If you slip and fall on a restaurant floor, and there’s no caution sign, the company may have to pay for your injuries. The same goes if you enter a building and a chunk of drywall from the ceiling falls and hits you. But what about if an accident occurs on a rental property– can landlords be held responsible for personal injuries?
When Is a Landlord Responsible for Personal Injuries?
For a landlord to get held responsible for a tenant’s injury, the landlord’s behaviour, or lack thereof, must be the proximate cause of a tenant’s injury. Proximate cause, in this scenario, would be the action or inaction that is sufficiently related to and responsible for the injury.
In proving proximate cause, you can determine if the landlord was negligent and, therefore, responsible. This, in large part, is why so many landlords require renters’ insurance. Despite the frustration, it causes some tenants; it can pay for issues such as these:
- Awareness of dangerous conditions and failure to notify the tenant.
- Failure to fix or maintain a potentially dangerous situation, such as a structurally unsound balcony.
- How foreseeable the accident was.
- Failure to take reasonable care and action to prevent injury.
When Is a Landlord Not Responsible for Personal Injuries?
Landlords are not responsible for freak accidents that occur. For example, the landlord isn’t accountable if lightning strikes the roof and a shingle falls and hits a tenant’s head. Additionally, an accident that occurs from damage done by the tenant is not the landlord’s fault, especially if the landlord was unaware of the damage.
If a tenant misuses an oven, it catches on fire, and injures the tenant; it is not the landlord’s fault as it is not their responsibility to tell them how to use the oven properly. But ultimately, it is up to the courts to decide who is and isn’t responsible for the injury.
What if Both Parties Are at Fault?
A court can determine that both the tenant and the landlord are responsible for the injury, as the connection between the two is not always so clear. For example, if a tenant comes home from a night of drinking and trips on a raised tile that the landlord should have fixed, the courts can deem both the tenant and the landlord responsible. Courts consider these situations comparative fault, and the court will assign percentages of responsibility.
Sometimes, a court won’t order the landlord to pay the tenant if the tenant’s percentage of fault is higher than that of the landlord. Other court systems will order some form of proportional payment. However, in rare cases, courts will abide by the rule of contributory fault. This means that if the tenant is even deemed slightly responsible, the court will not order the landlord to pay anything.
So, to answer the ultimate question–yes, landlords can be held responsible for personal injuries. However, how much monetary reward gets assigned depends on the rules the court abides by in your area. So, before pursuing any legal action, or protecting yourself from a claim, make sure to pay attention to your state and local laws.
Interesting read: 5 Important Steps to Take When Your Employee Gets Injured On the Job
