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
- Whether New Hampshire negligence law imposes a duty on landlords to provide security to protect tenants from criminal attacks by third persons.
- 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.