Premise Liability

If you own a piece of property, you may be held liable for any accidents or injuries that occur on your premises. This is known as premises liability. Property owners have a duty to keep their premises safe for visitors, and if they fail to do so, they may be held responsible for any resulting injuries. This type of injury causes insurance rates to skyrocket.  Know the main types of visitors on your property and how to prevent a fall due to a hazard that you were aware of but didn’t fix.

There are three main types of visitors to a property: invitees, licensees, and trespassers.

• Invitees are people who are invited onto the property, such as guests or customers.
• Licensees are people who are allowed on the property for their own purposes, such as delivery people or utility workers.
• Trespassers are people who are not supposed to be on the property, such as criminals or vandals.

Property owners have a duty to keep invitees and licensees safe from harmful conditions on their premises.

For instance , if a company sells patio furniture, it must design and manufacture the goods in such a way that they do not pose an unreasonable risk of injury to people. In addition, if someone is visiting a public place but has little or no ability to keep themselves safe from reasonably foreseeable risks or harm—for instance, an infant or disabled person—the courts may determine that even though the visitor was technically there at their own invites, the property owner used an ‘implied invite’ when he allowed them onto his premises without adequately protecting them. 

In this way, courts around the country use the concept of invitee to set reasonable expectations as to people’s rights and responsibilities when one has invited another onto their property.