Appellate Division Clarifies Application of Modern Safety Codes to Historic Buildings

The New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division’s February 21, 2025 ruling in Schembari v. St. Michael's the Archangel Roman Cath. Church, 2025 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 267 clarifies when modern safety codes can be applied to old buildings such as churches.

The case arose from a 2018 accident wherein the Plaintiff, Schembari, a frequent churchgoer of Defendant St. Michael’s, walked up the seven front steps of the church’s main entrance into its sixteen-inch front landing. When the church’s doors are closed, as they were when Schembari was about to enter, a person exiting the church cannot see someone standing on the landing. Before Schembari opened the door, someone inside the church opened the doors to exit onto the landing, striking Schembari and knocking her down the front steps, causing her to sustain permanent injuries. Schembari brought suit against St. Michael’s, St. Michael’s architect, CTS, the Diocese of Paterson, and Rebecca Ruiz-Ulloa, the Diocese’s full-time architect.

Schembari retained licensed New Jersey architect Kevin Aslanian, AIA, as an expert in support of her contention that St Michael’s negligence caused her injuries. Aslanian opined that St. Michael’s had a “duty to keep the church free of dangerous, hazardous, and unreasonably safe conditions” and that St. Michael’s and the Diocese’s architects, CTS and Ruiz-Ulloa, respectively, had a duty “to point out the hazards in their inspections and building assessments” to St. Michael’s and the Diocese. Aslanian further opined that St. Michael’s breached their duty by failing to properly “construct and maintain” the church’s front doors and landing, which caused Schembari to fall and sustain injuries. The architect also asserted that CTS “should have advised” St. Michael’s “of the danger and hazard of the front entrance.” Aslanian also stressed that Ruiz-Ulloa was responsible for ensuring the church complied with state and municipal safety requirements.

St. Michael’s and CTS retained their own licensed architects as liability experts. CTS’s expert, Richard J. Vivenzio, deposed that current safety codes require the church to have a thirty-six inch front landing outside the main entrance, not the existing sixteen inch landing from the church’s original construction because “the doors could open out and hit somebody.” Vivenzio, however, also testified that historical buildings like St. Michael’s are only subject to safety codes existing at the time the church was built and that architects who renovate “an older building” need not “go back and change any part of the building to meet today’s standards” unless they are “specifically hired to review and make the building complaint with today’s codes.” Vivenzio further testified that CTS was hired to perform “certain aspects of repair work on the” church’s façade, roof, and masonry and not to “evaluate the safety of the church” and that, as such, CTS did not need to advise St. Michael’s of safety risks from the main entrance or of an “insufficient landing.”

St. Michael’s expert, Harry T. Osborne, AIA, also a New Jersey licensed architect, testified that the church would need at least “eighteen inches beyond the swing of a door of the landing width” if the church was constructed today. However, like Vivenzio, Osborne testified that an architect hired to assess “parts of the building that are falling off and are unstable” would assess only “that portion of the building, not the entire building.”

After discovery closed, the defendants moved to bar Aslanian’s expert report and for summary judgment dismissal of Schembari’s amended complaint. The trial judge found that Aslanian’s report failed to provide a basis for opining that CTS and Ruiz-Ulloa “had a duty to tell” St. Michael’s about the unsafe front door. The trial judge ultimately dismissed the matter because “the church violated no duty and the expert clearly did not provide a basis for me to conclude that was even in the game.” Schembari appealed.

In a 2025 per curiam opinion, the Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s rulings.

The Appellate Division found that Aslanian failed to identify “a statute, code, or generally accepted objective standards of practice requiring that architects employed or hired by the church must advise that it should comply with current safety codes that postdate construction of its sanctuary” and held that Aslanian’s report was thus inadmissible at trial.

The Appellate Division also affirmed that, regardless of Aslanian’s contentions, CTS and Ruiz-Ulloa were not statutorily required to advise the church of current safety code requirements as churches are statutorily exempted from such requirements. Additionally, the court observed that while N.J.A.C. 5:23-6.2(c)(2) provides that “repairs, renovations, alterations, and reconstruction” on an existing building must comply with the current requirements for the affected portion of the building, N.J.A.C. 5:23-6.2(f) makes clear that the rest of the building remains exempt from current code requirements.

The Appellate Division ultimately affirmed the dismissal of Schembari’s complaint. The Appellate Division held that with no expert testimony to present at trial, Schembari could not establish a prima facie case of negligence against St. Michael’s of unsafe conditions for not having a reasonably safe entrance because “the average juror does not understand what safety concerns the church should have addressed given the safety codes Schembari relies upon to sustain her claims did not exist when the church was built decades before.”

The Appellate Division’s decision in this case clarifies the law surrounding the application of modern codes to old buildings. As Schembari v. St. Michael’s shows, construction code that was not in existence at the time of the building’s construction does not necessarily apply to the building. Rather, they apply to parts of the building once those parts become subject to repair, renovation, or improvement. However, only those portions of the building subject to repair, renovation, or improvement must comply with modern codes; the parts of the buildings that remain untouched need not comply.