Georgia Apartment Liability for Rape of a Tenant
As an Atlanta injury attorney, I unfortunately receive phone calls from prospective clients regarding violent assaults and rapes at Georgia apartment complexes. These cases are commonly referred to in Georgia as negligent security cases because the legal inquiry focuses on whether the complex took adequate security measures to protect tenants against assaults given a history of prior crime.
The law in Georgia is that the owner must have been aware of sufficient prior crime on the property before the owner has a duty to take reasonable security measures. The test is truly when looking at the big picture of crime on the property if it was a situation where reasonable owners would have taken precautions. In the seminal Georgia Supreme Court case, Sturbridge Partners, Ltd. v. Walker, the tenant was brutally raped by an unknown criminal who forced his way into her apartment. There were only two prior burglaries involving petty theft from unoccupied apartments during the day. The apartment moved the Georgia Court to throw the case out claiming that the prior crimes were totally different from the subject rape. The Georgia Supreme Court disagreed and held that the “issue is not the forseeability of the rape itself, but whether Sturbridge had actual knowledge of the prior burglaries and, because of that knowledge, should have reasonably anticipated the risk of personal harm to a tenant which might occur in the burglary of an occupied apartment.” The legal question now is, is there enough crime such that a reasonable apartment owner would take precautions.
Continue reading "Georgia Apartment Liability for Rape of a Tenant" »
