Landlord may owe duty of care to protect its tenants from intruders' criminal acts

Law Reporter, Sep 1999

Tenney v. Atlantic Assoc., 594 N.W.2d 11 (Iowa 1999).

The Iowa Supreme Court held that a landlord, while not an insurer of its tenants' safety, owes a duty of care to protect tenants from reasonably foreseeable criminal acts of third parties.

Here, a woman was raped by a stranger who used keys to enter her apartment. She sued the apartment building manager, alleging defendant had failed to maintain adequate security. The trial court granted defendant summary judgment, holding that defendant had not breached a duty to plaintiff and that proximate cause could not be established because the action of the intruder had been a superseding cause of plaintiff's injury.

Reversing, the state high court acknowledged the general rule is that, absent a special relationship, there is no liability for failure to protect another from a criminal attack. The special relationship between a landlord and a tenant requires the landlord to protect the tenant from reasonably foreseeable harm by third parties, the court reasoned, just as an innkeeper is required to protect a guest.

Here, at least one prior act of attempted assault-by a groundskeeper with an apartment key-had happened on the premises. In addition, defendant had failed to ( 1 ) control access to master keys and (2) change the locks of individual apartments before each new occupancy. Given the circumstances, the court concluded a jury could find that the third-party crime risk was reasonably foreseeable and defendant had owed plaintiff a duty of care.

As for whether the intruder's conduct was a superseding cause of plaintiff's injuries, the court reasoned that, in this instance, the third party's criminal act was a foreseeable intervening force. It was a product of defendant's original negligence and, therefore, an act for which defendant could be held liable. Consequently, the court remanded the case for further proceedings.

Plaintiff's Counsel:

Stanley A. Roush, Cedar Rapids, Iowa