Can a Landlord be Held Liable for a Tenant’s Injuries?

With housing prices going up, it may be a good time to rent. In fact, rental communities are sprouting up everywhere. But the interplay between landlord and tenant can be a complex one, and if you’re injured on rental property, you may be wondering whether you can get a landlord or a commercial landlord, to compensate you for your injuries and for what you’re going through.

Injuries Inside a Unit

Injuries inside a tenants unit are largely the responsibility of the tenant. Most commercial landlords will require tenants to carry their own liability insurance, ensuring that there is compensation for victims, but smaller complexes, or rentals owned by private or individual landlords, may not have such a requirement.

Injuries on Common Areas

Of course, injuries on the common areas of the apartment complex, or caused by areas of the complex or a unit that the landlord has an obligation to fix or repair, are the duty of the landlord.

Sometimes it’s obvious what the landlord’s responsibilities are, but other times when it’s not so clear; your attorney may need to get a copy of the lease or of a typical lease in the complex where you were injured, to see what the landlord’s responsibilities are.

Sometimes it isn’t so clear who is liable, if you were injured while on or in someone else’s unit, because there could be dual responsibility to maintain the part of the property where you were injured, between the landlord and the tenant.

Take, for example, a stairway inside someone’s unit with a shaky railing that causes someone to fall. That railing may be the landlord’s responsibility to repair and fix, but it also may be the tenant’s responsibility to tell the landlord to fix it, and to warn others inside the unit of the defect or problem.

Other Parties

In some cases, the issue is not between a landlord and a tenant as far as who has the duty to warn and repair hidden or known defects, but even the local municipality may play a role.

Outside areas, walkways shared by the public, or areas that are near public streets, all can create problems in determining whether the city or county may be liable for failure to maintain the property.

Criminal Attacks and Negligent Security

Often criminal activity happens in residential complexes. These are negligent security cases, and they often rely on the landlord’s knowledge of the possibility of crime on the premises — that is, whether the landlord was on notice in advance that there could be criminal activity.

Landlords can also be liable when they are made aware of security problems on the property, and they fail to fix those problems. For example, broken fences, broken locks on doors, or other defects on the property that allow easy access for the outside world to come on the property and commit crime.

Landlords have a general duty to make sure there are other deterrents to crime, such as having adequate and thorough lighting, and having security cameras on the property.

Schedule a consultation with our Tampa personal injury lawyers at Barbas, Nunez, Sanders, Butler & Hovsepian today for help after your accident if you were injured in an apartment complex.

Source:

rentpost.com/resources/article/landlord-responsibilities-rental-property-crime/