No. In Georgia, there are three categories of entrants to a property: invitee, licensee, and trespasser. Only an invitee is entitled to the duty of ordinary care. In the case of a business, for example, invitees include all of those who come to the business to engage in a business transaction – like a shopper. The shopper need not actually purchase anything to be an invitee. It is only necessary that the person was there with the intent to engage in a transaction with the business.
The duty of care owed to a licensee is less than ordinary care. A licensee is someone who is lawfully on the property but is not there for the implied invitation. For instance, a person who accompanies someone else who has come to shop at a business, but does not intend to also engage in a business transaction, is a licensee.
A Georgia case that involved a mother who accompanied her daughter to a job interview raised this distinction. The court held that the mother, who was injured on the premises, and was a licensee, because while the daughter was there at the invitation of the business, the mother was not. As a licensee, the property owner or occupier would only be liable to that person if they knew or should have known of the environmental condition that resulted in the injury would pose a reasonable threat to people on the premises, but took no action to either enact reasonable care to render the condition safe or to warn of the condition and the risk entailed. This standard imposes a considerably lower duty than ordinary care.
The lowest duty of care is owed to a trespasser, which is anyone who enters property owned or occupied by someone else, either intentionally or in error, without permission from the owner or occupier. Under such circumstances, the owner or occupier of the property owes a trespasser no duty to keep the property safe. The owner’s only duty to a trespasser is to not intentionally or wantonly cause injury to the trespasser, such as through the use of traps or shooting the trespasser. Taking those steps could involve an entirely different area of law.
