MANN, APPELLEE, v. NORTHGATE INVESTORS, L.L.C., D.B.A. NORTHGATE APARTMENTS, APPELLANT.
No. 2012-1600
Supreme Court of Ohio
February 12, 2014
138 Ohio St.3d 175, 2014-Ohio-455
PFEIFER, J.
Submitted April 24, 2013
{14} For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.
Judgment affirmed.
O‘CONNOR, C.J., and PFEIFER, O‘DONNELL, KENNEDY, FRENCH, and O‘NEILL, JJ., concur.
LANZINGER, J., concurs in judgment only.
James A. Dye Jr., pro se.
Michael DeWine, Attorney General, and Maura O‘Neill Jaite, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
MANN, APPELLEE, v. NORTHGATE INVESTORS, L.L.C., D.B.A. NORTHGATE APARTMENTS, APPELLANT.
[Cite as Mann v. Northgate Investors, L.L.C., 138 Ohio St.3d 175, 2014-Ohio-455.]
(No. 2012-1600—Submitted April 24, 2013—Decided February 12, 2014.)
PFEIFER, J.
{11} The issue in this case is whether a landlord owes the statutory duty under
{12} On June 15, 2007, plaintiff-appellee, Lauren Mann, then 16 years old, visited a friend, Michelina Markiewicz, who was a tenant at an apartment building owned by defendant-appellant, Northgate Investors, L.L.C. Mann had entered the building at around noon that day, and left her friend‘s second-floor apartment in the evening at around 11:00 P.M. Mann had to walk down two sets of stairs (with a landing between them) to exit the building. She testified that the hallway and stairway were dark because it was night and there was no lighting—the existing lighting fixtures were inoperable. Despite the darkness, she decided to proceed down the stairs. She successfully descended the two flights of stairs, but after stepping off the last step—and thinking there might be another step—she stumbled forward through a glass panel adjacent to the glass exit door, suffering injuries.
{13} Mann filed suit against Northgate on October 5, 2010, alleging in her complaint that Northgate had “negligently failed to maintain adequate lighting for safe ingress and egress to said premises during nocturnal hours, thereby creating a danger to residents and guests.” Northgate filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that there was no evidence that it had breached a duty of care to Mann. It asserted that it owed Mann the duty it would owe an invitee, a duty of ordinary care in maintaining its property. Northgate further argued that darkness is an open and obvious danger and that there is no duty of a premises owner to warn an invitee of open and obvious dangers, since those dangers are so obvious that business owners may reasonably expect their invitees to discover the hazard and take appropriate actions to protect themselves against it.
{14} Mann countered that Ohio‘s Landlord-Tenant Act, in particular,
{15} The trial court granted summary judgment to Northgate, holding that
{17} The appellate court certified a conflict to this court recognizing that its opinion conflicted with that of the Ninth District Court of Appeals in Shumaker v. Park Lane Manor of Akron, Inc., 9th Dist. Summit No. 25212, 2011-Ohio-1052, 2011 WL 809492, regarding the applicability of
Whether landlord owes the statutory duties of
R.C. 5321.04(A)(3) to a tenant‘s guest properly on the premises but on the common area stairs at the time of injury?
133 Ohio St.3d 1463, 2012-Ohio-5149, 977 N.E.2d 692.
Law and Analysis
{18} In 1974, the General Assembly enacted the Ohio Landlord-Tenant Act,
{19}
{110} The Landlord-Tenant Act “changed the previous common law relationship of landlords and tenants under residential rental agreements.” Shroades v. Rental Homes, Inc., 68 Ohio St.2d 20, 21-22, 427 N.E.2d 774 (1981). Shroades explained that “in light of the previous common law immunity of landlords, and in recognition of the changed rental conditions and the definite trend to provide tenants with greater rights,” the General Assembly enacted the law in “an attempt to balance the competing interests of landlords and tenants.” Id. at 24-25.
