Case ID: a2d_538/html/1015-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Dolly A. MUNZI v. Ronald KENNEDY, et ux.
    No. 87-459-Appeal.
    Supreme Court of Rhode Island.
    March 22, 1988.
    Richard A. Boren, Weinstein & Boren, Howard I. Lipsey, Lipsey & Skolnick, Providence, for plaintiff.
    John G. Hines, Richard L. Patz, Hines, Patz & Wolpert, Inc., Providence, for defendants.
   OPINION

PER CURIAM.

On March 8, 1988 the plaintiff, through her counsel, appeared before this court to show cause why her appeal from the grant by a Superior Court justice of the defendants’ motion for summary judgment should not be denied. The plaintiff was seeking damages for injuries she received when she fell down a flight of stairs which ran from the first to the second floor in a single-family residence that the defendants had rented to the plaintiffs son. The plaintiff faults the defendants for the absence of a handrail and inadequate lighting.

Recently in Ward v. Watson, 524 A.2d 1108, 1109 (R.I. 1987), we reiterated the “long-settled rule that in Rhode Island a landlord is not liable for injuries sustained by a tenant or guest on the tenant’s premises, unless the injury results from a latent defect known to the landlord but not to the tenant, or from the landlord’s breach of a covenant to repair.” There is no dispute that the landlords never made any agreement relative to repairs, and it is obvious that the lack of a handrail and the alleged lighting conditions were patent, rather than latent, defects.

The plaintiffs’ appeal is denied and dismissed. The judgment appealed from is affirmed.