Indianapolis Tenant Awarded $121,770 for Fall Down Rental Stairs With No Handrail

On December 21, 2006, Donna Saine was walking down the stairs of the Indianapolis house she rented when she fell. The staircase dropped 15 to 17 steps from top to bottom, and no handrail ran along it. Indiana building and safety codes required one. Saine had asked her landlords more than once to install a handrail. They refused.

The fall caused a severe ankle sprain that did not heal on its own. Saine went through a long course of physical therapy, then surgery to repair and replace torn ligaments. The damage was permanent: lasting nerve injury, swelling, instability in the joint, and surgical scarring.

She brought her case to Wilson Kehoe & Winingham. Attorneys William E. Winingham and John G. Shubat filed suit in Marion Superior Court in December 2008 against the property owners, Richard Walker and the other landlords, with Judge Robyn Moberly presiding. State Farm's litigation counsel defended the claim. The two sides were far apart well before trial. Saine offered to settle for $100,000. State Farm countered with $5,000.

The defense did not dispute the layout of the stairs. Instead, it argued that Saine could have moved out at any time, which would put the fall back on her. Winingham and Shubat kept the jury on the handrail. They showed that a flight of 15 to 17 steps had no code-required rail for a person on the stairs to grab, that the landlords knew the rail was missing, that their tenant had asked for it on several occasions, and that the refusal left a hazard anyone could foresee. The codes were not a paperwork detail, they argued: a rail on that staircase was exactly what a falling tenant needed to catch herself.

On March 9, 2010, the jury sided with Saine. It set her total damages at $143,259, then divided the fault: 85 percent on the landlords and 15 percent on Saine. Under Indiana's comparative fault law, her recovery was reduced by her own 15 percent share. That brought the final judgment to $121,770.15, roughly twenty-four times what State Farm had offered to settle the case. No appeal or post-trial reduction of the verdict was reported.