Court Opinion

ID: 9765406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:01:58.254155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:09.656165
License: Public Domain

David Newbern, Justice, concurring. Our landlord-tenant law does indeed place no duty on a landlord to protect a tenant from a criminal act by a third party. When, however, there is a relationship between parties in which one of them acts so as to imply the assumption of a duty to act without negligence toward the other, then negligence becomes an issue. Keck v. American Employment Agency, Inc., 279 Ark. 294, 652 S.W.2d 2 (1983). I see no reason why a landlord should be immune from such a rule. A landlord’s relationship with a tenant is just as “special” as that of an employment agency’s relationship with its client. Both are based on contract. In this case, however, even assuming the landlords were negligent in not providing greater security, we could not reverse. It would not have mattered what sort of lock or locks were on the door because Ms. Bartley opened it. We could not say any supposed negligence on the part of the landlord constituted of the failure to provide a dead bolt or other lock more secure than the push-button type was the proximate cause of the injury. Negligence is not a static concept. That which was not characterized as negligence 60 years ago might be so characterized today in view of changed conditions. In a proper case, we should be willing to examine whether there is anything about the landlord-tenant relationship which would preclude us from holding that a landlord might be liable for demonstrable negligence causing injury to a tenant.