What Happened: A minor living with her mother on the second floor of an affordable housing community pushed through a window screen and fell to the ground 15 feet below. The screen through which the girl fell had been secured with tape along the bottom of the screen and screws on the side. The mother/tenant sued the landlord and management company for breach of the warranty of habitability and consumer fraud. The defendants argued that the tenant’s claims were legally invalid and asked the court to dismiss the case without a trial.

Ruling: The Vermont court granted the defendants’ summary judgment motion.

Reasoning: The tenant claimed that the defendants violated the lease’s warranty of habitability by installing and failing to maintain “manifestly unsafe windows” in the apartment. But she didn’t present any evidence to refute their contention that the allegedly insecure window screen rendered the apartment uninhabitable. Nor did she furnish them the notice and opportunity to cure required to make out a warranty of habitability claim under state law. There was no case for consumer fraud because the tenant knew that window screens were missing when she leased the apartment and the defendants never represented the screens as being a security device. Last but not least, the court pooh-poohed the tenant’s husband’s lawsuit because he didn’t sign the lease or live in the unit and thus had no standing to sue for breach of the lease’s warranty of habitability.

• Cook v. Johnson Cmty. Hous. Ltd. P'ship & All. Prop. Mgmt., 2025 Vt. Super. LEXIS 243, 2025 LX 454827