Months after a string of violent assaults in southwest Louisville last year, a woman who was assaulted is suing the apartment complex she lived in for negligence.
The new lawsuit against River Breeze Apartments claims the business knew of two previous crimes at the complex, but chose not to warn residents about the attacks.
Attorney David Barber also said River Breeze Apartments did not install cameras, did not improve lighting around the complex, and did not hire security after a pattern of violence against women developed in the area.
These latest accusations come from a young University of Louisville student who was living at the apartment complex. The woman said she lost some of her teeth while fighting off the man who assaulted her.
Last August, the young woman came home from work around 4:20 a.m. and faced her attacker, a man who had hit her with a handgun in a dark parking lot.
It was the fourth assault against women in three months at River Breeze Apartments. In all of them, the suspect matched a similar profile.
Barber said if there are third party criminal acts going on on your property, then after two, after three, after several of them happen, then it becomes reasonably foreseeable—and Kentucky law says that is on you, you have the duty to try and protect tenants.
The law he cites is case law, meaning it was previously established in another lawsuit. In the decision for that suit, Waldon v. Housing Authority of Paducah (1991), a judge wrote “a landlord’s conduct can make him liable to his tenant for the criminal acts of third persons, if the landlord fails to take reasonable steps to avoid injury from reasonably foreseeable criminal acts.”
The apartment complex sent out a notice the same day his client was assaulted. The lawsuit claims no other warnings were given beforehand.
Source: WHAS11
You must be logged in to post a comment.