## Facts

- Victory Properties, LLC owned and managed a six-family apartment building with a backyard common area.
- Children living in and visiting the building regularly used the backyard as a play area, despite its poor condition.
- The backyard contained hazardous debris, including loose chunks of concrete from deteriorating sidewalks/retaining walls, construction material, trash, rocks, discarded appliances/furnishings, and an abandoned vehicle.
- The plaintiffs alleged the landlord knew or should have known children used the backyard and that the debris posed a risk of serious injury.
- A ten-year-old child removed an approximately eighteen-pound piece of concrete from the backyard, carried it to a third-floor apartment, and dropped it from a window or balcony.
- The concrete struck seven-year-old Adriana Ruiz on the head, causing severe brain injuries.
- Adriana Ruiz and her mother sued the landlord for negligence, alleging failure to maintain the common area and remove dangerous debris.

## Issues

1. Whether a landlord owed a duty to maintain a common-area backyard in a reasonably safe condition when it knew or should have known children used it as a play area.
2. Whether the child’s injury was within the foreseeable general type of harm created by leaving heavy, movable debris accessible to children, despite the unusual manner in which the injury occurred.
3. Whether the intervening act of another child carrying and dropping the concrete so broke the causal chain, or raised public policy concerns, that summary judgment for the landlord was proper.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Connecticut affirmed the Appellate Court’s judgment reversing summary judgment for the landlord.
- The court held reasonable jurors could differ on duty, foreseeability, and proximate cause; the plaintiffs were entitled to a jury determination.
- The case was remanded with direction to deny the defendant’s motion for summary judgment and proceed to trial.

## Legal Principles

- A landlord must exercise reasonable care to keep areas under its control, including common areas used by tenants and their guests, in a reasonably safe condition.
- Foreseeability turns on the general type of harm risked by the defendant’s conduct, not the precise sequence of events producing the injury.
- In negligence cases, foreseeability and proximate cause are ordinarily fact questions; summary judgment is inappropriate where reasonable minds could reach different conclusions.
- An intervening act does not necessarily relieve a defendant of liability if the resulting injury falls within the scope of the risk created by the defendant’s alleged negligence.
- Public policy supports imposing a reasonable-care duty on landlords to address obvious hazards in common areas used by children; this does not create strict liability.

## Conclusion

Because evidence supported a finding that children regularly played in the backyard and that accessible concrete and debris created a foreseeable risk of serious injury from children mishandling it, the landlord’s duty and causal responsibility could not be resolved as a matter of law; the negligence claim had to be tried to a jury.


Ruiz v. Victory Props., LLC, 107 A.3d 381 (Conn. 2015)