In light of the public policy and drastic changes made by the statutory scheme of
R.C. Chapter 5321 , we hold that a landlord is liable for injuries, sustained on the demised residential premises, which are proximately caused by the landlord‘s failure to fulfill the duties imposed byR.C. 5321.04 . We conclude that the General Assembly intended both to provide tenants with greater rights and to negate the previous tort immunities for landlords.
{12} In Shroades, this court held that the landlord had failed to meet the statutory requirement of keeping the premises in a fit and habitable condition. Reasoning that “[a] violation of a statute which sets forth specific duties constitutes negligence per se,” the court held that the landlord‘s failure to abide by
{13} In Shump v. First Continental-Robinwood Assocs., 71 Ohio St.3d 414, 644 N.E.2d 291 (1994), syllabus, this court held that a landlord‘s common-law and statutory obligations extend to guests of a tenant: “A landlord owes the same duties to persons lawfully upon the leased premises as the landlord owes to the tenant.”
{14} In Shump, Sandra Burnside, a guest of a tenant, died from smoke inhalation and/or carbon monoxide poisoning from a fire in her friend‘s apartment. The fire had started on the first floor of the apartment, and the evidence suggested that Burnside became aware of the fire only when the smoke detector on the second floor of the two-story apartment was activated. Burnside‘s estate filed a wrongful-death claim against the landlord, alleging that the landlord had failed to install a smoke detector on the first floor of the apartment, contrary to a city ordinance. The trial court granted summary judgment to the landlord, holding that Burnside was a licensee and that the landlord owed to Burnside only a duty to refrain from willful and wanton conduct, which the estate had failed to prove. The appellate court affirmed that part of the trial court‘s holding.
{16} Shump cited longstanding common law that courts should not distinguish between the duties that a landlord owes a tenant and the duties a landlord owes to other people lawfully upon the leased premises.
“It is the well settled general rule that the duties and liabilities of a landlord to persons on the leased premises by the license of the tenant are the same as those owed to the tenant himself. For this purpose they stand in his shoes. * * * The guest, servant, etc., of the tenant is usually held to be so identified with the tenant that this right of recovery for injury as against the landlord is the same as that of the tenant would be had he suffered the injury.” [Caldwell v. Eger, 8 Ohio Law Abs. 47 (8th Dist.1929)], quoting 16 Ruling Case Law (1917) 1067, Section 588.
{17} This court held that
“Statutes are to be read and construed in the light of and with reference to the rules and principles of the common law in force at the time of their enactment, and in giving construction to a statute the legislature will not be presumed or held, to have intended a repeal of the settled rules of the common law unless the language employed by it clearly expresses or imports such intention.” (Emphasis added.) State ex rel. Morris v. Sullivan (1909), 81 Ohio St. 79, 90 N.E. 146, paragraph three of the syllabus.
{18} Thus, the court concluded that as common-law protections extended to a tenant‘s guests, the Landlord-Tenant Act‘s protections would extend to guests.
{19} Since a landlord owes a tenant‘s guest the same duty that the landlord owes the tenant, it only follows that the duty a landlord owes a tenant under
{20} Shump does state, as Shumaker points out, that “the obligations imposed upon a landlord under
{21} Further, Shump adopted the Restatement of Torts section stating that in common areas, the landlord owes the same duty to the tenant‘s guest as it owes to the tenant. In the syllabus of Shump, this court approved and adopted 2 Restatement of the Law 2d, Torts, Sections 355 to 362 (1965). Section 360 addresses the liability of landlords in common areas:
A possessor of land who leases a part thereof and retains in his own control any other part which the lessee is entitled to use as appurtenant to the part leased to him, is subject to liability to his lessee and others
lawfully upon the land with the consent of the lessee or a sublessee for physical harm caused by a dangerous condition upon that part of the land retained in the lessor‘s control, if the lessor by the exercise of reasonable care could have discovered the condition and the unreasonable risk involved therein and could have made the condition safe.
{22} Finally, Shump recognized that
R.C. 5321.12 states: “In any action under Chapter 5321. of the Revised Code, any party may recover damages for the breach of contract or the breach of any duty that is imposed by law.” (Emphasis added.)
