Paterson v. Deeb
| Decision Date | 12 June 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. AY-8,AY-8 |
| Citation | 472 So.2d 1210,10 Fla. L. Weekly 1417 |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
| Parties | 10 Fla. L. Weekly 1417 Polly Suzanne PATERSON, Appellant, v. Kent C. DEEB, Transamerica Insurance Co., W. Fenton Langston, and Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co., Appellees. |
Michael T. Callahan, of Brooks, Callahan & Phillips, Tallahassee, for appellant.
Fred M. Johnson and Patricia Guilday, of Fuller & Johnson, Tallahassee, for appellee Deeb.
Charles A. Stampelos, William B. Wiley, and Eugene L. Ciotoli, of McFarlain, Bobo, Sternstein, Wiley & Cassedy, P.A., Tallahassee, for appellees Langston and Hartford Acc. & Indem. Co.
Appellant, Polly Suzanne Paterson, sued appellees, Kent C. Deeb and W. Fenton Langston, as owners of an apartment leased by plaintiff, for compensatory and punitive damages resulting from an unknown assailant's sexual attack upon her in the leased premises. She appeals the lower court's judgment dismissing her amended complaint with prejudice for failure to state a cause of action. We reverse.
Plaintiff was offered and exercised several opportunities to amend her original complaint. The final amended complaint, construed most favorably for the plaintiff, alleges the following essential facts.
In August 1981 plaintiff leased an apartment from defendants under a one-year lease. In September 1982 she renewed the lease for one year and continued to reside in the apartment. At that time she executed a written agreement, which was retained by the defendants' rental agent. Despite plaintiff's request, a copy of the lease agreement has not been given to her.
The leased premises was an old building on East Park Avenue in Tallahassee containing three apartment units. Plaintiff's apartment comprised the entire upstairs of the building. The other two apartments were located on the first floor. Access to the apartments was through a common hallway with entrances at the front and the rear of the building. A stairwell from the downstairs hallway to an upstairs hallway provided access to plaintiff's apartment. Plaintiff's bathroom was across the hall from her living and bedroom quarters. The hallways and stairwell were common areas under the sole control of defendants and were poorly lighted.
Subsequent to plaintiff's renewal in September 1982, she told defendants' rental agent she feared for her personal safety in the building because of its lack of security. She specifically complained that the only lock to the front door of the building was broken and that the rear door of the building had no lock or other security device. The plaintiff further complained to defendants' rental agent that although one of the downstairs apartments had been vacant for some time nothing had been done to secure the open windows and doors in that unit and that from time to time trespassers came into the building and used that unit after dark. These windows and doors gave trespassers unrestricted access to the interior common areas of the building. Thereafter, plaintiff further complained to defendants' agent that window screens were still missing and that windows had not been repaired so they could be secured. Defendants' rental agent discussed plaintiff's requests with defendants and informed plaintiff that her requests for repairs and improved security would not be met because the building was to be demolished and improvements were impractical as a waste of money to defendants.
On the evening of January 10, 1983, plaintiff crossed the upstairs hall and entered her bathroom. An unknown assailant, hidden behind the unlocked bathroom door, grabbed the plaintiff from behind, threatened her at knifepoint, bound her hands, face, and mouth, battered her, and forcibly raped her at knifepoint within the confines of her bathroom.
Plaintiff alleges that defendants knew or should have known that between 1979 and 1982 the neighborhood in which the apartment was located experienced a substantial number of reported breaking and entering offenses and criminal assaults, and that from 1976 to 1982 the number of sexual assaults experienced in that neighborhood police district was significantly higher than the average for other reporting districts in Tallahassee; that defendants owed a common law and statutory duty to plaintiff to maintain the doors, locks, keys, and common areas of the apartment building in a reasonably safe condition, including minimal measures to secure the area against foreseeable criminal misconduct against plaintiff, a single woman living alone; that section 83.51, Florida Statutes (1981), in effect at the time the lease was made, required that defendants provide locks and keys for the doors of the building and otherwise maintain the common areas in a clean and safe condition, that the statute was designed to protect the class of persons of which plaintiff was a member, and that plaintiff suffered an injury of the type the statute was designed to prevent.
The amended complaint alleges that defendants breached the above duties in the following respects: (a) Not keeping the common areas of the building safe for use by the female plaintiff by failing and refusing to install or repair locks on the front and back doors leading to the common areas of the building and by failing to adequately light such common areas; (b) not providing a security lock for the outside of plaintiff's bathroom door, the sole access to which was through a common area of the building; (c) failing to take adequate measures to lock and secure the vacant living unit downstairs, which afforded access to the interior common areas and to plaintiff's apartment by trespassers and others intent on harming plaintiff; (d) violating the statutory duty imposed by section 83.51, Florida Statutes (1981), which requires that reasonable provisions be made for locks and keys and for the safe condition of all common areas of the building; (e) failing to exercise reasonable care to correct the dangerous and defective conditions of the doors, windows, and passageways of the building upon receiving notice of their existence from plaintiff; and (f) breaching their implied contract with plaintiff to provide a reasonably safe dwelling unit of common areas, windows, and doors secure enough to prevent ready access by persons intent upon reasonably foreseeable criminal misconduct likely to result in harm to the plaintiff. The amended complaint also joins the liability insurers as defendants and claims compensatory and punitive damages. 1
Defendants moved to dismiss the amended complaint on grounds that it failed to allege ultimate facts showing: That the alleged criminal activity was a reasonably foreseeable occurrence at the apartment premises; that defendants had any legal duty to protect plaintiff against the alleged criminal activity; that the alleged negligence was a legal cause of plaintiff's injuries; and that defendants were liable for punitive damages. The trial court held the allegations legally insufficient to allege the requisite foreseeability. It also found the facts insufficient to sustain the punitive damages claim.
