Invitee

In common-law premises liability, an invitee is one of three traditional categories of land entrants, alongside licensees and trespassers. The classification determines the duty of care a possessor of land owes to the entrant. Invitees are typically split into two subtypes: business invitees, who enter for a purpose connected to the occupier's commercial activity (e.g., shoppers in a store), and public invitees, who enter premises held open to the public (e.g., visitors to a municipal library or park).

Landowners owe invitees the highest duty of care among the three categories. This duty generally includes:

• Exercising reasonable care to keep the premises in a reasonably safe condition;
• Inspecting for hidden dangers that the owner does not actually know about but should discover;
• Warning of known or discoverable hazards that are not open and obvious;
• Taking affirmative steps to remedy unreasonable risks.

By contrast, licensees (social guests) are generally owed only a duty to warn of known dangers, and trespassers are owed only a duty to refrain from willful or wanton harm, with limited exceptions such as the attractive nuisance doctrine for children.

The framework is set out in the Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 332, 343, and remains the default rule in many U.S. jurisdictions. However, a significant number of states — beginning with California in Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal. 2d 108 (1968) — have abolished or merged the categories in favor of a unitary reasonable care standard applied to all lawful entrants, considering status only as one factor.

Outside the United States, English law restructured the area through the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957, which replaced the older invitee/licensee distinction with a single "common duty of care" owed to all lawful visitors, and the Occupiers' Liability Act 1984, which addresses duties to trespassers.

The invitee concept is most often litigated in slip-and-fall, retail-injury, and property-management cases.