Angry Tenant Kills Four People in Seoul apartment building

It wasn’t a good day to be a tenant or a landlord in Seoul, Korea.  A jobless man set fire to his apartment on the third floor of a five story studio apartment building.  The blaze damaged the building, injured seven people people and killed four.  The angry tenant apparently attacked fleeing tenants as they left the building.  100 residents fled the building and 11 were hospitalized.

As economic tensions mount, be aware of potential changes in your tenants behavior.  While your tenant and building security is top notch, and it is beyond the scope to know of a tenant’s potential for violence unless a documented violent behavior in the past has occurred.  If your tenant is arrested, if there is a police report or police called the building, make sure your security personnel write their own report documenting what happened.   You do not want to be held liable if what occurs could be construed as foreseeable.  Also, arguably, even if you could win the lawsuit, you don’t want to spend money and time on it.

Always conduct proper tenant screening to adopt a screening policy that include criminal records searches.   Better to be safe than sorry; and make sure that your tenant screening policy is consistent.

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