Court Opinion

ID: 9884888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:22:35.161242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:42.024996
License: Public Domain

CRIPPEN, Judge
(concurring specially).
Because the question of law in this case is an important one that should be considered by the Minnesota Supreme Court, I would certify the case for accelerated review under Minnesota Statutes section 480A. 10, subdivision 2(b). A supreme court decision will help develop the law, and resolution of the question has possible statewide impact. Minn.R.Civ.App.P. 117, subd. 2(d)(2). See id. Rule 118, subd. 1.
I concur in the opinion of the majority of the panel, because their decision conforms to proper reading of prior Minnesota law. See 4 Minnesota Practice, 296 (1974) (jury instruction guideline defining a landlord’s duty when latent defects exist).
As the majority reports, several courts during the last decade have recognized a landlord’s duty to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances. The standard has not been reviewed in Minnesota for several decades. In the Johnson case, discussed in the majority opinion, the court expanded the landlord’s responsibility for disclosure of unsafe conditions to the case where the landlord has information that would lead an ordinarily reasonable person to suspect that danger exists. Johnson v. O’Brien, 258 Minn. 502, 506, 105 N.W.2d 244, 247 (1960). A more expanded definition of the landlord’s duty was not urged in Johnson. Approving the changed definition at issue there, one first advanced in an instruction of the trial judge in the case, the court said:
We agree with the trial court that “To require one to use that care which an ordinarily prudent person would exercise under the same or similar circumstances can hardly be onerous, unreasonable or oppressive.”
Id. at 506-07, 105 N.W.2d at 247.
Accelerated review would also permit the supreme court to determine the impact of Minnesota Statutes section 504.18, subdivision 1 (1984). Enacted in 1971, this statute established covenants of the landlord for fitness of the premises, reasonable repairs, and maintenance of the premises in compliance with health and safety laws. The legislature mandated that this statute be liberally construed. See Minn.Stat. § 504.-18, subd. 3 (1984).1
Having in mind the statutory covenants, the development of the law also requires consideration of a modern restatement of law on the subject:
A lessor of land is subject to liability for physical harm caused to his lessee and others upon the land with the consent of the lessee or his sublessee by a condition of disrepair existing before or arising after the lessee has taken possession if
(a) the lessor, as such, has contracted by a covenant in the lease or otherwise to keep the land in repair, and
(b) the disrepair creates an unreasonable risk to persons upon the land which the performance of the lessor’s agreement would have prevented, and
(c) the lessor fails to exercise reasonable care to perform his contract.
Restatement (Second) of Torts § 357 (1975).
This case involves tragic injuries, related to a major defect on the premises that could have been readily repaired by the *138landlord before the disaster occurred. It is very important for this case and for others like it to determine whether it should be decided according to usual negligence standards and independent of historic standards that provide special protection for landlords.

. We determined in 1984 that the statute did not expand the liability of landlords for hidden defects, a topic that is not at issue in the case at hand. See Meyer v. Parkin, 350 N.W.2d 435, 438 (Minn.Ct.App.1984). We said in Meyer, however, that the legislature “did not intend to alter a landlord’s tort liability” by establishing uniform covenants. Id.