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NY Post Article (TENANT RAPE $HOCK )

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NY Post Article (TENANT RAPE $HOCK )

Postby HAJ77 » Wed Feb 05, 2003 9:28 am

An interesting article from the February 5th NY Post regarding the LLs responsibility for security.

February 5, 2003 --

The owners of a Brooklyn apartment building have agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit by a student who says she was raped because of their negligence.

The 20-year-old victim said she was attacked on Sept. 26, 2000 by a man who managed to slip through a broken door into her Ocean Avenue high-rise building, which is owned and managed by Ocean Partnership.

The former Brooklyn College student last year filed a $20 million lawsuit against the owners, Ocean Partnership, citing its failure to fix the building's broken front door.

The woman has since moved out of the state, and her attacker remains at large. But her lawyers argued that the man had full access to the "decrepit" building.

She declined to comment on the settlement, but her lawyer, Bruce Barron, said it was one of the largest ever in a rape lawsuit in New York.

Barron said property owners should take notice, saying the settlement sends "a strong message to building owners and property managers: they should take the safety of their tenants into great concern."

"No tenant's safety and security should be taken for granted," he said. "This is a clear warning to all building owners with safety problems."

According to the lawsuit, the door to the apartment building was often left unlocked and was broken several times, leaving tenants vulnerable to criminals.

Jeff Harris, Ocean Partnership's lawyer, would not comment. But court documents showed the company had been sued for negligence several times in the past.

Other New York rape cases involving negligence have led to large awards:

* In 1996, a Bronx jury awarded $5 million to a teenager who sued the Board of Education for negligence after he was allegedly raped by a classmate in a middle school bathroom when he was 11 years old.

The victim's lawyer, Norman Gershon, said at the time that the city was negligent because no one checked on the victim after he went missing for several minutes. In addition, he said, school officials had not heeded another child's warning that his client was being picked on before the attack, which took place on May 15, 1990.

* In 1998, a Brooklyn woman who was raped in her housing project was awarded $3 million by a federal jury that found the Housing Authority at fault for failing to repair door locks. The woman's attacker testified at the trial that he had targeted the Cypress Hills Houses because he knew the locks on the outer doors were broken.

The victim, a 52-year-old home-health-care attendant, was raped on Christmas night 1992 after returning home. A jury found the rapist 40 percent responsible for the rape and the Housing Authority 60 percent responsible because it failed to provide proper security, leaving the locks broken for a year.

No one knows how many civil suits arising from rapes have been filed or won. And because many such cases end in confidential out-of-court settlements, it is impossible to say what the highest damage award has been.

But most experts on rape say that the number of civil suits has grown from a few 15 years ago to a steady stream, as women have become more aware of their legal options.
HAJ77
 
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