Snow and ice at a Lynn rental: who has to clear what, and who answers for a fall

Every Lynn winter produces the same argument on the back stairs: the lease says the tenant shovels, the code says the owner does, and someone has already slipped. Massachusetts answers most of it in one sentence of the State Sanitary Code — the owner keeps the shared means of egress free of snow and ice, and a written lease can shift only an exit under the tenant’s exclusive use — and the Supreme Judicial Court answered the rest in 2010 by abolishing the old distinction between snow that fell and snow that was piled. This page puts those rules next to their sources, says what they do not cover (sidewalks, driveways, parking), and names the office that enforces them.

What this page is: the rules that decide who clears snow and ice at a Lynn rental — the shared stairs, the walks, the sidewalk — and what the courts say when someone falls, each linked to its official source. It is not legal advice. Where a rule could not be read from a primary source, the page says so instead of guessing. When it matters, read the linked source or use the free legal help on our tenant rights page.

Shared exterior stairs, fire escapes, egress balconies and bridges: the owner keeps them free of snow and ice, at all times — 105 CMR 410.452

The regulation is short enough to quote: “The owner shall maintain all means of egress at all times in a safe, operable condition and shall keep all exterior stairways, fire escapes, egress balconies and bridges free of snow and ice, provided, however, in those instances where a dwelling has an independent means of egress, not shared with other occupants, and a written letting agreement so states, the occupant is responsible for maintaining free of snow and ice, the means of egress under his or her exclusive use and control.” Read it as two rules. First, anything that serves as a way out of the building and is shared — the front steps of a three-decker, the back stairs, a fire escape — is the owner’s to clear, and the code says “at all times,” not “within 24 hours.” Second, the only duty a lease can move is an exit that no other occupant uses, and only when the written agreement says so: a single-family rental’s own front walk, or a ground-floor unit’s private door. A clause making the third-floor tenant shovel the shared back stairs does not change who the code holds responsible — the owner still answers to the inspector. What the regulation does not name: driveways, parking areas, paths that are not a means of egress, and the public sidewalk. For those the lease, not the sanitary code, decides between landlord and tenant. Source: 105 CMR 410.452 — Safe Condition (LII copy of the State Sanitary Code)

Nobody may block an exit, and every shared exit is the owner’s to keep clear — 105 CMR 410.451

The neighbouring section sets the general rule the snow clause specializes: “No person shall obstruct any exit or passageway. The owner is responsible for maintaining free from obstruction every exit used or intended for use by occupants of more than one dwelling unit or rooming unit. The occupant shall be responsible for maintaining free from obstruction all means of exit leading from his unit and not common to the exit of any other unit.” The same shared-versus-exclusive line runs through it: shared exits are the owner’s, your own private exit is yours. A snowbank that blocks the only door out of a shared hallway is an obstruction under this section as well as a snow-and-ice failure under the previous one. Source: 105 CMR 410.451 — Egress Obstructions

A blocked exit is a condition “deemed to endanger or materially impair health or safety” — 105 CMR 410.750(G)

The Sanitary Code keeps a list of conditions that are, by definition, serious enough to trigger its strongest remedies. Item (G) is “Failure to provide adequate exits, or the obstruction of any exit, passageway or common area caused by any object, including garbage or trash, which prevents egress in case of an emergency.” Snow and ice that make a shared stair impassable fit that description, which matters because the code’s remedy ladder — the inspection, the correction order, and the tenant’s repair-and-deduct and rent-withholding rights under M.G.L. c.111 §127L — runs faster and further on a listed condition than on an ordinary violation. In Lynn the inspection is requested from the Inspectional Services Department (781-586-6815, the number on the city’s ISD page); the mechanics of that route, and what each remedy is worth at today’s rents, are on our repairs page. Source: 105 CMR 410.750 — Conditions Deemed to Endanger or Materially Impair Health or Safety · City of Lynn — Inspectional Services Department

If someone falls: since 2010 snow and ice carry the same duty of reasonable care as any other hazard — Papadopoulos v. Target Corp., 457 Mass. 368 (2010)

