What Is Premises Liability?

Premises liability is the legal responsibility a property owner or occupier carries for injuries caused by unsafe conditions on their property. It is a form of negligence — it is not automatic, and an owner is not an insurer of everyone who walks in.

The claim is not that an injury happened on the property. It is that the owner failed to exercise reasonable care about a hazard they knew about or should have found.

That distinction is the whole case. A spill that appeared thirty seconds before you slipped is usually not actionable. The same spill sitting for an hour in a busy aisle usually is.

Georgia’s rule comes from O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1. It provides that an owner or occupier who, by express or implied invitation, induces others to come onto the premises is liable for injuries caused by a failure to exercise ordinary care in keeping the premises and approaches safe.

Two phrases carry the weight. Ordinary care is a reasonableness standard, not perfection — an owner does not have to eliminate every conceivable risk. And approaches extends the duty beyond the building itself to the paths, entrances and car parks people use to get there.

A separate provision, O.C.G.A. § 51-3-2, addresses licensees — people on the property for their own purposes rather than by invitation. The duty owed to a licensee is considerably lower, generally not to wilfully or wantonly injure them.

It matters a great deal, and it is the first thing a defence lawyer will look at. Georgia sorts visitors into three categories, and the duty owed changes with each.

Invitee. Someone on the property for the mutual benefit of both parties — a customer in a shop, a diner in a restaurant, a guest at a hotel. Invitees receive the highest protection: ordinary care under § 51-3-1. Most premises claims are invitee claims.

Licensee. Someone present for their own purposes with permission but not invitation — often a social guest. The duty is lower.

Trespasser. Someone with no right to be there. The duty is lowest, though exceptions exist, particularly where children and attractive hazards such as swimming pools are involved.

Georgia premises liability claims generally come down to two elements working together: the owner’s knowledge of the hazard, and your lack of equal knowledge of the same hazard.

The owner’s knowledge can be actual — an employee saw the spill, a customer reported it, staff created it — or constructive, meaning they should have found it through reasonable inspection. Actual knowledge is rarely provable, so most cases rest on constructive knowledge, which usually turns on how long the hazard was there.

Your knowledge matters because Georgia asks whether you had equal knowledge of the danger. If the hazard was obvious, or you already knew about it, the claim becomes substantially harder. This is the defence you will hear most often.

Inspection records cut both ways here. A documented sweep log showing an inspection minutes before your fall is a strong defence. A policy requiring hourly inspections with logs showing four-hour gaps tends to help the injured person instead.

Slip, trip and fall injuries are the most common by a wide margin — wet floors, spilled product, uneven surfaces, torn carpet, poorly lit stairs, missing handrails, ice and untreated walkways.

Beyond falls, these claims cover falling merchandise in warehouse-style shops, swimming pool incidents, dog bites and animal attacks on the property, escalator and lift failures, structural collapses, and fires or burns caused by code violations.

Negligent security is a distinct and significant category: a claim that an assault or robbery was foreseeable given the area’s crime history and that the owner failed to provide reasonable lighting, locks or security. These often arise at apartment complexes, hotels and car parks.

Georgia generally allows two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit, under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33. Claims for damage to property follow a different, longer period.

The practical deadline is far shorter than the legal one. Security footage — usually the single most valuable evidence in a premises case, because it shows how long the hazard existed — is commonly overwritten within days or weeks. Incident reports get filed away and staff move on.

If the property belongs to a government entity, much shorter ante litem notice deadlines apply: generally six months for a Georgia municipality under O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5, and twelve months for a county under § 36-11-1. A fall on a city sidewalk or at a county building is governed by those, and missing them generally bars the claim regardless of merit.

Georgia uses modified comparative negligence under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33. You can recover as long as you are less than 50% responsible, but your award is reduced by your share of the blame. At 50% or more, you recover nothing at all.

In premises cases this rule does an enormous amount of work. Arguments that you were looking at your phone, wearing unsuitable shoes, walked past a warning cone, or simply were not watching where you were going are all comparative fault arguments — and each percentage point is money.

Being partly at fault does not end a claim. It is a reason to make sure the evidence about the hazard itself is strong enough to keep your percentage low.

Because the decisive facts are controlled by the defendant and do not last. Incident reports, inspection and sweep logs, maintenance records, prior complaints about the same hazard, employee statements and camera footage all sit with the business.

Destroying or failing to preserve that material after being put on notice can amount to spoliation of evidence, which carries its own consequences and can result in adverse inferences against the property owner.

This is why a preservation demand sent in the first days matters more in premises cases than in almost any other claim type.

Report it before you leave and ask for a copy of the incident report. A claim first reported days later invites the argument that the fall did not happen there.

Photograph the hazard immediately — the spill, the broken step, the lighting, the absence or presence of warning signs. It will be cleaned or repaired within hours, and once it is, proving what it looked like becomes very difficult.

Get names of employees and independent witnesses. Retail turnover is high and visitors are unreachable within days.

Seek medical attention promptly — both for your health and because a gap between the incident and first treatment is the most common argument used to discount a claim.

More aggressively than vehicle claims, because liability is genuinely harder to establish and the insurer knows it. Expect the file to focus on what the owner knew and what you should have seen.

Common positions: the hazard was open and obvious, the inspection procedures were reasonable and followed, the condition had not been there long enough, or your own inattention caused the fall.

You are not required to give the other side’s insurer a recorded statement, and you are not required to sign a blanket authorisation releasing your entire medical history. A targeted authorisation limited to treatment for this incident is a reasonable alternative.

The most time-critical thing a lawyer does in a premises case happens in the first days: sending a preservation demand so footage and inspection records are retained rather than overwritten in the ordinary course.

Beyond that, the work is establishing the owner’s constructive knowledge — obtaining the sweep logs, identifying prior complaints about the same hazard, and locating witnesses who noticed the condition earlier.

The Wilson PC handles premises liability claims throughout Georgia on a contingency fee, which means no fee unless there is a recovery. Request a free case evaluation if you were injured on someone else’s property.