Hill v. Superior Property Management: Who Owes a Duty After a Fall at a Utah Condo?

Short answer: In Hill v. Superior Property Management Services, the Utah Supreme Court held that a condominium’s contract property management company did not owe a duty of care to a resident who tripped in the complex’s common area. The duties of a property “possessor” belong to whoever actually controls the land, and in that case that was the homeowners association, not the company it hired to mow the lawn.

When someone falls at a condo, townhome community or apartment complex, there are often several businesses involved: an owner or HOA, a management company, a landscaper, a snow removal contractor. This decision explains why the answer to “who is responsible?” usually starts with who controls the property, and why the way a claim is argued from the beginning can decide whether it survives.

What Happened

The case is Hill v. Superior Property Management Services, Inc., 2013 UT 60, decided October 11, 2013. Colleen Hill had lived at a condominium complex since 2006. A large tree in a grassy common area near her unit had sent up offshoots from its roots in several places. She knew about them, considered them trip hazards and generally stayed off that lawn.

On April 2, 2009, her dog went onto the grass, and she followed to clean up after it, as the condominium rules required. She walked carefully but tripped on the tree shoots, which she testified were hard to see because they looked “like sticks” and “blended in with the dead lawn.”

She sued the homeowners association and Superior, the company that had handled maintenance and landscaping at the complex under a contract since the mid-1990s. The trial court dismissed Superior but refused to dismiss the HOA, finding it could be liable as the possessor of the property. The HOA then settled with Hill, and she appealed the ruling in Superior’s favor.

What the Court Decided

In a 3–2 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed. It rejected each of the theories Hill offered for why Superior owed her a duty.

The contract did not require the work. The contract required weekly mowing “throughout the normal growing season,” which had not started on April 2, and trimming of “branches,” which the court read to mean limbs growing from the trunk, not shoots coming up from the roots. The court added that a mere failure to perform a contract typically creates contract liability, not tort liability, and that there is “no room in our law for a tort duty” based on work a company habitually did but was never required by contract to do.

Superior was not the possessor. Property owners and others in control owe “significant duties” to invitees, including duties to fix or warn about dangerous conditions. But the court said the hallmark of a possessor is control: the right to exclude others from the property and the right to make whatever repairs are needed. Superior had neither. The HOA kept control of access and kept responsibility for major work, including “major trimming of all large trees.” As the court put it, “Possessor liability is not strict liability,” and a company without the power to fix a hazard is not charged with the duties of the one who has it.

The company did not take over the property. A contractor that takes “entire charge” of a property, such as one that runs it, collects the rent and keeps it in repair, can be treated like a possessor. Superior had not, because the HOA still collected fees and handled major maintenance.

Mowing was not a promise to fix the roots. A company that voluntarily takes on a task must do it with care, but the duty is limited to the task it actually took on. Mowing could not have removed the root shoots, so it did not create a duty to deal with them.

The Argument That Was Never Decided

Hill’s strongest theory, the court said, was that Superior’s own repeated mowing had turned the shoots into the hardened, stubby clumps she tripped on. That matters because Utah law draws a sharp line between acts and omissions: “As a general rule, we all have a duty to act reasonably in our affirmative acts; but no such duty attaches with regard to omissions except in cases of a special relationship.”

The majority never reached that theory. It held that in the trial court Hill had argued about what Superior failed to do, not about anything Superior did that created the hazard, so the argument was not preserved for appeal. “The general invocation of a theory is insufficient,” the court wrote. Two justices dissented. They would have found the argument preserved, and would have held that repeated mowing that created the hazard was affirmative conduct carrying a duty of reasonable care, leaving it to a jury to decide whether the mowing was reasonable.

What This Means for a Fall at a Condo or Apartment Complex

• Identify who controls the property. The owner, landlord or HOA that decides who may enter and what gets repaired is usually the party with a possessor’s duties. In Hill, that party stayed in the case after the management company was dismissed.
• Get the contracts. Management, landscaping and snow removal contracts spell out who was responsible for what. Hill turned on the exact words: “growing season” and “branches.”
• Separate what a contractor did from what it failed to do. A vendor that created a hazard through its own work stands differently from one that simply did not fix a condition it had no duty to fix. That theory has to be raised clearly, with the facts that support it, from the start.
• Knowing about a hazard does not end a claim, but it matters. Utah compares fault. Your recovery is reduced by your share, and you can recover from defendants only if their combined fault is greater than yours (Utah Code 78B-5-818).

Limits of the Ruling

Hill decided what a contract management company owes a resident. It did not decide whether the HOA was negligent; that claim settled. It also did not decide the affirmative-conduct theory, which the dissent found persuasive. The Utah Supreme Court has since relied on its statement of the act-versus-omission rule, for example in B.R. ex rel. Jeffs v. Rodier, 2015 UT 1. A contract that gives a management company broader control than Superior had could lead to a different answer.

For the basics of these claims, see what you have to prove in a Utah slip and fall claim and our premises liability page. Most Utah injury lawsuits must be filed within four years (Utah Code 78B-2-307(4)); our statute of limitations guide covers the exceptions.

Talk to a Utah Premises Liability Attorney

A fall at a shared property can involve an owner, an HOA and several contractors, each pointing at the others. We sort out who controlled what, and gather the contracts and maintenance records that answer that question.

Hurt in Utah? Call (801) 921-5134 or send us your case for a free consultation. No attorney fees unless we win. Hablamos Español.