Title: Landlord Liability and Property Management Liability - TorkLaw
Headings: 
What is Landlord Liability
About Landlord Liability
Determining Accountability
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Content: Landowners are responsible for maintaining their property in a reasonably safe condition. This includes protecting tenants from foreseeable third party criminal assaults. Suppose a tenant is assaulted or raped on the apartment’s grounds by an unidentified criminal. Can the landlord be held liable to the tenant for his or her injuries? The test is one of “foreseeability,” that is, whether the landlord could have reasonably anticipated that a tenant would have been raped, robbed, or assault on the apartment’s grounds. One major consideration is whether this was the first time such a thing had occurred or whether there had been prior similar incidents on the apartment grounds. Where the risk of criminal assaults or other illegal conduct is great, and the cost to the landlord to prevent such attacks is relatively minor, the landlord has a duty to take preventive measures. In one case, there had been three vicious criminal assaults within two years in the common areas of an apartment complex. The plaintiff was subsequently shot during a carjacking. The court held that there was a reasonably foreseeable risk of violent criminal assaults on the property, which impose on the landlords a duty to provide at least minimal security measures.