For most of the twentieth century a Massachusetts property owner could not be held liable for a fall on a “natural accumulation” of snow or ice — only for snow that had been piled, channelled or otherwise made worse by human hands. The Supreme Judicial Court ended that in July 2010: “We now abolish the distinction between natural and unnatural accumulations of snow and ice, and apply to all hazards arising from snow and ice the same obligation of reasonable care that a property owner owes to lawful visitors regarding all other hazards.” The case itself was a store parking lot, not an apartment, but the court described the landlord’s position directly: “If a tenant (or a guest of the tenant) slipped and was injured in a common area that remained under the landlord’s control, the landlord could be found liable in tort only if he failed to use reasonable care to keep the common area in a condition no less safe than it was when the tenant first commenced the lease.” What “reasonable care” requires in a given storm — how soon, how thoroughly, whether salt was enough — is a question of fact a court decides case by case; the point of the 2010 decision is that the question now gets asked. Who owed the care is where the sanitary-code line above comes back: a shared stair is the owner’s; an exit the lease validly made yours is yours. Source: Papadopoulos v. Target Corp., 457 Mass. 368 (SJC, July 26, 2010) — Caselaw Access Project copy

The public sidewalk: a city question this page could not answer from a primary source

Nothing in the sanitary code sections above reaches the public sidewalk in front of the building — they govern the means of egress from the dwelling. Many Massachusetts cities and towns put sidewalk clearing on the abutting property owner by local ordinance, with a deadline and a fine. Whether Lynn does, and on what terms, could not be verified today: a search of the city’s website for “snow” returned no ordinance page, the Department of Public Works page describes plowing without stating a sidewalk rule, and the codified ordinances sit on a host that refuses automated requests. Rather than repeat a rule we have not read, this page says where to ask — the DPW for the city’s requirement, and your lease for whether the landlord has passed that requirement to you. Between landlord and tenant, a sidewalk clause in a lease is not one the sanitary code overrides, because the sidewalk is not a means of egress under 410.452. Source: City of Lynn — Department of Public Works · 105 CMR 410.452 — Safe Condition

What a lease can and cannot do about snow

Put the sections together and the lease question sorts itself. A lease may assign the tenant an exit nobody else uses, if it says so in writing — that is the one shift 410.452 allows, and it is common in single-family and owner-occupied two-family rentals. A lease may assign driveways, parking spaces and (subject to whatever the city requires of the owner) the sidewalk, because the sanitary code is silent on them. A lease cannot relieve the owner of a shared exterior stair, fire escape or egress balcony as far as the code is concerned: the Board of Health and ISD enforce the regulation against the owner whatever the lease says, and the 2010 duty of reasonable care attaches to whoever controls the common area. If your lease makes you responsible for a shared stair and you clear it anyway, keep a record — the date, the time, a photo — because the same record that shows you did your part is the one that shows what the owner did not. Source: 105 CMR 410.452 — Safe Condition · 105 CMR 410.451 — Egress Obstructions

What this page does not know

Honest caveat: no public dataset counts winter falls, code complaints or snow-clearing disputes by city or ZIP, so there are no local figures on this page — only the rules and their sources. The city's own sidewalk-clearing ordinance, if Lynn has one, could not be read from a source we could fetch today (the city site returned nothing for a search on "snow"; the codified ordinances sit behind a bot wall), so this page does not state one. Court opinions are quoted from the Caselaw Access Project's copies of the official reporters. Where the page says a rule is silent, that is a statement about the text we read, not a promise that no other rule exists.

Where a snow problem usually goes next

An unshoveled shared exit is a code condition, so the route to getting it fixed — the inspection request, the written notice, and the remedies at today's rents — is on the repairs page; the other winter question, who pays when the heat or the gas goes off, is on the utilities page; if the answer to your complaint is a notice, a raise, or a suit, the retaliation page covers the law that protects the complaint itself; and a renters-insurance policy's liability coverage is the part that matters if a guest falls on a walk the lease made yours — the renters-insurance page covers what a lease may demand. If the building's economics are the real problem, each Lynn ZIP's current average (01905, 01901, 01902) says what moving costs instead.

Page last updated September 30, 2026 · rent index data through August 2026.