A landlord of residential premises owes a visitor the same duty of care as a tenant: to take reasonable care to avoid foreseeable risk of injury, but not to make the premises as safe as reasonable care could make them. The absence of handrails on a porch and stairs no more than one metre high, where no building standard requires them, does not constitute a breach of duty merely because the premises could have been made safer. The fact that premises could be made safer does not mean they are dangerous or defective. Imprecise evidence of prior complaints about falls does not, without more, alert a landlord to a defect requiring remediation.
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