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DRAFT FOR ATTORNEY REVIEW — NOT FINAL

Willard v. PARSONS HILL PARTNERSHIP, 2005 VT 69 (2005)

Citation
Willard v. PARSONS HILL PARTNERSHIP, 2005 VT 69 (2005)
Parent Document
Willard v. PARSONS HILL PARTNERSHIP, 2005 VT 69 (2005)
Jurisdiction
Vermont (state)
Effective Date
2005-08-05

Other Sections in This Document (143)

Full Text

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¶ 29. In all other respects, we conclude that, for summary judgment purposes, plaintiffs have alleged and sufficiently supported a claim for a common-law breach of the warranty of habitability. A landlord's failure to comply with applicable housing code regulations can result in a breach of the warranty of habitability. 9 V.S.A. § 4457; see also Hilder, 144 Vt. at 160, 478 A.2d at 208-09 (declaring that violation of housing code provision related to tenant health and safety may be prima facie evidence of breach of the warranty of habitability). The state and federal governments established standards regulating the amount of PCE that drinking water may contain before it becomes unsafe for human consumption. Here, the Department of Health repeatedly issued "Do Not Drink" advisories over a fourteen-year period because the water that the partnership was providing to its tenants regularly failed to meet those standards. Accordingly, as the trial court stated, "[i]t is obvious in this case that failure to provide potable water to a housing project would be a breach of the implied warranty of habitability."