Sargent v. Ross

New Hampshire Supreme Court · Torts

TortsLandlord liabilityNegligencePremises liabilitylandlord tort liabilityabolition of landlord immunityreasonable careforeseeability

Facts

Plaintiff's four-year-old daughter fell to her death from an outdoor stairway at a residential building owned by the defendant in Nashua. The defendant lived in a ground-floor apartment, and her son and daughter-in-law lived in the second-floor apartment served by the stairway; at the time of the accident, the child was in the care of the daughter-in-law, plaintiff's regular babysitter. The defendant had added the stairway about eight years before the accident. There was evidence that the stairs were dangerously steep and that the railing was insufficient to prevent a child from falling over the side, with no other apparent cause for the fall.

Issue

Whether the defendant landlord could be held liable in tort for the child's death where the stairway was not shown to be under the landlord's retained control, used in common, or affected by a concealed defect. More broadly, whether the traditional rule of landlord nonliability should continue to govern, or instead be replaced by ordinary negligence principles.

Rule

The court discarded the doctrine of landlord nonliability in tort and the rule of caveat lessee. Henceforth, landlords, like other persons, must exercise reasonable care under all the circumstances not to subject others to an unreasonable risk of harm, considering factors including the likelihood of injury, the probable seriousness of the injury, and the burden of reducing or avoiding the risk; former categories such as control, hidden defects, and common or public use are relevant only insofar as they bear on foreseeability and unreasonableness of the risk.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

In Portland, Maine, Nora Bennett owns a duplex and recently approved the installation of a narrow interior staircase leading only to tenant Luis Ortega’s upstairs unit. Luis’s dinner guest, Elena Cruz, falls when the stair treads prove unusually shallow and the handrail ends several steps before the landing.

If Elena sues Nora for negligence, which is the best statement of the governing standard?

Explanation. The majority abolished landlord tort immunity and held that landlords are governed by ordinary negligence principles. The proper inquiry is whether the landlord acted as a reasonable person under all the circumstances so as not to subject others to an unreasonable risk of harm. Former categories such as common area, retained control, and negligent repair are no longer prerequisites to liability; they matter only insofar as they bear on foreseeability and unreasonable risk. (Derived from Sargent v. Ross (n.d.).)