Residential Property Owners Not Liable for Sidewalk Slip and Fall when They Did Not Cause the Dangerous Condition

If you slip and fall because of a dangerous condition on a sidewalk, did you know that your right to recover compensation for your injuries depends upon the nature of the property abutting the sidewalk? If it’s commercial property, the property owner may be liable to you for failing to correct the dangerous condition. If it’s residential property, however, the property owner is only liable if the owner personally created or exacerbated the condition. This rule was recently discussed by the Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division in the case of Johnson v. Dymowski.

In this case, the plaintiff slipped and fell on an icy patch lying underneath some newly fallen snow on the sidewalk abutting the defendants’ property. The defendants had salted the walk the night before and also before leaving for work in the morning.

The icy patch was caused by water flowing out of a neighbor’s sump pump, traveling across their yard and onto the sidewalk in front of the defendants’ property, where it pooled and froze. The defendants have known for years about this discharge from their neighbor’s sump pump and regularly applied a de-icing agent to that portion of the sidewalk when needed. Based on the defendants’ knowledge of this dangerous condition on the sidewalk, the plaintiff argued that they had a duty to correct this known dangerous condition.

Unfortunately for the plaintiff, he slipped and fell on a sidewalk abutting residential property. Had the sidewalk abutted commercial property, this case may have come out differently. Under New Jersey law, residential homeowners are not liable for dangerous sidewalk conditions unless they themselves either created or exacerbated the dangerous condition.

The plaintiff tried to argue that this rule only applies to naturally occurring sidewalk conditions and not artificially created hazards, but the New Jersey case law does not make such a distinction. The basic rule remains that residential property owners are not liable for sidewalk injuries. This rule is commonly referred to by the courts as the “no-duty rule for residential property.”