Invitee, licensee, trespasser: the Georgia classification framework

Georgia sorts people on land into invitees, licensees, and trespassers, and the category sets the duty owed to them. The test the Supreme Court repeats for the first line is “whether or not the owner or occupant of the premises will receive some benefit, real or supposed, or has some interest in the purpose of the visit”. Permission separates licensees from trespassers. The label can decide a case, and in some cases it decides very little.

The three categories and their duties

Category	How the person got there	Duty	Statute
Invitee	Express or implied invitation, with an interest of the owner in the visit	Ordinary care for the premises and approaches	§ 51-3-1
Licensee	Permitted, but merely for the person's "own interests, convenience, or gratification"	Liable "only for willful or wanton injury"	§ 51-3-2
Trespasser	Neither invitation nor permission	No duty except to refrain from willful or wanton injury	§ 51-3-3

A statutory licensee also must be “neither a customer, a servant, nor a trespasser”, and must not stand in any contractual relation with the owner. Each duty has its own page: invitees, licensees, and trespassers.

The benefit test doesn’t require a sale

The quoted test comes from Anderson v. Cooper, 214 Ga. 164 (1958), as Cham v. ECI Management, 311 Ga. 170 (2021), applied it. Cham also quoted a decision saying that mutual interest “does not mean that there must be a commercial business transaction between the parties”. The examples Cham collected show how far that goes.

Visitor	Status in that case	Why
Customer of a business	Invitee	Direct benefit to the business
Companion of a customer	May be an invitee	No business relationship is required for that
Wife caring for her husband at a nursing home (Esposito)	Jury could find invitee	Her care lightened staff work, and the home treated visitors as customers
Visitor to a prison inmate (Freeman)	Invitee	Mutual benefit from visitation
Person in an office building to solicit a donation (Jones v. Candler)	Licensee	Not there to transact business
Social guest in a home (Thompson; Patterson)	Licensee	Georgia's rule for a guest of the owner

So a free event, a school visit, or a hospital stay isn’t excluded merely because no money changes hands. The question is what the owner gets, or thinks it gets, from this person’s presence.

Whose guest, and which part of the land?

Cham is the decision to read on apartments. A man shot in a complex’s parking lot had been living in his girlfriend’s unit, though his name wasn’t on the rental application. The court made three points.

The owner’s relationship is what counts. The court said “the touchstone is not the visitor’s relationship to the tenant, but his relationship” to the landlord. A guest doesn’t simply stand in the tenant’s shoes under § 51-3-1, and being a tenant’s social guest doesn’t automatically make a person the landlord’s licensee.

Ordinary visits differ from living there. A footnote said a person making a social visit “will in most cases be an invitee of the landlord in the common area of an apartment complex”. But someone continually using the place might exceed the invitation. There was slight evidence of licensee status there, so the jury charge stood.

Two statutes, different spaces. § 51-3-1 covers space the landlord keeps. § 44-7-14 covers a landlord who has fully parted with possession. Cham called them “mutually exclusive sources of liability” and faulted decisions that ran them together.

Status can change within one visit

Time and place both matter.

• Leaving the invited area. Under the rule quoted in Crosby v. Savannah Electric, 114 Ga. App. 193 (1966), an invitee “may not wander at will” to out-of-the-way or dangerous places.
• Coming back after closing. In Flagler Co. v. Savage, 258 Ga. 335 (1988), a man returned to his car at a closed restaurant’s lot around 3:00 a.m., then walked into the woods. There was evidence from which a jury could find he was a licensee.
• Stopping only to ask a question. In Wade v. Mitchell, 206 Ga. App. 265 (1992), a man stopped at a truck stop to ask where to find a parts store. The court assumed licensee status without deciding, and it left the question with the jury.
• Going past a sign. In Trammell v. Baird, 262 Ga. 124 (1992), a teenager riding past a sign requiring a permit was a trespasser as a matter of law.

Age doesn’t move the line. “One’s status as a trespasser, licensee or invitee is not determined by his age or his capacity, mental or physical”, said Gregory v. Johnson, 249 Ga. 151 (1982). Children have a separate route through attractive nuisance.

When the label doesn’t change much

Defendants may push for licensee status, but it isn’t always the win it seems. In Cooper v. Corporate Property Investors, 220 Ga. App. 889 (1996), the parties argued about status at a crowded mall event, and the court called it “a distinction without a difference in this case”. The defendants knew people were there, so “exactly the same acts of caution may be required”. The plaintiff still lost, for lack of evidence of superior knowledge.

The label matters more for a hazard nobody knew about. Only an invitee can rely on what a reasonable inspection would have found. A licensee has no such route under the language in Patterson v. Thomas, 118 Ga. App. 326 (1968).

It also matters for crime. Under SB 68 (2025), § 51-3-51 gives an invitee several ways to prove foreseeability, § 51-3-52 limits a licensee to a particularized warning and willful and wanton failure, and § 51-3-54(1) bars a trespasser’s negligent security claim.

Proving status

Fact	Evidence
Purpose of the visit	Receipts, texts, calendar, testimony
What the owner expected	Signs, advertising, policies, how visitors are treated
Where the fall happened	Map, photos, restricted-area markings
When it happened	Hours of operation, video
Lease position	Rental application, policies, management statements

Status can go to a jury if the evidence conflicts. The first statement to an insurer or manager about why you were there can matter, so make it accurate. A property owned by a government raises separate immunity and notice rules, which sidewalk falls touches on.

Sources

• Cham v. ECI Management, 311 Ga. 170
• Crosby v. Savannah Electric & Power, 114 Ga. App. 193
• Flagler Co. v. Savage, 258 Ga. 335
• Wade v. Mitchell, 206 Ga. App. 265
• Trammell v. Baird, 262 Ga. 124
• Gregory v. Johnson, 249 Ga. 151
• Cooper v. Corporate Property Investors, 220 Ga. App. 889
• Patterson v. Thomas, 118 Ga. App. 326
• Official Code of Georgia Annotated, November 2022 public release: §§ 44-7-14, 51-3-1, 51-3-2, 51-3-3
• Georgia Senate Bill 68 (2025): §§ 51-3-51, 51-3-52, 51-3-54

This page was last reviewed in November 2026 for general information. Laws and court decisions can change after that date. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship.