Ice at Your Apartment Complex: What Does a Pennsylvania Landlord Owe You?

Common areas are the key concept

Pennsylvania law generally distinguishes between areas under a tenant’s exclusive control and common areas the landlord retains control over — parking lots, shared walkways, exterior stairs and landings, entryways, mail areas and shared laundry.

For common areas, the landlord generally retains the duty to maintain reasonably safe conditions. That is where most apartment ice injuries happen: the stairs down from a second-floor landing, the path between the building door and the lot, the strip in front of the mailboxes.

Who this protects

Tenants, and also guests, delivery drivers, home health aides and other lawful visitors. You do not have to be on the lease to have a claim.

A lease clause assigning snow removal to tenants may affect responsibility for a private entrance or an individually assigned area. It is much less likely to shift responsibility for a shared lot or a common stairway.

What tends to make these cases

• A repeated, known problem. Ice that forms in the same place every winter — under a leaking downspout, at the bottom of a slope, where runoff crosses a walkway — is a condition the landlord knew about or should have known about. That is the core of the claim.

• Prior complaints. Text messages, emails or maintenance requests from you or any other tenant about that exact spot are the single most valuable evidence in an apartment ice case.

• Lighting. A walkway with a burned-out fixture and an ice patch is two failures, not one.

• Design and drainage. Ice created by where the complex piles plowed snow, or by drainage the landlord controls, is generally treated differently from ice that simply fell from the sky.

Hills and ridges, again

It applies here too. During generally slippery conditions, an injured person typically must show ice permitted to accumulate in ridges or elevations that unreasonably obstructed travel, the landlord’s actual or constructive notice, and causation.

The exception that matters most in apartment cases is the one about conditions the owner created — through drainage, snow piling or a maintenance failure — rather than conditions that simply arrived with the weather.

Practical steps for tenants

• Photograph it, including any downspout, drain or snow pile that fed the ice.

• Report it in writing, through the portal or by text or email, and keep the record. A phone call to the office leaves nothing behind.

• Ask neighbors. Someone else has almost certainly complained about that spot before.

• Request the maintenance log and the snow removal contract. An attorney can ask for these formally, and can ask that they be preserved before they are routinely purged.

• Do not assume the lease ends the conversation. Tenants often decide they have no claim because of a sentence in a lease that does not actually cover the area where they fell.

One thing worth saying directly

Tenants sometimes hesitate because they are worried about their housing. That concern is understandable and worth discussing openly with a lawyer, who can explain what the process actually involves before anything is filed.

Talk it through with someone local. If you have questions about your own situation, the attorneys at Joyce, Carmody & Moran can review what happened and explain your options — no cost for the first conversation, and no obligation. We are based in Pittston and handle injury matters throughout Luzerne County.