With all the ice and snow this winter, condominium associations (and their insurers) that maintain interior sidewalks in their community will be breathing a sigh of relief that they have no liability for an injury from a fall on an icy patch on an interior sidewalk. In the unpublished Appellate Division decision, Qian v. Toll Brothers Inc., docket no. A-1352-12T2 (February 7, 2014), the court ruled that a condominium association could not be held responsible for a fall on an interior sidewalk abutting a privately owned street of the community.
The plaintiff lived in an adult residential community at the Villas at Cranbury Brook in Plainsboro. On the day of the accident, there was freezing rain and ice that accumulated on the sidewalks. Plaintiff and her husband decided to walk to the food market. On the way back, she fell on an icy patch of an interior sidewalk in the community directly in front of one of the homes.
The court noted the long line of cases holding that residential property owners have no duty to maintain public sidewalks. While commercial property owners have been held responsible to maintain public sidewalks, a judicial distinction drawn between residential and commercial property owners remained intact.
In the New Jersey Supreme Court case, Luchejko v. City of Hoboken, decided in 2011, the Court placed condominium owners on the residential side of this dichotomy for purposes of determining liability for a fall on an adjoining public sidewalk. The Court rejected the argument that a homeowner’s association was more like a commercial property owner in its responsibilities to the public.
In Qian, the plaintiff argued that Luchejko should not apply because she was injured while walking on a sidewalk located within the residential community, rather than on a sidewalk abutting a public roadway. Plaintiff argued that the defendant Association was responsible by both statute and its by laws to maintain all common areas of the property and collected a maintenance fee to do so, from which it purchased liability insurance.
The Appellate Division was not swayed by this argument, finding that a similar one had been presented in Luchejko and rejected by the Supreme Court. The plaintiff further tried to distinguish the interior sidewalks as different than public sidewalks. The court, however, also rejected this distinction because the interior sidewalks were used by the public and functioned just like a public sidewalk.
The court concluded by stating that if a private residential community is to be treated differently with respect to snow and ice removal on its interior sidewalks than abutting public sidewalks, it is up to the Supreme Court to make the appropriate distinction.
