## Facts

- Deanna Walls lived with her mother at the Bay Ridge Apartment Complex in Nashua, New Hampshire; her mother was the tenant under the lease.
- Bay Ridge consisted of 412 apartments in fourteen buildings and was owned and managed by the defendants.
- On December 13, 1988, Walls was sexually assaulted in her vehicle while it was parked on the complex premises.
- The assailant was arrested and later convicted.
- In the two years before the assault, the complex experienced numerous property crimes (including automobile thefts and incidents of criminal mischief/theft), but no reported sexual assaults or similar attacks on persons.
- Walls brought negligence-based claims alleging the defendants failed to provide reasonable security, failed to warn residents about inadequate security and criminal activity, and failed to retain competent management.
- While dispositive motions were pending in federal court, the federal district court certified two state-law questions to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether New Hampshire negligence law imposes a duty on landlords to provide security to protect tenants from criminal attacks by third persons.
2. Whether New Hampshire’s implied warranty of habitability in residential leases obliges landlords to provide security to protect tenants from criminal attacks by third persons.

## Decision

- The court answered the first certified question: New Hampshire law does not impose a general duty on landlords to protect tenants from third-party criminal attacks.
- The court recognized limited, fact-specific circumstances in which a duty may arise from the landlord’s own conduct (e.g., creating a known condition that increases criminal opportunity, or voluntarily undertaking security).
- The court answered the second certified question: the implied warranty of habitability does not require landlords to provide security against third-party criminal attacks.
- The matter returned to the federal district court for application of these answers.

## Legal Principles

- Negligence liability requires an identified legal duty; whether a duty exists is a question of law.
- As a general rule, private actors, including landlords, have no affirmative duty to protect others from criminal acts of third parties.
- Duty is limited by reasonable foreseeability and by policy considerations regarding the burden of constant precautions against criminal conduct.
- A landlord-tenant relationship, standing alone, is not treated as a “special relationship” that creates a broad affirmative duty to protect against criminal attack.
- A duty to take precautions against third-party crime may arise when the landlord’s conduct materially increases the risk (including creating or maintaining a known condition that creates a special opportunity for crime) or when the landlord voluntarily undertakes to provide security and must use reasonable care in performing that undertaking.
- The implied warranty of habitability addresses physical, structural, and sanitary conditions affecting habitability and does not extend to a general obligation to prevent third-party criminal attacks.

## Conclusion

The court declined to impose a general landlord duty to provide security against third-party criminal attacks and held that the implied warranty of habitability does not require crime-prevention security measures, leaving only narrow, conduct-based exceptions to be assessed on specific facts.


Walls v. Oxford Mgmt. Co., 137 N.H. 653, 633 A.2d 103 (N.H. 1993)