When someone is injured in a rental property in Queensland, by a step that gives way, a balustrade that lets go or a dangerous electrical fault, the first question is rarely who owns the place. It is who was responsible for the condition that caused the injury.
Queensland answers that with two separate bodies of law doing different jobs. The Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 (Qld) sets out what a lessor must do to keep rented premises fit to live in and in good repair. The law of negligence, as modified by the Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld), decides whether an injury gives rise to a claim for damages and against whom. Treating the two as one is a common reason a tenant misreads their position.
Two sets of rules, two different jobs
A breach of the tenancy legislation is not itself a personal injury claim. The lessor’s obligations in s 185 of the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 (Qld) arise under the tenancy, and the remedies for breaching them are tenancy remedies.
Those obligations still matter to an injury claim. When a court asks under s 9(1) of the Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld) whether a reasonable person in the lessor’s position would have taken a precaution, a standing statutory duty to maintain the premises in good repair is directly relevant to that question. It does not follow that breaching the tenancy legislation establishes a breach of the duty of care. In Jones v Bartlett [2000] HCA 56, Gummow and Hayne JJ put it that the reasonableness of the steps required of a landlord is affected by the terms of any applicable statutes, including residential tenancy statutes.
| Tenancy legislation | Law of negligence | |
|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | What condition must the premises be kept in? | Is this injury actionable, and against whom? |
| Key provisions | ss 17A, 185, 214, 217; Regulation sch 6 | ss 9, 11, 13 to 16, 23, 24 |
What a landlord’s duty of care actually is
The principal authority is Jones v Bartlett [2000] HCA 56, where a tenant’s adult son walked into a glass door in a rented house. The glass met the standard applying when the house was built but not the later standard for new construction. The High Court dismissed the appeal, McHugh J dissenting.
The duty is a duty to take reasonable care, and no more. Gleeson CJ said there was “no ground in principle for imposing upon the respondents an obligation greater than an obligation to take reasonable care”. On those facts the common law did not require compliant glass to be replaced merely because a later standard governed new construction. That is a conclusion about the common law duty alone. Gummow and Hayne JJ noted that statutes may supplant the common law duty or impose a higher one, and the minimum housing standards discussed below are an example.
Gummow and Hayne JJ put the content of the duty this way: broadly, it is conterminous with a requirement that the premises be reasonably fit for the purpose for which they are let, namely habitation as a domestic residence. The duty with respect to dangerous defects “will be discharged if the landlord takes reasonable steps to ascertain the existence of any such defects and, once the landlord knows of any, if the landlord takes reasonable steps to remove them or to make the premises safe”. Their Honours broke reasonable fitness into three inquiries: whether there was a dangerous defect, whether reasonable care was taken to find it, and whether reasonable care was taken to remove it or make the premises safe.
On what counts as a dangerous defect, the same judgment is careful. Many domestic items can injure someone. They are “ordinarily only dangerous if misused”, and will only be defective “if they are dangerous when being used in a regular fashion and ordinarily would not be dangerous when so used”. The Court held the glass door was not a dangerous defect in the necessary sense, and the claim failed.
Northern Sandblasting Pty Ltd v Harris [1997] HCA 39 shows the duty can bite: a tenant’s daughter injured by electrical defects in rented premises succeeded against the landlord. Its members differed on the basis of liability, and in Jones v Bartlett Gaudron J observed that what cannot be extracted from its reasons “is the precise content of that duty”.
The maintenance obligations that matter most
Section 185 of the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 (Qld) splits the lessor’s obligations in two. Under s 185(2), at the start of the tenancy the premises must be fit for the tenant to live in and in good repair, the lessor must not be in breach of a law dealing with the health or safety of persons using or entering the premises, and the premises must comply with any prescribed minimum housing standards. Section 185(3) carries those obligations through the tenancy. Section 185(5) makes clear that premises include any common area available for use by the tenant, so a shared stairwell is inside the obligation.
The minimum housing standards make this concrete. Section 17A allows them to be prescribed by regulation, and s 18 of the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Regulation 2025 (Qld) prescribes the standards in schedule 6. Two read as though written with injury claims in mind. Schedule 6 s 1(1) requires premises to be weatherproof, structurally sound and in good repair, and s 1(3)(b) states that premises are not structurally sound if “a deck or stairs are likely to collapse because of rot or a defect”. Schedule 6 s 2(b) requires that fixtures and fittings, including electrical appliances, “must not be likely to cause injury to a person through the ordinary use of the fixtures and fittings”.
Note how closely that tracks Jones v Bartlett. The High Court asked whether a thing was dangerous when used in a regular fashion; the Queensland standard asks whether a fitting is likely to injure someone through its ordinary use. The repair categories matter too. Under s 214(1)(k), emergency repairs include “a fault or damage likely to injure a person”, and s 214(2) adds works needed to comply with the minimum housing standards. A fault or damage of that kind is not a routine maintenance item.
