I recently had a reader ask, “A friend slipped on my front steps. Should I worry about getting sued?” This question is based on what is called “premises liability,” a law which outlines the responsibility a landowner has to a person injured on his property. Generally, the landowner's liability depends upon what legal classification the visitor had while on the property. Usually, a person falls within one of three legal classifications when they are on another's property –an “invitee,” a “licensee,” or a “trespasser.”

An invitee is a visitor who enters property at the invitation of the owner for the material or commercial benefit of the owner. For example, a plumber coming to your house to fix the pipes is an invitee because he is there for your material benefit.

If you are an invitee, the property owner owes you a duty to keep his or her premises in a “reasonably safe condition.” Legally, this means the owner must warn you of hidden dangers he is aware of. This is the basis for most “slip and fall” cases – something slippery spilled on the floor and it was there long enough that the owner should have known about it. These “hidden defects,” however, must be of the type that would not be discovered by the invitee in the exercise of ordinary care. In fact, an owner is not responsible for injuries to an invitee from an ordinary risks or “open and obvious” danger. For example, if something slippery has fallen on the grocery store floor and they have a huge sign that says “Watch Out for This Slippery Stuff,” the danger is clearly open and obvious.

A licensee is a person who visits a landowner's property with the landowner's consent or as the landowner's guest but with no business purpose. A landowner owes a duty to a licensee to warn him of hidden dangers that are a danger to the licensee. A landowner also owes a duty not to purposefully or negligently injure the licensee after the landowner sees the licensee is in danger. This duty is substantially less than an landowner owes to an invitee. In fact, in most situations, if you are at a friend's house and an accident occurs, your friend will not be liable.

A trespasser, of course, is a person who enters without permission of the landowner. The duty owed a trespasser is not to intentionally injure him and possibly to warn him of hidden dangers you know he is about to encounter. I say “possibly,” because even though you don't really owe a trespasser any duty, if you see that he is about to walk into the bear trap you have recently set in the living room, you need to start yelling.