Court Opinion

ID: 9635433
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:50:31.866749+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:27.143044
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
concurring.
We are called upon to decide an issue of first impression — under what circumstances may a landlord be held *398liable to his tenant for injuries sustained as a result of criminal activity occurring on portions of the leased premises within the landlord’s exclusive control. I join in the Opinion of the Court.
Mr. Justice McDermott has admirably resolved a complex case, which was made more difficult by the procedural posture in which the appeal arose. The great majority of appellate courts which have wrestled with this issue have reviewed lower court decisions made at a preliminary stage of the proceedings — such as motions for judgment on the pleadings and summary judgment. Consequently, their review was limited to the question of whether, reading the record most favorably to the plaintiff, a cause of action could be made out. This issue comes to us for the first time following the complete trial.
At the outset I note that I completely subscribe to the Court’s treatment of the issues of compensatory and punitive damages set forth in sections II A and II B of the opinion. Because the liability issue has not been addressed previously by this Court, I write separately to explain my understanding of the reasoning which leads to the Court’s decision.
The Appellees urge this Court to hold, as did the Superior Court, that a landlord owes a duty — to provide security to protect against criminal acts of third persons — based upon the implied warranty of habitability in residential leases. This approach was adopted in the seminal case of Kline v. 1500 Massachusetts Avenue Apartment Corp., 439 F.2d 477 (D.C.Cir.1970). The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recognized that, as a general rule, a private individual does not have a duty to protect another from a criminal attack by a third person. Nevertheless, it concluded that the general rule was inapplicable to the landlord-tenant relationship in multiple dwelling houses. In arriving at its conclusion, the court emphasized the development of the modern view of the lease as a contract, *399and the movement away from the traditional analysis of a lease as a conveyance of a property interest. The court stated, “... there is implied in the contract between landlord and tenant an obligation on the landlord to provide those protective measures which are within his reasonable capacity.” 1 439 F.2d at 485.
The landmark Pennsylvania case which reflects the trend towards treating the residential lease as a contract, rather than a conveyance of land for a term, is Pugh v. Holmes, 486 Pa. 272, 405 A.2d 897 (1979). There this Court recognized an implied warranty of habitability in residential leases. I would expressly reject the notion advanced by the Kline court that a landlord is required in the first instance to provide any form of “security service” or protective measures to meet the “warranty of habitability” implied in the lease contract. The central premise of Pugh v. Holmes was that the contemporary leasing of residences involves “a well known package of goods and services” and that, therefore, it is proper to give legal protection to the tenant’s assumption that a lease guarantees him at least these well known goods and services in exchange for payment of rent. Thus, when we recognized that this package “ ‘includes not merely walls and ceilings, but also adequate heat, light and ventilation, serviceable plumbing facilities, secure windows and doors, proper sanitation, and proper maintenance,’ ” 486 Pa. at 282, 405 A.2d at 902, we focused on those qualities which by common understanding constitute the sine qua non of “residence”. We stated that
[t]he implied warranty is designed to insure that a landlord will provide facilities and services vital to the life, health, and safety of the tenant and to the use of the *400premises for residential purposes ... In order to con-. stitute a breach ... [a] defect must be of a nature and kind which will prevent the use of the dwelling for its intended purpose to provide premises fit for habitation by its dwellers.”
Id., 486 Pa. at 289, 405 A.2d at 905. (Emphasis added). It would be a gross distortion of the reasoning in Pugh v. Holmes to give it any part in the analysis of situations such as that presented by the case at bar. Secure doors and windows, that is, devices which serve the purpose for which they were designed and which are not merely holes in walls, are fundamental elements in distinguishing an uninhabitable structure from a residence. "Security services” are not. Only the most fainthearted and seclusive could accept the proposition that lack of such services would render a residence uninhabitable.2
Proceeding with the contract analysis, the Kline court determined that a duty was owed by a landlord to his tenants simply because the risk of harm existed. The court stated, "... we place the duty of taking protective measures guarding the entire premises and the area peculiarly under the landlord’s control against the perpetration of criminal acts upon the landlord, the party to the lease contract who had the effective capacity to perform these necessary acts.” 439 F.2d at 482. It is an inaccurate statement of tort law, however, to say that what may be *401done, must be done. Duty should not be defined by ability, but by responsibility.
The Appellees suggest that a duty to protect tenants from the risk of criminal conduct is nothing more than a continuation of the landlord’s existing duty to maintain the common areas of the leased premises; and that we need not impose a new duty, but merely delineate the scope of an existing obligation. This existing obligation which the Appellees perceive as the basis for their contention is a landlord’s duty to maintain the common areas in a reasonably safe condition for the use of tenants and their invitees.
The term “reasonably safe” has traditionally been interpreted to include physical deficiencies, health hazards, and structural defects. Liability may be imposed upon a landlord where he had actual notice of a defective condition within the common areas or where a reasonable inspection would have disclosed the condition. The Appellees would expand “defective condition” to include not only a physical defect, but also a risk of physical harm to tenants from criminal conduct. The duty of a landlord would be two-fold —i.e., a duty to alleviate an existing condition which creates a risk of harm from criminal conduct and a duty to conduct a reasonable investigation to discover such a condition.3 Liability would then be imposed upon a landlord for a breach of either duty. This is neither a natural nor a logical extension.
The traditional duty which has been imposed upon a landlord who retains control over the common areas is an exception to the general rule that, absent an agreement to the contrary, a landlord who surrenders possession of the leasehold does not have an obligation to maintain the prem*402ises in repair. The exception recognizes that a landlord has exclusive authority to maintain or repair the common areas. I join in the Court’s refusal to extend this duty to maintain the common areas to include security services.
As noted in the Opinion of the Court, the weakness of Appellees’ argument is demonstrated by their failure to recognize a crucial distinction between the risks of injury from a condition of the property and from criminal acts of a third person. In failing to maintain the condition of the common areas of the leased premises, the landlord’s conduct has created the risk of injury to a tenant. It is the responsibility of the landlord to abate the risk which his conduct has created. Liability may then be imposed upon a landlord where injury results because of his conduct or failure to remove the risk of harm created by his conduct. The risk of injury from criminal acts arises not from the conduct of the landlord, but from the conduct of a third person.
Where, as here, the conduct of the parties is regulated neither by statute, ordinance, or regulation, nor by the lease-contract itself, the courts have struggled with the issue of whether liability may be imposed upon a landlord for criminal acts.4 The conflicting resolutions of this issue result from the courts’ attempts to respond to what is essentially a social problem, rather than a landlord-tenant problem. The risk of harm from criminal conduct is not peculiar to the landlord-tenant relationship. It is a risk that *403one encounters in society at large. Any attempt by a landlord to insulate tenants from this risk must necessarily fail. Therefore, the mere fact that a tenant may be exposed to that risk cannot be the basis for imposing liability.
As has been ably detailed in the Opinion of the Court, although the creation of the landlord-tenant relationship in and of itself does not impose a duty on the landlord to provide security services to a tenant, where a landlord voluntarily undertakes to provide protection from criminal acts he has a duty to do so reasonably. Liability is to be imposed only where the measures taken by the landlord either are unreasonable to reduce the risk of harm or have the effect of increasing the risk of harm; or where the landlord fails to maintain the measures which have been adopted in their normal operable condition.
Although it has never been generally accepted that a landlord undertakes an obligation to protect the premises, and the tenant, from the risk of harm from third parties simply by leasing premises to a tenant, Appellees argue that public policy dictates that we now so hold. As this Court stated, however, in Mamlin v. Genoe, 340 Pa. 320, 325, 17 A.2d 407, 409 (1941),
[t]he right of a court to declare what is or is not in accord with public policy does not extend to specific economic or social problems which are controversial in nature and capable of solution only as the result of a study of various factors and conditions. It is only when a given policy is so obviously for or against the public health, safety, morals or welfare that there is a virtual unanimity of opinion in regard to it, that a court may constitute itself the voice of the community in so declaring. There must be a positive, well-defined, universal public sentiment, deeply integrated in the customs and beliefs of the people and in their conviction of what is just and right and in the interests of the public weal.

