Rental House Negligence


Attorney Dennis SchaeferAuthor: Attorney Dennis Schaefer

Florida is an extremely popular place to vacation. There are millions of tourists each year. Most of the visitors will arrange for hotels or stay with friends or relatives. However a rather large number of tourists will arrange to rent houses or condominiums. Most of these rentals are done weekly or monthly. However some can be rented for shorter periods of time.

Regardless of the length of time that the rental is for, a safe place to conduct your business is required to be provided to you. This safe place to conduct your business, in most cases, extend to your invited guests. Often a written contract might be specific as it relates to guests during your rental. How clearly the contract informs you of these issues will determine if they will actually apply to your situation.

In our case a family rented a beach front house for housing for a family wedding. The overall condition of the house was nothing more than satisfactory. There were signs of poor maintenance and excessive wear and tear. Our client, one of the contract (lease) signors fell when walking through one of the two kitchens in the house. It became obvious, after the fall, that the dishwasher leaked water on the floor. It also appeared that there might have been prior notice of this problem dishwasher because a water stained mat was directly in front of the leaking machine.

There are too many potential areas of negligence to outline them all. Suffice to say that a landlord is responsible to provide a tenant with a safe place to transact their business. In the case cited above, they did not do so. If you have any questions about an accident in a vacation rental do not hesitate to call Dell and Schaefer. We are always willing to consult with you on all legal questions.



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