Parents sue landlord for not providing adequate security

Hansen v. Etheridge, Georgia

Was violence "foreseeable"?

Could an apartment manager know that an uninvited guest would stab someone?

While trying break up a brawl at a Georgia apartment community a teenage boy was stabbed and killed. The boy's parents sued the owner of the property, claiming that the apartment security manager should have stopped the party.

The manager saw beer cans in the apartment and noticed that the party had spilled out into the parking lot and was getting out of hand. She told the resident hosting the party to break it up, but did nothing further. Instead, she left the apartment community to attend to other business. Forty-five minutes later the teenager was killed.

The owner claimed that he shouldn't be held responsible for the attack and asked the court to dismiss the case without holding a trial.

DISMISSED:

An appeals court dismissed the case, saying that the owner wasn't liable for the teenager's death. The court said any possible negligence of the security manager for letting the party continue hadn't caused the teenager's death. It wasn't "foreseeable" that an uninvited guest would stab someone.

[Hansen v. Etheridge].