Landlords on guard as lawsuit hits trial
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Staff WriterJanuary 29, 2007 9:58 AMThe family of a woman who was killed at Bridgeport Apartments wants to hold the property owner liable.
RALEIGH - The North Raleigh apartment Stephanie Bennett lived in seemed safe to Carmon Bennett, her father.
That was five years ago, before his 23-year-old daughter was murdered when her killer either crawled through a bedroom window or walked through her front door, then raped and strangled her.
A recent Charlotte News-Observer article explained that Carmon Bennett will spend the next few weeks in a Wake County courtroom while his attorneys try to convince a jury that his daughter's death was caused in part because of poor maintenance and a lack of crime prevention measures at her apartment off Lake Lynn Drive. Jury selection is expected to begin today.
Stephanie Bennett's body was found on May 21, 2002, in a spare room of her ground-floor apartment. The case baffled Raleigh police detectives for years, until a DNA match to Drew Planten gave them their suspect in October 2005.
Planten, 35, a withdrawn Michigan native who worked as a chemist at the state Department of Agriculture, lived in an adjacent apartment complex at the time of Bennett's death. He was connected to another woman's death in Michigan but committed suicide while awaiting trial in Raleigh.
Bennett's killing, which went unsolved for three years, sent shockwaves throughout the Triangle.
So has Carmon Bennett's lawsuit, with landlords crossing their fingers that the outcome, or even the publicity from the case, won't hurt their businesses.
"It certainly went onto radar screens of any landlord -- whether it's an apartment landlord or if you're renting out a room in your basement," said David Ravin, a senior vice president at Crosland, a Charlotte developer that owns six apartment communities in the Triangle. "It's a wake-up call to be constantly looking over security."
Riskiness in dispute
Bridgeport Apartments, a woodsy complex favored by many young professionals along the shores of Lake Lynn, became Stephanie Bennett's home in July 2001 when she rented a ground-floor apartment with her stepsister and friend.
Carmon Bennett said he thinks the Bridgeport Apartments, managed by the Chicago-based apartment complex giant Equity Residential Properties Trust, could have done more to protect his daughter. He accuses the complex of outfitting her ground-floor apartment with a faulty window lock, failing to trim shrubbery that could hide an assailant and providing a parking lot with little lighting.
Equity denies the claims, saying that police have never determined whether Planten came in through a window or had a door opened to him. He was also an obsessed, sexually motivated killer who had focused on Bennett. No amount of trimmed landscaping or well-lit parking lots would have deterred him, lawyers for the company argue in court papers.
It is not unusual for apartment owners to be sued when a violent death or crime happens, said Michael Semko, legal counsel for the National Apartment Association. Usually, the owners are found responsible only when they have neglected to fix a broken lock a tenant has reported or failed to fix a burnt-out light in a parking lot, Semko said, adding that he wasn't familiar with the Bennett case.
Landlords worry that wrongful death liability claims might cause insurance companies to raise premiums on nearby apartments. There is also the concern that the publicity of such lawsuits will lead to a spat of copycat cases, albeit for less serious allegations, from tenants. And they fear that just the mention of murder at one apartment -- regardless of liability -- can shake tenants' feeling of security at apartments throughout the area.
Tenants seek security
For Chanae Early, a 22-year-old Shaw University student, choosing an apartment came down to finding a place in a low-crime area that was close to school and had a decent grocery store nearby. She and her roommate settled on a second-floor apartment in Parkwood Village in west Raleigh and haven't encountered any problems.
"We feel pretty safe," Early said. But, she added, "There could be more lights at night."
Apartment managers at even the safest complexes say they have to make visible efforts to make tenants feel safe, particularly in the wake of serious crimes.
"You check to see whether lighting is appropriate, shrubs and trees are neatly groomed and don't provide places for people to hide," Ravin said. "Everyone looks at their own condition when something like that happens and wonders, 'Could this happen to me?' "
Occupancy at Bridgeport has nudged up after lagging in the years after Bennett's murder. Its rental rates have dipped about 20 percent since September 2001, while rents at other nearby complexes have risen 2 percent during the same period, according to data from the Triangle Apartment Association.
Lawsuits also spur management companies to treat tenants gingerly, Semko said. If the apartment is in a high-crime area, pamphlets are handed to incoming residents. The words "safety" and "security" are avoided because of the liability they create when an unsafe scenario does exist.
"They tend not to be used just because of the great fear, 'God forbid someone is mugged or killed, and we've got to pay $25 million for something we didn't know about,' " Semko said.