Two questions are presented for our consideration: (1) Whether the allegations were sufficient to allege a cause of action for negligence; (2) Whether the allegations were sufficient to state a claim for punitive damages. We answer each question in the affirmative.
The four elements of negligence are (1) a legal duty owed by defendant to plaintiff, (2) breach of that duty by defendant, (3) an injury to plaintiff legally caused by defendant's breach, and (4) damages as a result of the injury. In general, the landlord's duty is to exercise reasonable care to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe condition. The issue of foreseeability said to be lacking in this case of criminal attack relates to the elements of duty and causation. See, e.g., Ten Associates v. McCutchen, 398 So.2d 860 (Fla. 3d DCA 1981).
As a general rule, a landowner has no duty to protect an invitee on his premises from criminal attack by a person over whom the landowner has no control unless the criminal attack is reasonably foreseeable. E.g., Relyea v. State, 385 So.2d 1378 (Fla. 4th DCA 1980); Admiral's Port Condominium Assn., Inc. v. Feldman, 426 So.2d 1054 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983); Highlands Insurance Co. v. Gilday, 398 So.2d 834 (Fla. 4th DCA 1981). It has also been said that, to impose such a duty upon the landowner, the invitee must allege and prove that the landowner had actual or constructive knowledge of prior similar acts committed upon invitees on the premises because a landowner should not be required to take precautions against a sudden attack which the landowner has no reason to anticipate. Relyea v. State, 385 So.2d at 1383. Thus, it appears that the foreseeability of criminal attack is essential to the concept of duty only in the sense that in the absence of another basis for imposing a legal duty the law does not require one to perform a specific act where that person has no knowledge or reason to know that such act is reasonably necessary to protect invitees on the premises.
Because there are often additional considerations incident to the contractual and statutory obligations found in the usual landlord/tenant relationship, we do not perceive the foreseeability premise of the general rule governing landowner/invitee liability to be the exclusive basis for the landlord's liability to the tenant regarding criminal attacks committed on the leased premises. See Kline v. 1500 Massachusetts Avenue Apartment Corp., 439 F.2d 477, 481-85 (D.C.Cir.1970). There appears to be a marked tendency in Florida decisions to recognize the right of tenants to recover damages for criminal attacks on the leased premises on several additional legal theories. E.g., Green Companies v. Divincenzo, 432 So.2d 86 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983); Ten Associates v. McCutchen, 398 So.2d 860 (Fla. 3d DCA 19...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Doe v. Linder Const. Co., Inc.
...for crimes committed by third persons have relied on their own McClenahan -type cases as authority. See, e.g., Paterson v. Deeb, 472 So.2d 1210, 1218 (Fla.App.1985); Kline 439 F.2d at 484. In McClenahan, we set out the general test for determining the existence of proximate cause, as follow......
-
Motorcity of Jacksonville, Ltd. By and Through Motorcity of Jacksonville, Inc. v. Southeast Bank, N.A.
...Servs., Inc. v. MacFarland, 662 So.2d 710, 712 (Fla.App. 2 Dist.1995), review denied, 670 So.2d 939 (Fla.1996); Paterson v. Deeb, 472 So.2d 1210, 1214 (Fla.App. 1 Dist.1985), review denied sub nom., Langston v. Paterson, 484 So.2d 9 (Fla.1986). With respect to loan transactions, Florida law......
-
Sharp v. W.H. Moore, Inc., 16667
...to the submission of the foreseeability issue to the jury because criminal assaults occur in all neighborhoods); Paterson v. Deeb, 472 So.2d 1210, 1218-19 (Fla.App.1985) ("[w]e are not willing to give the landlord one free ride, as it were, and sacrifice the first victim's right to safety u......
-
Clohesy v. Food Circus Supermarkets, Inc.
...548-50 (E.D.Pa.1977); Czerwinski v. Sunrise Point Condominium, 540 So.2d 199, 200-01 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1989); Paterson v. Deeb, 472 So.2d 1210, 1218-20 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1985); Willie v. American Cas. Co., 547 So.2d 1075, 1083 (La.Ct.App.1989); Erickson v. Curtis Inv. Co., 432 N.W.2d 199, 201......
-
Negligence cases
...DCA 2000). 4. O’Keefe v. Orea , 731 So.2d 680, 684 (Fla. 1st DCA 1998), rev. denied , 725 So.2d 1109 (Fla. 1998). 5. Paterson v. Deeb , 472 So.2d 1210, 1214 (Fla. 1st DCA 1985), rev. denied , 484 So.2d 8 (Fla. 1986), rev. denied , 484 So.2d 9 (Fla. 1986). 6. Coker v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. ,......
-
The Unidentified Wrongdoer
...like a landlord, for the rape and robbery of the plaintiff-tenant by an unidentified person in her apartment); Paterson v. Deeb, 472 So. 2d 1210, 1212, 1218-20 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1985) (finding that the plaintiff stated a cause of action for negligence against her landlords for a sexual a......
-
Premises liability: a notable rift in the law of foreseeable crimes.
...(assault and robbery)). (19) See Czerwinski v. Sunrise Point Condo., 540 So. 2d 199, 200 (Fla. 3d D.C.A. 1989) (citing Paterson v. Deeb, 472 So. 2d 1210, 1215 (Fla. 1st D.C.A. 1985)); see also Vazquez v. Lago Grande Homeowners Ass'n, 900 So. 2d 587, 592-93 (Fla. 3d D.C.A. 2004) (citing (20)......