. In Kline, the level of security services which had been provided by the landlord at the inception of the lease had deteriorated. The application of contract principles was, therefore, peculiarly appropriate because of this decline in the protective measures which had been in existence at the time the parties had entered into the lease. The expansive language of the opinion made it apparent, however, that the court would not be inclined to limit liability to those instances in which the level of existing measures had been relaxed.

. The implied warranty/contract analysis must also be rejected for the further reason that the remedies available thereunder are inconsistent with the remedies sought in a tort action such as this. In Pugh v. Holmes we noted that where a landlord breaches the implied warranty of habitability, the tenant may a) vacate the premises thereby terminating his obligation to pay rent, b) remain in possession and assert the implied warranty as a defense in an action for unpaid rent, c) make necessary repairs at his own expense and deduct the cost from the amount of rent due, or d) pursue other "traditional” contract remedies such as specific performance. See generally, 486 Pa. at 291-95, 405 A.2d at 907-08. Nothing in this discussion even remotely suggests the possibility of a personal injury claim arising out of an alleged breach of the implied warranty of habitability. I cannot countenance the erosion of fundamental distinctions in the law which necessarily results from molding tort remedies to contract analysis.

. The structural soundness of the premises is readily subject to inspection and correction, even in the absence of knowledge of a particular defect. Without actual notice of criminal activity, however, the protective integrity of the premises, its soundness against the risk of harm from the intentional misconduct of unknown third parties, is not similarly susceptible to meaningful examination. Possible deficiencies in this regard are infinite, limited only by the imagination.

. Unlike Pennsylvania, other jurisdictions have adopted regulations which define the minimum standards for safety in multiple dwellings. For example, the New Jersey legislature has authorized its State Commissioner of Community Affairs to promulgate regulations for the maintenance of multiple dwellings pursuant to the Hotel and Multiple Dwelling Law, N.J.S.A. 55: 13A-1 et seq. In Trentacost v. Brussel, 82 N.J. 214, 412 A.2d 436 (1980), the New Jersey Supreme Court relied upon regulations which had been adopted by the Commissioner in holding that a landlord had breached the standard of care in failing to provide a lock on an entrance door. The New Jersey regulation cited therein provided that building entrance doors shall be equipped with heavy duty lock sets.