{23} We thus conclude that Shump should in no way be interpreted so as to prevent a tenant‘s guest from benefiting from the protections of
{24} The question remains as to the legal significance of a failure of a landlord to meet the obligations of
{25} After Shroades, this court revisited negligence per se in relation to
Courts view the evidentiary value of the violation of statutes imposed for public safety in three ways: as creating strict liability, as giving rise to negligence per se, or as simply evidence of negligence. See, generally, Browder, The Taming of a Duty—The Tort Liability of Landlords (1982), 81 Mich.L.Rev. 99. These are three separate principles with unique effects upon a plaintiff‘s burden of proof and to which the concept of notice may or may not be relevant.
{27} This court rejected the idea that
Considering the general reluctance among courts to impose strict liability in this context, the wording of the statute fails to convince us that the General Assembly intended to create strict liability upon a violation of this statutory requirement. Absent language denoting that liability exists without possibility of excuses, we are unpersuaded that the intent behind this statute was to eliminate excuses and impose strict liability.
{28} The more common question—and one that arises in the case before us—is whether a statutory violation will be considered as evidence of negligence or whether it will support a finding of negligence per se. The words of the statute tell the tale—whether a statutory violation gives rise to negligence per se “depends upon the degree of specificity with which the particular duty is stated in the statute.” Id. at 496.
{29} When the statute sets forth a general, abstract description of a duty, a violation thereof can be considered as evidence of negligence, but a violation does not of itself conclusively demonstrate the breach of a duty. If a statute sets forth a positive and definite standard of care, a violation of the statute constitutes negligence per se, and that violation conclusively proves that the defendant has violated a duty to the plaintiff:
[W]here a statute sets forth “a positive and definite standard of care * * * whereby a jury may determine whether there has been a violation
thereof by finding a single issue of fact,” a violation of that statute constitutes negligence per se. Chambers v. St. Mary‘s School (1998), 82 Ohio St.3d 563, 565, 697 N.E.2d 198, 201, quoting Eisenhuth v. Moneyhon, supra, 161 Ohio St. [367] 374-375, 53 O.O. [274] 278, 119 N.E.2d [440] 444 [(1954)]. In situations where a statutory violation constitutes negligence per se, the plaintiff will be considered to have “conclusively established that the defendant breached the duty that he or she owed to the plaintiff.” Chambers, id. In such instances, the statute “serves as a legislative declaration of the standard of care of a reasonably prudent person applicable in negligence actions.” Thus the “reasonable person standard is supplanted by a standard of care established by the legislature.” 57A American Jurisprudence 2d, supra, at 672, Negligence, Section 748.
{130} This court determined in Sikora that the statutory requirement set forth in
Rather, we believe the statutory requirement is stated with sufficient specificity to impose negligence per se. It is “fixed and absolute, the same under all circumstances and is imposed upon” all landlords. Ornella v. Robertson (1968), 14 Ohio St.2d 144, 150, 43 O.O.2d 246, 249, 237 N.E.2d 140, 143. Accordingly, we conclude that the statute requires landlords to conform to a particular standard of care, the violation of which constitutes negligence per se.
{31} Further, the court reaffirmed that “a landlord‘s violation of the duties imposed by * * *
{32} We find nothing in the degree of specificity involved in the statutes to distinguish the requirement in
{133} We reaffirm today that a landlord owes to a tenant‘s guest the same duty that the landlord owes a tenant. Thus, a landlord owes a tenant, and therefore the tenant‘s guest, the duty to “[k]eep all common areas of the premises in a safe and sanitary condition,” pursuant to
{34} Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Tenth District Court of Appeals and remand the cause to the trial court.
Judgment affirmed and cause remanded.
O‘CONNOR, C.J., and O‘DONNELL, LANZINGER, KENNEDY, FRENCH, and O‘NEILL, JJ., concur.
Michael T. Irwin, for appellee.
Reminger Co., L.P.A., Brian D. Sullivan, Martin T. Galvin, Kevin P. Foley, and Nicole M. Koppitch, for appellant.
Giorgianni Law, L.L.C., and Paul Giorgianni, urging affirmance for amicus curiae Ohio Association for Justice.