This section contains the nature of the case and procedural background.

Twenty-one-year-old Shannon Potts came to the Grand Stratford Apartments after work to socialize with friends. She arrived at a second-floor apartment around 1:30 a.m., slightly intoxicated, and watched movies with a small group. She continued drinking until about 4 a.m., when her friends hid the alcohol. Shannon asked one to talk with her privately on the balcony. They talked for about twenty minutes before her friend returned inside to get another drink. While inside, her friend heard a scream and a crash. Shannon had gone over the railing. Her friends ran downstairs and found her unresponsive. A bystander called 911. Shannon was rushed to the hospital with a fractured neck and crushed spine and was pronounced dead. Toxicology tests showed she was intoxicated at the time of her fall and had marijuana and Xanax in her bloodstream. The apartments were built to comply with the 1968 housing code, which required guardrails between thirty and thirty-four inches high. The original black iron railings are thirty-two inches high and remained in place when Shannon fell forty-three years later. In 1979, the Code was amended to require guardrails of forty-two inches in height. The 1979 Code included a grandfather provision: 'Guardrails which were installed prior to the passage of this subchapter and were in conformance with the Health and Safety Housing Code then in effect may be allowed to remain if in structurally sound condition.' The 2005 Code required rails not less than 42 inches. The grandfather provision was revised to state, 'Any structure that was in compliance on the day previous to the adoption of this code will be allowed to remain.' Critelli, the then-owner, was a 'habitual violator' of the code. All properties under his ownership were put on an accelerated inspection schedule. In 2009, Critelli attached a forty-eight-inch-high white plastic lattice to the guardrails with zip ties. The lattice served as a privacy screen to shield each balcony from view. Critelli received numerous notices of violations regarding this property; none addressed the guardrails before February 2011. An inspector concluded the plastic lattice was an alteration to the guardrails that triggered a duty to comply with the current forty-two-inch guardrail requirement. D took over the complex and began renovating the apartments. They vacated two of the apartment buildings but permitted tenants to remain in the third. D planned to allow tenants to move from the unrenovated building into the newly renovated buildings as upgrades were completed. D received the notice of violations on February 24. The violations were not prioritized, so Estes gave the list of violations to his general contractor without identifying which violations to address first. By March 31, D had fixed fifty-eight violations. On an inspection on July 5, it was noted that only six remaining violations. A $1090 fine for the guardrail-height violations was imposed. By July 13, the only remaining infraction was the height of the guardrails, and D had ordered new forty-two-inch guardrails. At a Code board meeting, D admitted the guardrail height was a health and safety issue but reminded the board that the guardrails had been at that height for forty-five years without an accident. The board granted D until October 7 to fix the violation. The Board granted an extension until 10-07-2011 to complete the repairs and suspended the $1,090.00 fine. Shannon Potts fell over the balcony rail to her death three days later. Shannon Potts fell over the balcony rail to her death three days later. Ps sued D. D moved for summary judgment on the ground that the extension from the Board to install higher guardrails was a legal excuse precluding tort liability. Ps moved for partial summary judgment claiming that the violation of the forty-two-inch guardrail requirement constituted negligence per se as a matter of law. I defense, D argued that the Board extension, the grandfather clause were valid defenses, and that the doctrine of negligence per se does not apply to a local ordinance. At trial, Ps' expert, Richard Hinrichs, a professor at Arizona State University, testified regarding why guardrails are required to be forty-two inches high: The International Building Code is based on-that they arrived at the 42-inch minimum height based on where the average person's center of gravity falls when standing. And I'm sure that there was originally research done in order to arrive at that height of 42 inches. A 42-inch-high guardrail, for the vast majority of people, except for the tallest individuals, will be above the average person's center of gravity. The jury was instructed that the court had already determined that D was negligent. The special verdict directed the jury to decide the remaining issues of causation, comparative fault, and damages. The jury found Shannon was thirty-five percent at fault, and D was sixty-five percent at fault, and awarded Ps $1,750,000 before the reduction for Shannon's fault. D moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV) and a new trial, claiming the district court erred in finding a violation of the ordinances constituted negligence per se. The district court granted the motion for a new trial. The district court ruled that the ordinance, as incorporated in Iowa's Uniform Residential Landlord Tenant Act (IURLTA), Iowa Code section 562A.15 (2011), did not establish a sufficiently specific standard of care to allow Ps to establish negligence per se. Ps and D appealed. A divided court of appeals affirmed on both appeals with three separate opinions. The majority held that our decision in Griglione v. Martin required a statewide standard for a statute or ordinance to establish negligence per se. The majority concluded the district court correctly set aside the verdict because 'compliance with an ordinance that may or may not be grandfathered does not constitute conclusive proof of reasonableness.' Both parties appealed.

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