurred in September 2023 while DeAngelis was shopping at the Whole Foods store at 10 Columbus Circle. According to her lawsuit, a black pit bull suddenly bit her hand, causing injuries that later required surgery.

DeAngelis says she continues to experience significant scarring, impaired mobility and difficulty completing ordinary tasks she could perform before the attack.

Her complaint, filed Aug. 20 in Manhattan Supreme Court, characterizes the damage as “permanent and continuing.”

She is seeking unspecified compensation for medical costs, emotional distress and other losses allegedly resulting from the incident.

The dog’s owner reportedly left the store with the animal before law enforcement officers arrived, leaving unanswered questions about the dog’s history and why it had been brought inside.

DeAngelis, a co-host of Fox Business Network’s “The Big Money Show,” maintains that Whole Foods should not have permitted the animal to remain in a store where pets are ordinarily prohibited.

Like other businesses open to the public, Whole Foods must accommodate legitimate service animals under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Its policy does not, however, extend the same protections to ordinary pets.

Federal law defines a service dog as an animal individually trained to perform specific work or tasks for a person with a disability. Dogs providing only companionship, comfort or emotional support are not recognized as service animals under the ADA.

Businesses are generally required to admit properly trained service animals despite existing no-pet policies. That protection is not unlimited: An animal may be removed when it is out of control and its handler fails to bring it under effective control.

DeAngelis alleges that the pit bull involved in the attack was not a legitimate service animal. She accuses Whole Foods of failing to apply reasonable safeguards or meaningfully enforce its rules concerning animals on the premises.

The lawsuit further contends that the company failed to exercise reasonable care in supervising and regulating the presence of animals inside its property.

Whole Foods had not issued a public response to the allegations when news of the case first emerged.

The dispute arrives amid an ongoing national debate over dangerous dogs, public safety and whether attacks involving certain breeds disproportionately produce catastrophic injuries.

Several trauma-center studies have concluded that bites attributed to pit bull-type dogs are more likely to require surgical treatment or produce severe trauma than attacks involving certain other identifiable breeds.

One 2026 study examining 276 dog-bite patients found that incidents identified as pit bull attacks were significantly more likely to require surgery. Researchers nevertheless warned that victims and witnesses may not always identify a dog’s breed accurately.

A wider review of American research has also listed pit bull-type dogs and German shepherds among the breeds frequently connected to serious bite injuries.

Breed-related data remain heavily disputed. Mixed-breed dogs can be difficult to identify based solely on appearance, while researchers lack an authoritative estimate of the number of pit bull-type dogs living in the United States.

DogsBite.org, an organization advocating on issues involving severe dog attacks, has reported that pit bulls accounted for approximately two-thirds of the fatalities it recorded from 2005 through 2019. Its findings rely on the organization’s own breed-classification system rather than federal fatality statistics categorized by breed.

Those arguments may shape the public response, but they are not the central legal issue in DeAngelis’ case.

The lawsuit is expected to focus on the circumstances inside the Columbus Circle store, whether the animal should have been admitted and whether Whole Foods failed in its duty to protect customers from a foreseeable danger.

The case also emerges as DeAngelis gains greater prominence at Fox Business. Puck News correspondent Dylan Byers recently reported that she may be under consideration for the time slot formerly held by Maria Bartiromo.