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A New Jersey court has considered whether a vacation renter could sue the listing brokerage for injuries suffered during the renter’s vacation.
Harry and Holly Egner (“Owners”) purchased a vacation home on the Jersey Shore in February 2003. The Owners made the home available for vacation rentals, listing the property with Prudential Fox & Roach (“Brokerage”). The Brokerage was not acting as a property manager, although one of the Brokerage’s employees walked through the property at the time the lease was signed. The listing agreement allowed the Brokerage to make emergency repairs to the property, not to exceed $100.
Colombia Reyes (“Colombia”) saw the Brokerage’s marketing materials, and entered into a two-week lease for the property with the Owners during August 2003. During the term of her rental, Colombia’s father (“Reyes”) fell down the staircase off a deck in the back of the property. The deck had no rails, and there was a hard-to-see gap between the house and the deck. Because of this gap, Reyes had allegedly stumbled onto the deck from the house and then down the stairs because there was no rail for him to grasp. He allegedly suffered permanent injuries from his fall. Colombia testified that no warnings were provided to her or her family over the danger posed by the deck.
Reyes filed a lawsuit against the Owners and the Brokerage for his injuries. Both the Owners and the Brokerage filed motions with the trial court seeking judgment in their favor. The trial court granted judgment in favor of the Brokerage and partial judgment in favor of the Owners. Reyes appealed these rulings.
The Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, affirmed the trial court’s ruling in favor of the Brokerage. While considering the allegations against the Owners, the court ruled that the Owners had a duty to protect Colombia and her family from unreasonable risks of harm located on the property, even if the Owners were not aware of the risk. Therefore, the court sent the case back to the lower court so it could determine whether the property’s deck posed such a risk and whether Colombia and her family knew that the deck posed a risk of harm.
The court also ruled that the Brokerage did not have a duty to discover defects existing on the property, only all known defects on the property. New Jersey law requires licensees to make a “reasonable effort” to ascertain material information about the property’s physical condition, a duty which includes making a visual inspection “to determine if there are any readily observable physical conditions affecting the property”. The court found that the Brokerage had satisfied this requirement when its employee had walked around the property at the time the listing agreement was executed. The court determined that this duty did not require the Brokerage to search “every nook and cranny of the rental premises to discover latent defects.” Because the Brokerage had met its duty, the court affirmed the ruling in favor of the Brokerage.
Reyes v. Egner, 962 A.2d 542 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2009), cert. granted, 970 A.2d 1047 (N.J. 2009).
Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Barry Goodman of Greenbaum, Rowe, Smith, & Davis LLP for alerting NAR Legal Affairs to this decision.