## Facts

- Tina Sargent, as administratrix of her four-year-old daughter’s estate, brought a wrongful-death action after the child fell from an exterior wooden stairway serving a second-floor apartment in a two-family building.
- The building was owned by Fabiola Ross, who lived in the first-floor unit; her son and daughter-in-law lived in the upstairs unit accessible only by the exterior stairway.
- Ross had caused the stairway to be added to the building about eight years before the accident.
- At the time of the fall, the child was in the upstairs apartment under the care of Ross’s daughter-in-law, who regularly babysat the child.
- Evidence permitted findings that the stairway was dangerously steep and that the railing was insufficient to prevent a child from falling over the side.
- The plaintiff sued the babysitter for negligent supervision and Ross for negligent construction and maintenance of the stairway.
- The jury found for the babysitter but returned a verdict against Ross.

## Issues

1. Whether a residential landlord may be held liable in tort for injuries caused by a defective or dangerous condition on leased premises when the condition does not fit within traditional exceptions to landlord nonliability (such as retained control, common areas, or concealed defects).
2. Whether the evidence supported submitting Ross’s negligence to the jury and sustaining the verdict under a general reasonable-care standard.

## Decision

- The New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed the judgment against Ross.
- The court rejected the traditional common-law rule limiting landlord liability to narrow exceptions and held that landlords, like other persons, must exercise reasonable care to avoid unreasonable risks of harm.
- The court upheld denial of Ross’s motions for nonsuit, directed verdict, judgment notwithstanding the verdict, and to set aside the verdict.
- The court concluded the jury could reasonably find Ross negligent based on the stairway’s dangerous steepness and inadequate railing, and the foreseeable use of the stairway by children.

## Legal Principles

- Residential landlords are subject to ordinary negligence principles: duty, breach, causation, and damages, measured by reasonable care under all the circumstances.
- Liability does not depend on formalistic “control” classifications or fitting the case into traditional exceptions to landlord nonliability.
- Reasonable care is assessed by considering the likelihood of harm, the probable seriousness of injury, and the burden of reducing or avoiding the risk.
- A landlord who constructs and maintains a hazardous condition may be liable when injury to foreseeable users (including children) results from an unreasonable risk.

## Conclusion

The court replaced the traditional doctrine of landlord tort immunity with a general duty of reasonable care, affirming a wrongful-death verdict where a landlord-installed exterior stairway posed an unreasonable and foreseeable risk of severe harm.


Sargent v. Ross, 113 N.H. 388, 308 A.2d 528 (N.H. 1973)