Alaskan Village, Inc. v. Smalley

In Alaskan Village, Inc. v. Smalley, 720 P.2d 945, 948 (Alaska. 1986), the owner of a mobile home park was sued for damages when a six-year-old child was mauled and severely injured by a tenant's pit bull after it escaped from its pen in the tenant's yard and attacked the child. The mobile park lease agreement included a clause that prohibited tenants from keeping "vicious dogs" on the premises. The Alaska Supreme Court concluded the clause in the lease existed to benefit not only the landlord but also the safety of other residents in the trailer park. The court noted that the manager of the trailer park had admitted the purpose of the rule was to protect other tenants, and it held the landlord had a duty to exercise reasonable care to enforce its rules and regulations when there was ample evidence it had actual knowledge of prior incidents of viciousness exhibited by the offending pit bull and it was clearly foreseeable the animal might harm someone.