Does my status as an invitee

· 3 min read

In Georgia, the legal label a court attaches to a visitor strongly affects the duty a property owner owed at the time of an injury. Among the three traditional categories, an invitee receives the highest level of protection, which can be decisive in a negligent-security claim.

The three visitor categories

Georgia premises law sorts visitors by their relationship to the property, and the duty owed shifts with each:

  • An invitee enters for a purpose connected to the owner’s business or interest, such as a customer or paying guest. The owner owes ordinary care to keep the premises and approaches safe under O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1.
  • A licensee enters with permission but for the visitor’s own purposes, such as a social guest. The owner must avoid willfully or wantonly injuring the licensee, a lower standard than ordinary care.
  • A trespasser enters without permission, and the owner owes the most limited duty, generally to avoid intentional or reckless harm.

Because the categories carry different standards, determining which one fits is often an early and important issue.

Why invitee status matters for security

For a negligent-security claim, invitee status is favorable because the ordinary-care duty can extend to protecting against the criminal acts of third parties when those acts are foreseeable. For claims arising on or after April 21, 2025, Georgia’s tort-reform law (SB 68) codified this area at O.C.G.A. § 51-3-51, which spells out the conditions for an invitee’s negligent-security claim: the wrongful conduct and resulting injury must be foreseeable, tied to a known hazardous condition that posed a heightened risk, and the owner must have failed to use ordinary care to address it. An invitee can argue the owner should have provided reasonable measures, such as lighting, locks, cameras, or personnel, against a known danger. A licensee or trespasser faces a steeper path, since the owner’s duty toward them does not ordinarily require the same protective steps. Even for an invitee, foreseeability sets the outer edge of what the owner must do, and Georgia courts have long fixed that edge by looking to prior incidents resembling the attack, the method drawn from Sturbridge Partners, Ltd. v. Walker, alongside the full context of the place.

Status is the start, not the whole case

Establishing invitee status sets the duty, but the claim still requires more. An injured invitee must show the owner failed to use reasonable care against a foreseeable crime and that the failure helped cause the harm. Whatever the visitor’s status, O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33 distributes the percentages of fault among the owner, the injured visitor, and the criminal, cutting off recovery once the visitor’s own share reaches half. Under the 2025 reforms, the share assigned to the criminal actor in a negligent-security case is presumed to be no less than the share assigned to the owner, a presumption the parties may rebut. O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33 gives two years from the injury to bring the suit.

The bottom line

A visitor’s status as an invitee matters a great deal in Georgia, because it triggers the owner’s ordinary-care duty, which can include reasonable protection against foreseeable crime. That status defines the standard the owner had to meet, while the rest of the case turns on foreseeability, causation, and how fault is apportioned.

This article is for general educational and informational purposes only and is not legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship, and Georgia law may change. For advice about a specific situation, consult a licensed Georgia personal injury attorney.

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