Injured in Your D.C. Apartment? Your Landlord Can’t Blame You for Not Moving Out

If you were badly hurt by something your landlord refused to fix, a ceiling that came down, an unlit stairwell, a railing that gave way, wiring that started a fire, you can expect the insurance company to open with some version of this: you knew about it. You complained for months. You saw the crack. You used those stairs every single day. If it was really that dangerous, why didn't you move?

In the District of Columbia, that argument does not work, and it has not worked for more than forty years.

Staying in a dangerous apartment is not "assuming the risk"

D.C.'s Housing Regulations set minimum safety standards for rental housing. Interior ceilings must be structurally sound and free of loose plaster and wide cracks. Common stairways must be lit and have secure handrails. When a landlord violates those standards and someone gets hurt, the landlord is not permitted to argue that the tenant voluntarily accepted the danger by continuing to live there.

The D.C. Court of Appeals said so directly in Scoggins v. Jude, 419 A.2d 999 (D.C. 1980), where a water-soaked living room ceiling collapsed on a tenant and her guest after the landlord had been told about the leak repeatedly and did nothing. The court held the defense of assumption of risk was simply unavailable to the landlord, because the court "would undermine the public policy implicit in the Housing Regulations if we were to permit the argument that a tenant of substandard premises had the reasonable alternative of leaving the premises under lease."

The logic is straightforward. Housing regulations exist precisely because tenants frequently cannot leave. If a landlord could escape liability any time a tenant stayed put, the regulations would protect no one, and the worst landlords would benefit the most.

Why this matters more in D.C. than almost anywhere else

The District is a contributory negligence jurisdiction. In most of the country, being partly at fault reduces what you recover. In D.C., in most cases, being even slightly at fault can wipe the claim out entirely. We cover that rule and how it plays out across the region in our primer on contributory negligence in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

There is one narrow statutory exception, and it does not help an injured tenant. D.C. Code § 50-2204.52 limits the contributory negligence defense for pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable users, but it sits in the traffic code and reaches only motor vehicle collisions. We explain who it covers in our post on the rule for people hit while walking or biking in D.C. A tenant crushed by a falling ceiling gets no benefit from it at all.

That is exactly what makes the Scoggins rule so valuable. In a jurisdiction where a sliver of plaintiff fault normally ends the case, D.C. law takes the single most obvious fault argument, you stayed, off the table as a matter of law.

What the defense can still argue

Scoggins is not blanket immunity, and it is worth being clear-eyed about the limits. What the rule protects is your decision to remain in your home and to use it normally. What it does not protect is conduct that unreasonably adds to the danger.

In Scoggins itself, the court held a jury should still have been allowed to consider whether the tenant was contributorily negligent for hanging heavy plants from the already-cracked ceiling. That was conduct that made a bad condition worse.

Banks v. District of Columbia, 551 A.2d 1304 (D.C. 1988), drew the line more sharply. A woman fell descending an unlit common stairway that lacked secure handrails, both violations of the Housing Regulations. The court confirmed she could not be barred from recovery simply for choosing to use the stairs. But the jury was entitled to weigh how she used them, including whether she had been drinking and whether she closed the apartment door behind her when that door was the only source of light on the steps.

The practical translation: you are not required to abandon your home or stop using your own hallway. You are required to behave reasonably once you are there. Those are very different things, and the difference is often where these cases are won.

Guests are protected too

Scoggins involved not just the tenant but a friend who had come over to help her move furniture out from under the leak. The Court of Appeals applied the same protective principles to the guest, and left the judgment in his favor undisturbed, noting he had no control over the premises and no role in creating the added hazard.

If you were seriously hurt while visiting someone else's apartment, as a family member, a home health aide, a delivery worker, or a friend, the landlord's duty runs to you as well. Our overview of how D.C. handles premises liability and visitor status explains the broader framework.

A 2026 ruling reinforces the same principle

The Court of Appeals returned to this ground this year in Woodley v. Woodberry Village Apartment, No. 23-CV-0965 (D.C. Mar. 19, 2026). That case was about compensation for years of uninhabitable conditions rather than a physical injury, and the trial court had slashed the tenant's award on the theory that he should have moved out when the landlord urged him to.

The Court of Appeals reversed, and reached back to Scoggins to explain why. A landlord cannot penalize a tenant for staying unless the landlord first shows it followed the statutory process in D.C. Code § 42-3505.01(f)(1), which requires an approved plan from the Rent Administrator, notice to the tenant, and a guaranteed right to return to the unit. Private pressure, a cash offer to leave, or a warning that the utilities are about to go off is not a substitute for that process.

For injury cases, the significance is the direction of travel. Forty-six years after Scoggins, the District's highest court is still refusing to let a landlord convert a tenant's decision to stay into the tenant's own fault.

If you are living with a dangerous condition right now

Notice is frequently the decisive issue. In Scoggins, the landlord admitted he had inspected the crack and put off the repair for budget reasons, and that admission is what carried the negligence question to the jury. Build the same kind of record:

• Put every complaint in writing. Email or text, not a phone call, and keep your copies.
• Photograph the condition, with dates, and photograph it again as it worsens.
• Report it to the D.C. Department of Buildings through 311. An inspector's report is independent evidence that does not depend on your memory.
• Keep your medical records and follow through on treatment.
• Do not sign anything a landlord offers in exchange for moving out or dropping a complaint without having a lawyer read it first.

How D.C., Maryland, and Virginia compare

	District of Columbia	Maryland	Virginia
Deadline to file a personal injury lawsuit	3 years (D.C. Code § 12-301(a)(8))	3 years (Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-101)	2 years (Va. Code § 8.01-243(A))
Can being partly at fault defeat the claim?	Yes. Contributory negligence, with a narrow statutory exception for vulnerable users that applies only to motor vehicle collisions	Yes. Contributory negligence	Yes. Contributory negligence
Where the landlord's safety duty comes from	The D.C. Housing Regulations (14 DCMR) and the implied warranty of habitability read into every residential lease	Local housing codes, plus Md. Code, Real Prop. § 8-211, which targets defects posing a serious and substantial threat to life, health, or safety	Va. Code § 55.1-1220, which requires fit and habitable premises and makes a landlord liable for damages caused by a failure to use ordinary care

Talk to a D.C. injury lawyer

If a dangerous condition in a rental property caused a serious injury or a death in your family, the fact that you stayed, complained, or kept using the stairs is not the end of your case in the District of Columbia. What matters is what the landlord knew, what the landlord failed to do, and whether your own conduct was reasonable under the circumstances.

Posey Lebowitz PLLC handles serious injury and wrongful death cases in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Call us at (202) 524-0123 or use our contact form for a free consultation.

This article is general information, not legal advice about your case.