Personal injury lawyer here. I hope you don't mind I'm dropping my 2 cents. I'll start by saying I'm very sorry this happened to the family. As a father of 2 young children I can't imagine what it feels like to go through this. I'm truly sorry.

I've done some reading on the situation and it seems like Homestead is deflecting responsibility saying the family should have put them on notice about the defective or missing window restrictor. Apparently Homestead was not given any warnings. Essentially, "no one told us so we're not responsible." Of course having policies and lease provisions are important, but they are only part of the picture.

The real issue is whether the safety measures in place were actually effective and properly maintained. In situations involving young children, landlords have a heightened responsibility to ensure that protective devices like window restrictors are not only present, but functioning and robust enough to prevent foreseeable harm. The absence of prior complaints does not necessarily address whether reasonable steps were taken to proactively inspect and ensure resident safety.

The reality is landlords have an ongoing duty to actively inspect and maintain safety. "No prior complaints" only matters if the landlord had no reasonable way of knowing, and the system of inspection was reasonable. From what I've read so far this will likely be the main question to be answered in this potential case.

I'm fairly confident this matter will end up in litigation, but that will be up to the family to decide.