Ruiz v. Victory Properties, LLC

Olga Rivera and her daughter Adriana Ruiz (plaintiffs) lived in an apartment building owned by Victory Properties, LLC (defendant). Adriana and other children routinely played in the building’s backyard. The backyard was unkept, containing furniture, an abandoned vehicle, and construction materials, including chunks of concrete. Despite receiving complaints about the backyard, Victory Properties did not remove the debris or safeguard it from access by the building’s children. One day, Adriana’s 10-year-old cousin Luis Cruz took a large chunk of concrete to his family’s third-floor apartment and dropped it out of the window to see if it would break upon hitting the ground. After dropping the concrete, Luis noticed Adriana in the backyard below. Luis shouted for Adriana to move, but the concrete struck Adriana on the head, causing significant injuries. Rivera, on behalf of herself and Adriana, sued Victory Properties for negligence based on Victory Properties’ failure to remove the loose concrete from the backyard. Victory Properties moved for summary judgment, arguing that negligence liability was inappropriate because Victory Property’s conduct was not a proximate cause of Adriana’s injuries. The trial court granted the motion, holding that Victory Properties was not liable as a matter of law because it did not have a duty to protect against the unforeseeable risk of injury from a child throwing concrete out of a third-floor window. The appellate court reversed, holding that the general type of harm, namely injury to one child from another throwing a large chunk of concrete, was a reasonably foreseeable risk of not removing the concrete from the backyard. Victory Properties appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court.