Obvious risk, and the subsection that often decides a rental case
The obvious-risk provisions do real work where a hazard was one anyone could see, but each is narrower than it first looks. Under s 13(1) of the Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld) an obvious risk is one that would have been obvious to a reasonable person in the injured person’s position, and s 13(4) adds that a risk can be obvious even if it is not prominent, conspicuous or physically observable. Section 15(1) removes any proactive duty to warn of an obvious risk, subject to the exceptions in s 15(2), but it removes only the duty to warn and leaves any duty to inspect, maintain or repair untouched. Section 14(1) operates only where a defence of voluntary assumption of risk is raised, and then presumes awareness of the risk unless the injured person proves otherwise.
Section 13(5) is why those provisions often achieve less than they appear to. It declares that a risk from a thing is not an obvious risk “if the risk is created because of a failure on the part of a person to properly operate, maintain, replace, prepare or care for the thing, unless the failure itself is an obvious risk”.
That subsection is central to many rental injury cases. The hazard in a rented house is frequently not an open danger but a maintenance failure wearing a normal appearance: the timber step that looks sound and is rotten underneath. On the face of s 13(5), a risk created that way is not an obvious risk at all, and the provisions above have nothing to attach to.
The qualification matters. Where the maintenance failure is itself obvious, s 13(5) simply does not apply, and whether the risk was obvious falls to be decided under s 13(1) in the ordinary way. Section 16 separately excludes liability for an inherent risk, being one that cannot be avoided by the exercise of reasonable care and skill at all.
Where the agent fits, and how fault can be shared
Many Queensland tenancies are administered by a property manager, which raises a fair question about who answers for the condition of the house. The obligations in s 185 sit on the lessor regardless of who collects the rent or inspects. Whether a managing agent is also responsible for an injury is not answered by s 185 at all. It turns first on whether the agent owed the injured person a duty of care, which depends on the agent’s role, knowledge and what it actually undertook to do. If a duty is owed, s 9 of the Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld) decides whether it was breached and s 11 decides causation.
The tenant’s own conduct is measured by the same standard. Section 23 applies the breach-of-duty principles to contributory negligence, judged by what a reasonable person in the injured person’s position knew or ought reasonably to have known at the time. Section 24 allows a reduction of up to 100%, which defeats a claim entirely.
Section 217(1) of the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 (Qld) requires a tenant who knows the premises or inclusions have been damaged to give notice as soon as practicable, and for routine repairs that notice goes to the lessor. A written repair request proves when the lessor was put on notice, which goes to the second and third of the three Jones v Bartlett inquiries. It cuts both ways, because it also records the tenant’s own knowledge of the hazard, so it is relevant to the reasonableness of each party’s conduct rather than decisive of either.
Time limits and how the process starts
A claim about the condition of rented premises runs under the Personal Injuries Proceedings Act 2002 (Qld). Section 6(1) applies that Act to all personal injury arising out of an incident, and the carve-outs in s 6(2) are for things this is not: motor accident injury under the Motor Accident Insurance Act 1994 (Qld), and work injury whose damages are regulated by chapter 5 of the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld). Someone injured while working there, such as a tradesperson, may be on a different statutory path.
Two clocks then run at once. Under s 9(1) and s 9(3), written notice of the claim in the approved form must be given before a court proceeding is started, and part 1 of that notice is due by the earlier of two dates: nine months after the incident, or nine months after symptoms first appear where they were not immediately apparent; and one month after the claimant first instructs a law practice where the proposed respondent has been identified. Section 9(5) provides that missing the date does not end the obligation, which continues, but a reasonable excuse for the delay must then be given.
Separately, s 11(1) of the Limitation of Actions Act 1974 (Qld) bars an action including damages for personal injury after three years from the date the cause of action arose. That is the ordinary period. Section 29 extends time where the person was under a disability when the right of action accrued, and s 31 allows a court to extend it by a year where a material fact of a decisive character was not within the claimant’s means of knowledge. The notice date is still the tighter of the two clocks. The official text can be read on the Queensland legislation website: s 185 of the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008, s 13 of the Civil Liability Act 2003 and the Regulation setting the minimum housing standards.
Published 12 October 2026.
Where this leaves a tenant
The structure is clear enough once the two systems are separated. The tenancy legislation sets a floor, and the law of negligence then asks the Jones v Bartlett questions about whether reasonable care was taken to find and fix the problem. Two things follow: records matter more than recollection, and the notice period is much shorter than the three-year limitation period.
Related reading
- Injured in a public place in Queensland: who owes a duty of care
- Slip and fall accidents: causes, injuries and establishing liability
- How Fraser Lawyers helps with public liability claims
- Contact Fraser Lawyers
Need advice? Time limits and key decisions in injury claims can be strict and easy to miss. If this is your situation, contact Fraser Lawyers to understand your rights and where you stand, with no obligation. |
This article is general information only and is not legal advice. Queensland law and the figures referred to can change, and every situation turns on its own facts. Contact Fraser Lawyers for advice specific to your circumstances.
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