What does a Georgia property owner owe you when you are hurt on their premises?

When a Georgia business or property owner invites you in, it owes you ordinary care to keep the premises and the approaches to them safe. That duty is O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1, and it is the foundation of every slip and fall, trip and fall, and store injury claim in the state. The owner is liable for injuries its carelessness caused.

What does O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1 say?

The published heading is “Duty of owner or occupier of land to invitee.” The whole section is one sentence:

Where an owner or occupier of land, by express or implied invitation, induces or leads others to come upon his premises for any lawful purpose, he is liable in damages to such persons for injuries caused by his failure to exercise ordinary care in keeping the premises and approaches safe.

The sentence dates to the Civil Code of 1895 and has not changed in substance since.

What does it mean for you?

An “invitee” is anyone a property owner wants on the property for the owner’s benefit: a shopper in a grocery store, a tenant’s guest in an apartment complex, a customer in a parking lot, a traveler in an airport concourse. “Implied invitation” means the open door counts. Nobody has to hand you a written invitation to the hardware store.

“Ordinary care” is the standard a reasonably careful owner would use. It does not make the owner an insurer of your safety. A spill that happened thirty seconds before you walked through it is usually not the store’s fault. A spill that sat for an hour while employees walked past it is. That is why these cases turn on what the owner knew or should have known, and for how long. Inspection logs, surveillance footage, and employee statements decide them.

“Approaches” matters too. The duty reaches the sidewalk, the parking lot, the ramp, and the entryway the owner controls, not only the floor inside. A dark, unmarked curb at the edge of a shopping center lot is on the owner.

Georgia also expects something of you. The owner will argue you should have seen the hazard. Under the comparative negligence rule, every point of fault they put on you comes off your recovery, and 50 points end it. Photograph the hazard before it is cleaned up, get the names of anyone who saw you fall, and ask for the incident report in writing.

Related Georgia laws

• O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33: how your own share of fault reduces or bars your claim
• O.C.G.A. § 51-2-7: when an animal’s owner is liable for a bite
• O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33: the two year deadline to file an injury lawsuit

Sources

• Official Code of Georgia Annotated on legis.ga.gov (official text)
• O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1 on Justia (2025 Georgia Code)
• Text verified against the published code on 2026-10-16. Statute text is public record. Nothing on this page is legal advice about your specific case.

What should you do next?

If you fell in a store, a parking lot, an apartment complex, or any place you were welcome to be, the owner’s duty of ordinary care is where your case starts. Call before the video is overwritten.

Call Kenneth S. Nugent, P.C. at 770-820-0711, any hour, any day. The call is free, the case review is free, and there is zero fee unless we win. Nine offices across Georgia, and we come to you if you cannot come to us.

One more thing. Don’t sign anything from an insurance company before you talk to a lawyer. A signature on the wrong form can give away rights you did not know you had.