Security in Residential Apartment Buildings

[Hello]

In residential apartment building where there is a lock on the door but there is a repeat problem of people loitering at the front door gaining access into the building by following tenants in and entering when tenants open the door to leave can a landlord be liable for crime which occurs because a criminal gained access to the building by this method i.e. can a landlord be held liable for failure to have security guards at the door? What is the cite of cases which dealt with this?

[Anonymous]

The laws on this subject vary significantly from state to state, with some states answering with an emphatic "no". So you need to specify the jurisdiction.

[Hello]

Massachusetts

[Anonymous]

Massachusetts does permit litigation over allegations of inadequate security at businesses and rental units. However, the owner of the property will not be held liable without proof that the landowner knew or had reason to know of a threat to the safety of persons lawfully on the premises against which the landowner could have taken reasonable preventive steps. Whether posting a security guard is a reasonable measure, or whether the present security is reasonable in the eyes of the Massachusetts court, is something best determined through consultation with a Massachusetts lawyer who handles inadequate security cases.

Some examples from the past, as detailed in Luisi v Foodmaster Supermarkets, Inc, 50 Mass App Ct. 575;739 NE2d 702 (2000).

Carey v. New Yorker of Worcester, Inc., 355 Mass. at 452: bar owner held liable for injuries inflicted upon a patron who without warning was shot by another customer whom the bar owner's employees knew to be drunk and a troublemaker but whom they nevertheless took no steps to remove from the premises or any other preventive measures.

Sharpe v. Peter Pan Bus Lines, Inc., 401 Mass. 788, 792-794, 519 N.E.2d 1341 (1988) - common carrier held liable for wrongful death of passenger who without warning or provocation was stabbed repeatedly by another person, where there was evidence that the bus terminal was in a high crime area and had been the scene of a number of personal injury crimes, and where the presence of an uniformed security guard would have acted as a deterrent to this crime.

Flood v. Southland Corp., 416 Mass. at 72-73 - where store employee knew that teenagers gathered outside the store were "high" and one of them had a knife, but no particular security precautions were taken, the store was potentially liable in negligence for injuries inflicted upon one of the teenagers when stabbed by the teenager with a knife.

Fund v. Hotel Lenox of Boston, Inc., 418 Mass. 191, 635 N.E.2d 1189, l93-195 (1994) - where hotel was in a high crime area and was aware of numerous crimes within the hotel and at nearby hotels but failed to take certain measures to protect its guests from criminal acts of third persons, the risk of a violent attack upon one of its guests was within the foreseeable risk of harm resulting from that failure.

Whittaker v. Saraceno, 418 Mass. at 200 - where a commercial landlord had no knowledge of any attacks on tenants in the common area of its office building, the landlord had no reason to know of any threat to the safety of its tenants that required the landlord to take preventive steps to protect its tenants.

Griffiths v. Campbell, 425 Mass. 31, 35, 679 N.E.2d 536 (1997) - a residential landlord was not liable for the wrongful death of a Boston police officer who was murdered in a drug raid on one of the apartments leased by the landlord to a tenant where the homicide was not within the foreseeable risk of harm based simply on the plaintiff's assertion that the landlord should have suspected drug activity within that apartment.

[pmurphy521]

As a security consultant who works on these cases frequently the core issue always revolves whether the criminal act was "foreseeable". That term opens a whole can of worms as how that term is finally defined is crafted through expert witnesses and deposition and finally trial in some cases.