Title: Liability for Bites by Tenants' Dogs
Headings: Liability for Bites by Tenants' Dogs
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Liability for Bites by Tenants' Dogs

Content: As with areas off the premises, the landlord does not retain control within the leased premises. Thus, to place liability on the landlord for injuries occurring within the leased premises over which the landlord has given up control to the tenant is to make the landlord an insurer. Nevertheless, at least one case imposed liability on the landlord based on Restatement of Torts section 324A (b) when a known vicious dog escaped through a defective gate and attacked a child off the landlord's property. In Wright v. Schum, 781 P.2d 1142 (Nev. 1989), the landlord's tenant had a vicious pitbull, there was a clearly defective gate, the landlord made a deal with the tenant to not evict if the pitbull were kept on a chain or inside the house, and the landlord promised a neighbor (not the eventual dog bite victim, but a different neighbor) that the landlord would "take care of the problem" with the pitbull. Relying on section 324A (b), the court held that the landlord had undertaken to perform his tenant's duty to confine the pitbull, and had negligently breached that duty, and therefore was liable for the child's injuries. One commentator argues that a landlord's liability for harm created by the behavior of tenants (which includes the ownership of a dangerous dog) is based on the warranty of habitability. ( John A. Humbach, Landlord Control of Tenant Behavior: An Instance of Private Environmental Legislation, 45 Fordham L. Rev. 223 (1976), "It is not unreasonable that the implied warranty of habitability should be extended to impose landlord responsibility for tenant misconduct.") In some cases, courts have held landlords liable to their tenants who were bitten by dogs which came from adjacent property. See Liability For Bites By Dogs Upon Adjacent Property.