Should the property company compensate for the murder of the owner's family?

I am the owner of a garden community. My family lives on the second floor. Outside the window is the expressway outside the community. In the first half of this year, four window guardrails were installed on the windows of the external wall when the residents on the first floor downstairs were renovating their houses. At that time, I thought that the window guardrail installed downstairs caused certain security risks to my home. Therefore, I asked the downstairs residents to dismantle it, but the downstairs residents never responded to my request. I went to the community management office for help, but the management office has not taken effective action so far. One night the other day, I came home from work and found that my house had been stolen, and the lost property was worth more than 30 thousand yuan. After on-site investigation and appraisal by the public security organs, it was determined that the thief climbed into my house from the window guardrail downstairs. To this end, I would like to ask the residents downstairs and the community management office to compensate me for my economic losses. Excuse me, Mr. Yang, is my request legal?

The lawyer's answer:

I want to answer your question from two aspects. First of all, the dispute between you and the residents downstairs belongs to the adjacent relationship. Because the residents downstairs have the obligation not to set up facilities that pose potential danger to the residents above, according to the provisions of Article 83 of the General Principles of the Civil Law of our country, the neighbors of real estate should correctly handle the neighboring relationship, and if they cause obstacles to the neighbors, they should compensate for economic losses. The behavior of your downstairs residents installing window guardrails constitutes a hazard to the safety of your house. In fact, this kind of harm has been unfortunately confirmed by reality. It is entirely possible to ask the residents downstairs to remove the window guardrail and eliminate the potential safety hazard. You can force the downstairs residents to remove the window guardrail through legal channels. But this does not mean that the downstairs residents must constitute a bloody case in a residential area of Hongmei Road on May 7 of the previous year. When cleaning the room, a lady was killed by an invading robber and robbed of her property because her door was not closed and she was unprepared.

Today, criminals have been brought to justice. However, a lady's family believes that the property management company objectively provides conditions for criminals to rob and kill, and should bear corresponding civil liabilities. The reason is that the security personnel of the property company did not have a work permit and did not perform their security duties, so that criminals were registered with pseudonyms and mixed into the community, and there were obvious mistakes and serious dereliction of duty in management. To this end, a woman's family sued the court in May last year, demanding that the property management company compensate the funeral expenses, minor child support, mental damage compensation, and the loss of robbed funds of 6,543,800 yuan. Minhang court verified that Liu had been engaged in security work for 9 years, never participated in training, and did not hold the post certificate of relevant departments, which really violated the provisions of the Measures for the Administration of Public Security of Residential Properties in Shanghai, but it should be handled and punished by relevant departments. The criminal Meng had visited Ms. Chen's house twice with a pseudonym before the incident. A woman and her family did not arouse vigilance, nor did they put forward special requirements for security guards, such as asking visiting guests with walkie-talkies and letting them go after notification. On the day of the incident, security guard Liu was released after registering in Meng. At that time, Meng had no abnormal behavior, and the security guard could not foresee that Meng would commit criminal acts after entering the building. After the incident, the security guard on duty received a notice from others and was able to rush to the scene quickly and report to the public security organ in time, which has fulfilled the obligation of caution. Liu is not at fault in fulfilling his security obligations.

Accordingly, Minhang court made the above judgment.

Compensation for theft losses. What needs to be made clear is that the installation of window guardrails by downstairs residents does not in itself constitute an infringement or hindrance to you, but it brings you potential safety hazards and may become the conditions for criminals to commit crimes. This condition cannot form a legal causal relationship with the theft of your home. Therefore, you only have the right to ask the downstairs residents to eliminate the danger, but you have no right to ask the downstairs residents to compensate your family for the economic losses.

As for whether the property management company (the residential management office is not an independent legal person and has no independent legal status) constitutes the obligation of economic compensation for the theft of your home, there are two issues worthy of attention. One is whether there is a fault in the security measures of the property management in the community, and whether this fault constitutes a legal causal relationship with the theft of your home. The burden of proof is on you, that is, if you can't provide clear evidence to prove "yes", the property management company will not assume the obligation to compensate you. Second, whether there is a factual fault in the approval and supervision of the decoration of the downstairs residents by the property company. Judging from the current legal provisions, there are only two points that property companies need to review in the approval and supervision of decoration. One is to see if the decoration has affected the appearance of the house. Whether it constitutes damage to the neighboring rights is not an inevitable condition for the approval of the decoration of the property company. To take a step back, even if the content of neighboring rights is an inevitable condition for the approval and supervision of the renovation of the property company, then this fault cannot be legally proved to have a causal relationship with the theft of your home. So you have no right to ask the property company to bear the economic losses caused by the theft of your home.