Short answer. Where the harm came from a collapse caused by lack of necessary repairs, yes: the proprietor of the building answers for the damage. Article 1660 is a separate remedy and a narrower one, letting a tenant walk away at once from a dwelling whose condition brings imminent and serious danger to life or health.
What the law says
The proprietor of a building or structure is responsible for the damages resulting from its total or partial collapse, if it should be due to the lack of necessary repairs.
Civil Code, Article 2190 — Liability for a Collapsing Building. Read the full provision →
What the law says
the lessee may terminate the lease at once by notifying the lessor, even if at the time the contract was perfected the former knew of the dangerous condition or waived the right to rescind the lease on account of this condition
Civil Code, Article 1660 — Dangerous Dwelling. Read the full provision →
Two different questions live in this one
A tenant hurt by a defective building is asking two things at once: can I recover for the injury, and can I get out of this lease. The Civil Code answers them in different places, and conflating them is why people either sit in a dangerous unit waiting for permission to leave or assume that leaving is all the law offers. Liability for the harm is a matter of responsibility for the condition of the structure. The right to leave is a matter of lease law, and it does not require anyone to be found at fault first.
Responsibility for a collapse
On the injury, the relevant rule is short: the proprietor of a building or structure is responsible for the damages resulting from its total or partial collapse, if it should be due to the lack of necessary repairs. Note the two limbs. There must be a collapse, whole or partial, which covers a staircase, a landing, a ceiling or a railing giving way rather than every defect that causes an accident. And the cause must be the lack of necessary repairs. That is what makes the record of complaints about the defect, and the owner's response to them, central to the case.
The right to leave, and the waiver that does not work
Where a building intended for human habitation is in a condition whose use brings imminent and serious danger to life or health, the lessee may terminate the lease at once by notifying the lessor, even if at the time the contract was perfected the former knew of the dangerous condition or waived the right to rescind the lease on account of this condition. That last clause is the important one. A tenant who signed knowing the place was unsafe, or who signed a waiver about it, still has the right. Landlords cannot contract out of it, and tenants who assume they signed it away have not.
What to do now
If the danger is present, notify the lessor in writing that you are terminating on account of the condition, and keep proof the notice was sent. Photograph the defect and the surroundings before anything is repaired, since the repair will otherwise erase the evidence of what caused the harm. Gather every earlier complaint you made about it, in whatever form, along with the lessor's replies or silence. Get the injury documented medically on the day, and keep the receipts. Those records, made early, are what any later claim is built from.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1654 — Obligations of the Lessor
- Civil Code, Article 2191 — Other Liabilities of Proprietors