Landlords, Tenants, and Crimes
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Whether you’re a tenant or a landlord, you need to know the law when it comes to crimes committed in your apartment complex.
If you are attacked by someone in your building, parking lot, or other common area, can you sue your landlord for failing to keep the premises safe from crime?
If you are the landlord, what does the law require of you in terms of protecting your tenants from crimes on your properties? The purpose of this article is to answer these questions.
Note: The advice provided here is for general education only. If you think you might be involved in an actual lawsuit, you should meet with a good local lawyer who specializes in your type of case because the laws are different in different states. Also, every lawsuit is different, so each one must be handled differently depending on the facts.
The law requires landlords to use “reasonable care” to protect everyone on their premises from “foreseeable harm.” What is “reasonable care” or “foreseeable harm,” like most things in law, depends on the facts of the particular case. Ultimately, the jury will decide these questions on a case by case basis. However, we can still find general guidelines from the cases the courts have already decided.
GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR LANDLORDS AND TENANTS
1. The crime must have been foreseeable by the reasonable landlord. A jury will decide whether a specific crime to a specific tenant was foreseeable by that tenant’s landlord. However, the jurors decide that question based on evidence presented to them of prior similar crimes in the apartment complex and in the neighborhood, generally. They will also look closely at any and all complaints, reports, or requests made to the landlords by their tenants about the need for more security in the apartment buildings.
2. The landlord could have taken reasonable precautions to prevent the crime. Again, a jury will decide what precautions would have been reasonable for a specific landlord to take to prevent a specific crime and whether such precautions would have actually prevented that crime. However, depending on the standards of the neighborhood, typical security measures can include: security guards or doormen; security cameras; locked doors with security access codes or keys; well-lit entryways, walkways, garages, and yards; and well-trimmed trees and bushes.
KLINE v. 1500 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE APARTMENT CORP.
In 1970, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in the landmark case of Kline v. 1500 Massachusetts Avenue Apartment Corp., found, for the first time in U.S. history, that landlords must take reasonable steps to protect their tenants from foreseeable crimes committed in their apartment complexes.
In October 1959, when Sarah B. Kline signed her lease to her apartment in the 585-unit apartment building at 1500 Massachusetts Ave., Washington, D.C., there were certain security measures in place. A door man was on duty at the main entrance 24 hours a day. At least one employee was at a desk in the lobby 24 hours a day to observe all persons going into the elevators. One side entrance to the apartment building, the one on 15th St., was also an entrance to a parking garage used by both the tenants and the general public. There were two parking lot attendants who stood at those entrances so that one of them was always watching either the people going to the parking garage or the people going into the apartment building. The only other entrance to the building was a side entrance on 16th St., which stayed unlocked during the day but was locked at 9:00 p.m. each night.
However, within seven years, by 1966, the security measures at 1500 Massachusetts Ave. had deteriorated to the point that: there was no doorman at the main entrance; the lobby desk was empty most of the time; the 15th St. entrance was unguarded most of the time; and the 16th St. entrance was often left unlocked all night long. The landlord let this lack of security continue even though there was an increased number of assaults, thefts, and robberies against the tenants at 1500 Massachusetts Ave. committed in or from the halls of the apartment building. The landlord was aware of these crimes taking place in its building. Even Ms. Kline herself had asked the landlord to improve security before the crime in question was committed against her.
On November 17, 1966, a little after 10:00 p.m., Ms. Kline was assaulted and robbed just outside her apartment, in the hallway on the first floor above the street level at 1500 Massachusetts Ave. Only two months earlier, another female tenant, Leona Sullivan, had been attacked in the same hallway.
The court decided that the landlord, 1500 Massachusetts Avenue Apartment Corp., had a duty to Ms. Kline to at least keep the level of security at the building as it was when she first signed her lease in 1959 because the landlord should have known all of its tenants were at risk of assault and robbery inside the building, just as Ms. Sullivan had been two months earlier.
The court explained its decision: “While the apartment lessees themselves could take some steps to guard against this risk by installing extra heavy locks and other security devices on the doors and windows of their respective apartments, yet this risk in the greater part could only be guarded against by the landlord. No individual tenant had it within his power to take measures to guard the garage entranceways, to provide scrutiny at the main entrance of the building, to patrol the common hallways and elevators, to set up any kind of a security alarm system in the building, to provide additional locking devices on the main doors, to provide a system of announcement for authorized visitors only, to close the garage doors at appropriate hours, and to see that the entrance was manned at all times.
“The risk of criminal assault and robbery on a tenant in the common hallways of the building was thus entirely predictable; that same risk had been occurring with increasing frequency over a period of several months immediately prior to the incident giving rise to this case; it was a risk whose prevention or minimization was almost entirely within the power of the landlord; and the risk materialized in the assault and robbery of appellant on November 17, 1966. … [¶] The rationale of the general rule exonerating a third party from any duty to protect another from a criminal attack has no applicability to the landlord-tenant relationship in multiple dwelling houses. The landlord is no insurer of his tenants’ safety, but he certainly is no bystander. And where, as here, the landlord has notice of repeated criminal assaults and robberies, has notice that these crimes occurred in the portion of the premises exclusively within his control, has every reason to expect like crimes to happen again, and has the exclusive power to take preventive action, it does not seem unfair to place upon the landlord a duty to take those steps which are within his power to minimize the predictable risk to his tenants. …
“As between tenant and landlord, the landlord is the only one in the position to take the necessary acts of protection required. He is not an insurer, but he is obligated to minimize the risk to his tenants. Not only as between landlord and tenant is the landlord best equipped to guard against the predictable risk of intruders, but even as between landlord and the police power of government, the landlord is in the best position to take the necessary protective measures. Municipal police cannot patrol the entryways and the hallways, the garages and the basements of private multiple unit apartment dwellings. They are neither equipped, manned, nor empowered to do so. In the area of the predictable risk which materialized in this case, only the landlord could have taken measures which might have prevented the injuries suffered by appellant. … [¶] We therefore hold in this case that the applicable standard of care in providing protection for the tenant is that standard which this landlord himself was employing in October 1959 when the appellant became a resident on the premises at 1500 Massachusetts Avenue. The tenant was led to expect that she could rely upon this degree of protection. While we do not say that the precise measures for security which were then in vogue should have been kept up (e.g., the number of people at the main entrances might have been reduced if a tenant-controlled intercom-automatic latch system had been installed in the common entryways), we do hold that the same relative degree of security should have been maintained.”
CONCLUSION
Remember, if you are a tenant, you have a duty to take reasonable steps to protect your own safety, such as telling your landlord immediately about any broken lights, locks, doors, or windows, overgrown trees or bushes, and suspicious persons around your apartment complex. If you are a landlord, you have a duty to keep your property reasonably safe from crime. And, if you had safety procedures or equipment in place at any time, you may have to keep at least that level of security because your tenants arguably relied on it when signing their leases.
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