Klingbeil Management Group Co. v. Vito

• Decision Date: 12 June 1987
• Docket Number: No. 840404,840404
• Citation: 357 S.E.2d 200,233 Va. 445
• Parties: KLINGBEIL MANAGEMENT GROUP COMPANY, et al. v. Barbara L. VITO. Record
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Page 200

357 S.E.2d 200

233 Va. 445

KLINGBEIL MANAGEMENT GROUP COMPANY, et al. v. Barbara L. VITO.

Record No. 840404.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

June 12, 1987.

Benjamin J. Trichilo (Lewis & Trichilo, Fairfax, on briefs), for appellants.

William J. Carter (Robert W. Goodson, Carr, Goodson & Lee, P.C., Washington, D.C., on brief), for appellee.

Present: CARRICO, C.J., POFF, COMPTON, STEPHENSON and THOMAS, JJ., and COCHRAN and GORDON, Retired Justices.

COMPTON, Justice.

In this negligence case, we consider whether a landlord is liable for injuries to a tenant caused by the criminal acts of a third party and, if not, whether a local dead-bolt ordinance provides the basis for landlord liability in this case.

In February 1981, appellee Barbara L. Vito was raped in her apartment in Arlington by an unknown assailant. Subsequently, she filed this law action against the manager and owners of the 1821-unit apartment complex, appellants Klingbeil Management Group Company, Buckingham Apartments, Ltd., K.G.I. Company, Miden Company, Frank Stavroff, Richard W. Foster, and Jerome W. Vogel (hereinafter collectively, landlord). The tenant sought compensatory and punitive damages for personal injuries arising from the alleged negligent and wanton conduct of the landlord in failing to maintain proper security procedures, proper exterior lighting, and proper locks on the doors to the buildings.

In a November 1983 trial, the court below submitted the case to a jury solely on the issue whether the landlord was negligent due to the absence of a dead-bolt lock on the front door of plaintiff's apartment. The jury found for the tenant, assessing $150,000 compensatory damages, and the trial court entered judgment on the verdict. We awarded the landlord this appeal from the December 1983 judgment order, limiting the appeal to consideration of several issues which raise the questions noted above.

On the date of the incident, the tenant entered her ground-floor apartment about midnight. The front door to the apartment did not have a dead-bolt lock. Instead, the door was fitted with a standard "button" lock used for commercial and residential buildings. When a door with such a lock is opened with a key, which fits into the knob on the outside of the door, the button located on the inside of the door stays "in"; opening the door does not dislodge the button from the locked position.

After the tenant had unlocked the front door and had been inside her one-bedroom apartment for some time, she heard a noise and, upon investigating, noticed that the button on the front doorknob was "out." She was then grabbed from behind and assaulted. Her assailant subsequently left the apartment and never has been apprehended.

Subsequent investigation did not disclose with certainty how the assailant gained access to the apartment. There was no evidence of forced entry. The tenant did not know how or when the attacker entered. There was some evidence to show that he entered through an unlocked living room window. There was other evidence, however, that the lock on the front door could be easily "slipped" and the door opened with the use of a plastic credit card. In sum, there was ample evidence for the jury properly to conclude that the assailant gained access via the previously locked front door.

The first issue on appeal deals with the common-law liability of a landlord for injuries to a tenant under these circumstances. The trial court instructed the jury on negligence, proximate cause, intervening cause, and foreseeability. In effect, the court permitted, over defendants' objection, liability to be imposed on the landlord for injuries to the tenant due to the criminal conduct of a third party. This was error.

Traditionally, a landlord owes the duty to his tenants to exercise ordinary care to maintain areas over which he has control in a reasonably safe condition, rather than the duty to act as a policeman. In other words, "[a]s a general rule, a landlord does not owe a duty to protect his tenant from a criminal act by a third person." Gulf Reston, Inc. v. Rogers, 215 Va. 155, 157, 207 S.E.2d 841, 844 (1974). In Gulf Reston, we adopted the Restatement view that a person owes no duty to control the conduct of a third person in order to prevent physical harm to another unless a "special relationship" exists giving rise to a right of protection. Id. at 158, 207 S.E.2d at 844. Examples of such a special relationship include common carrier-passenger, business proprietor-invitee, and innkeeper-guest. In Gulf Reston, we decided that no special relationship existed between the landlord and tenant in that case which would give rise to a duty on the landlord to protect the tenant from the intentional criminal act committed by an unknown third person. Id. at 159, 207 S.E.2d at 845. We adhere to that ruling in this case and hold there was no such common-law duty on this landlord.

This brings us to the second issue on appeal. The tenant argues, and the trial court agreed, that liability could be imposed on the landlord under these circumstances for failure to comply with a local dead-bolt ordinance. Relying on the provisions of § 29-5(8) of the "Housing Standards Ordinance of Arlington County, Virginia," enacted in 1972, the court instructed the jury, over the landlord's objection, that no dwelling unit in a multiple dwelling building could be leased from one person to another unless all exterior doors of the dwelling unit "are equipped with a vertical bolt dead lock or a dead bolt with not less than a five-eighths of an inch minimum throw." The court further instructed the jury that if the landlord violated the foregoing requirement, it was guilty of negligence.

The landlord argues the trial court erred in ruling liability could be based on violation of the ordinance. It contends a State statute on the subject is controlling. Section 55-248.13:1 of the 1974 Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, Code §§ 55-248.2 to -248.40 (the Act), provides that the governing body of any locality may require by ordinance that "any landlord who rents five or more dwelling units in any one building shall install, upon the written request of the tenant and at a cost to the tenant of not more than...