Langley Park Apartments, Sec. H., Inc. v. Lund

• Decision Date: 14 April 1964
• Docket Number: No. 284,284
• Citation: 199 A.2d 620,234 Md. 402
• Parties: LANGLEY PARK APARTMENTS, SEC. H., INC., et al. v. Ingemand W. LUND, Adm'r et al.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 402

234 Md. 402

199 A.2d 620

LANGLEY PARK APARTMENTS, SEC. H., INC., et al. v. Ingemand W. LUND, Adm'r et al.

No. 284.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

April 14, 1964.

John F. McAuliffe, Rockville (Robert C. Heeney and Heeney & McAuliffe, Rockville, on the brief), for appellants.

Henry R. Berger, Washington, D. C., (Milford Hillerson, Washington, D. C., and Jacob A. Stein, Washington, D. C., on the brief), for appellees.

BRUNE, C. J., and HENDERSON, PRESCOTT, HORNEY and MARBURY, JJ.

MARBURY, Judge.

This appeal presents for our determination a novel question in Maryland and one of some importance to the legal relationship between landlord and tenant. It may be stated as follows: Does a landlord have a duty to remove, or render safe, natural accumulation of ice or snow on walkways under his control provided he knew, or should have known of the existence of a dangerous condition resulting from the ice or snow. The issue was well briefed and argued by counsel for both sides.

The facts giving rise to this question are relatively simple and virtually undisputed. The appellant Langley Park Apartments, Sec. H, Inc., owned a large scale multiple housing development in Hyattsville. The appellant H. G. Smithy Co. managed the development and it is not contested that its liability is co-extensive with that of the landlord in this case. The injured plaintiff was Mrs. Evelyn O. Lund, who with her husband and two minor children lived in an apartment in the development at 1426 Kanawha Street. Mrs. Lund and her husband were the original plaintiffs, but she died before the case was tried from causes not connected with her injuries, and he, as her administrator, was substituted as a party plaintiff. Mr. Lund in his individual capacity, and as her administrator, is the appellee.

On Saturday and Sunday, February 13 and 14, 1960, it had snowed. There were 4.9 inches on the 13th and another snowfall of 1.3 inches on the 14th. The accident occurred on February 17, about 10:30 p. m. when Mrs. Lund was walking with her two children and her husband on the concrete walkway in front of her apartment building. She had not been out of doors previously since the snowfalls. The husband was carrying their two year old son in his left arm, holding his wife with his right hand, and she in turn was holding the hand of her other child. She slipped and fell, dragging the rest of the family to the ground. As a result Mrs. Lund suffered a laceration over her left eye and a sprain of her left shoulder and arm, among other injuries.

The husband testified that when the family left the apartment at about seven o'clock that evening the weather was clear, cold and the condition of the walkway where they fell was slushy. Mrs. Lund's deposition had been taken and this was read to the jury as part of the plaintiffs' case. In that deposition she stated that it had snowed heavily on the 13th and 14th, but that the management had not removed the snow from the walks. In its answers to interrogatories, the H. G. Smithy Co. stated that it had a custodial force of four men to clean snow from the walks for the twenty-four hour period of February 17, and that shovels, mechanical snow removers, rock salt, sand, brooms, etc. were available to the force for the purpose of removing or treating the snow and ice from and on the walks. It was further stated that they had actually removed it on the date in question. In spite of this, however, it is the contention of the appellants that there was no duty imposed by law on the landlord to remove the ice and snow naturally accumulated.

There is a sharp division in the decisions of jurisdictions which have considered the question here presented. The two views have been labeled the 'Massachusetts rule' (or common law rule) and the 'Connecticut rule' (or modern rule) in recognition of the respective states whose courts first ruled on a landlord's liability to remove snow and ice, but with opposite results.

The Massachusetts rule appears to have been first announced in the case of Woods v. Naumkeag Steam Cotton Co., 134 Mass. 357, 45 Am.Rep. 344 (1883). The plaintiff was a tenant who used steps in common with other tenants in passing from her apartment to the street. She slipped on them when they were in an icy condition. The court suggested that when the owner let the premises with the right of the occupants to use the stairways in common with one another it might have been obligatory on the owner's part to keep them in a safe condition, but, said the court, this obligation has never been extended to require him to 'reconstruct' the stairways if the stairways as they existed when the premises were demised, were not altogether safe by reason of a fault in the original construction which was apparent to both parties. From this premise the court reasoned that there was no duty on the part of the landlord to the tenant to remove from the steps the snow which naturally accumulated thereon, but it was the tenant's own duty to do so.

Although the Woods case, was not cited the rule of law it announced was reiterated in Smolesky v. Kotler, 270 Mass. 32, 169 N.E. 486. That case again stressed that the only duty the landlord has with respect to common passageways is to maintain them in the same condition of safety as they were or appeared to be when the tenant's estate commenced. Actually, the holding of the Massachusetts court had a precursor in the earlier case of Purcell v. English, 86 Ind. 34, 44 Am.Rep. 255 (1882), where the Indiana court in dictum appeared to reject generally the rule that a landlord had a duty at all to keep common passageways safe, but did narrow its holding to ruling that there was no duty to protect the tenant from the hazards arising out of such temporary causes as snow and ice accumulation. As late as 1959 Massachusetts still adhered to the common law rule. Spack v. Longwood Apartments, Inc., 338 Mass. 518, 155 N.E.2d 873. Other jurisdictions which followed the common law rule before the Connecticut court handed down its contrary decision were Washington, Oerter v. Ziegler, 59 Wash. 421, 109 P. 1058 (1910), and New York, Dwyer v. Woollard, 205 App.Div. 546, 199 N.Y.S. 840 (1923). However, New York appears to have taken a middle view. In Dwyer it was said that the landlord's duty to remove the snow and ice from a common yard used by his tenants was no greater than that of a municipality with regard to its streets, suggesting that only when the accumulation had formed ridges or hummocks of unusual size so as to be hazardous would there by any duty on the landlord to take action.

A little more than forty years after the landmark Massachusetts case, the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut in Reardon v. Shimelman, 102 Conn. 383, 128 A. 705, 39 A.L.R. 287, expressly rejected the Massachusetts rule and announced the modern rule. The facts of that case are similar to those of the present case. The defendant owned two large apartment buildings. Between the two was an open space or court over which were laid interconnecting walkways. The plaintiff, who was an invitee, visited a tenant of one of the buildings. On her way back to the public street she slipped, fell, and injured herself as she was obliged to pass along the common walkway. For several days the walk had been covered with ice and frozen snow, was alternately smooth and lumpy, and no attempt had been made to clear it or put a nonskid substance such as sand or ashes on it. The court held that the accumulation under the circumstances created a danger of which the landlord was aware and imposed an obligation on him to take remedial action. After stating that the landlord had a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent the occurrence of defective or dangerous conditions in the common approaches, the opinion went on to state the court could see no distinction as to whether a particular danger arose from the fall of snow or freezing water. The accumulation was likened to those natural causes which, though operating more slowly, bring about the decaying of wood or rusting of iron, the prevention or correction of which clearly would have been the landlord's duty.

Of those states which have had the benefit of both the Massachusetts and Connecticut courts' decisions when faced with the question here presented, most have decided that the latter court's reasoning is the more sound. The textwriters appear to support this latter view also. 2 Harper & James, Law of Torts, Section 27.17; Prosser, Torts (2d ed.), Section 80. However, a few jurisdictions have been aligned with Massachusetts. Some representative cases are: Goodman v. Corn Exchange Nat. Bank & Trust Co., 331 Pa....