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Georgia Premises Liability Lawyers
Holding Property Owners Accountable for Preventable Harm
When a property owner lets a hazard sit where a visitor cannot see it, and someone is hurt, Georgia law makes the owner answer for it.
A premises liability case turns on one idea the courts have repeated for decades: the owner's superior knowledge of the danger.
If the owner knew or should have known about the hazard, and you could not have known despite reasonable care, the property is responsible for what happened.
Lawsuit Legal's trial lawyers handle slip and fall and other premises cases across Georgia, backed by more than 40,000 cases handled and over $100 million recovered for injury victims and families.
Call (888) 713-6653 for a free, confidential review of your Georgia premises liability claim. You Win or It's Free.
Georgia Premises Liability Claims at a Glance
- A Georgia premises case turns on the owner's superior knowledge of the hazard (Robinson v. Kroger)
- You must show the owner knew or should have known, and that you could not have seen it with ordinary care
- Invitees are owed the highest duty of care; licensees and trespassers are owed less (O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1)
- Slip and falls, falling merchandise, bad maintenance, pool drownings, and negligent security are all premises claims
- Most claims must be filed within two years, and the sweep logs and video that prove the case disappear fast
- $100M+ recovered, a 98% recovery rate, and no fee unless we win
The Foundation of a Georgia Premises Case: Superior Knowledge
Every Georgia premises liability case rests on a principle from Robinson v. Kroger Co., the state's landmark 1997 decision: an owner is liable because of its superior knowledge of the hazard.[1]
To recover, an injured visitor has to prove two things: that the owner had actual or constructive knowledge of the hazard, and that the visitor did not know about it and could not have found it through ordinary care. The whole case lives in that gap between what the owner knew and what you reasonably could have.
Robinson did something else that still shapes these cases. It held that admitting you were not staring at the spot where you fell does not, by itself, prove you failed to use ordinary care. Whether you acted reasonably is a question for a jury, weighing all the circumstances, and that ruling keeps these claims out of the quick dismissals an owner's insurer pushes for.
Types of Premises Liability Cases We Handle in Georgia
Premises liability covers any injury that a property owner's carelessness allowed to happen. The cases we see most often in Georgia include:
Slip, trip, and fall. The most common premises claim, from spills and wet floors to torn carpet and uneven walkways. These are the heart of our Georgia slip and fall practice.
Falling merchandise. Items stacked unsafely on high shelves that fall on a shopper below.
Inadequate maintenance. Broken stairs, loose railings, crumbling walkways, and other defects an owner left unrepaired.
Swimming pool and water hazards. Drownings and near-drownings where a pool lacked the barriers, fencing, or supervision the law requires.
Negligent security. A foreseeable assault, robbery, or shooting on a poorly secured property, a claim Georgia reshaped in 2025 and the focus of our Georgia negligent security page.
Fires, burns, and toxic exposure. Injuries from code violations, blocked exits, and hazards an owner failed to fix or warn about.
Who the Property Owed a Duty: Invitee, Licensee, or Trespasser
Georgia law sets the owner's duty by the reason you were on the property, and the category often decides the case.
Invitees are people on the property for the owner's business, like a customer in a store or a tenant in a leased space. They are owed the highest duty: ordinary care to keep the premises safe, under O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1.[2]
Licensees are on the property for their own purposes with the owner's permission, like a social guest. The owner owes a narrower duty, generally not to injure them willfully or by a hidden trap the owner knew about.
Trespassers are owed the least, essentially a duty not to harm them intentionally, with a narrow exception meant to protect children drawn to a dangerous condition.
Confirming the right category, and the duty that comes with it, is one of the first questions in any Georgia premises case.
Negligent Security and Georgia's 2025 SB 68 Change
When the harm comes from a foreseeable crime rather than a physical hazard, the case is a negligent security claim, and Georgia changed the rules in 2025.
Senate Bill 68, effective for incidents on or after April 21, 2025, raised the bar for these claims. It narrowed what counts as a foreseeable crime, tied the danger to a specific condition of the property, and requires a jury to assign a share of fault to the criminal who committed the act. The change applies only to negligent security, not to ordinary slip-and-fall premises cases, which still run under the longstanding duty in O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1.
If you were hurt by a crime on someone else's property, the date of the incident and the proof of what the owner knew now decide the claim. Our full breakdown of Georgia negligent security law after SB 68 covers the new invitee and licensee standards and what each one requires.
How Georgia's Comparative Fault Rule Affects a Premises Case
Georgia follows a modified comparative negligence rule under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33. If you are found 50 percent or more at fault for your own injury, you recover nothing. Below that line, your recovery is reduced by your share of the fault.[3]
In a premises case, the owner's defense is almost always the same: you should have seen the hazard and avoided it. That is where Robinson matters most. Whether you used ordinary care for your own safety is a jury question, not an automatic bar, so an owner cannot win simply by pointing out that the danger was in front of you. Our pages on Georgia comparative negligence and apportionment of fault explain how the rule works.
What Is a Georgia Premises Liability Case Worth?
There is no honest average. A premises claim is valued on its own facts, but a few things consistently drive the number.
- The severity of the injury. A broken wrist and a traumatic brain injury from the same fall are not the same case. Georgia does not cap pain and suffering, so the lasting harm carries real weight.
- The strength of the notice evidence. The better you can prove the owner knew or should have known about the hazard, the stronger the claim. A documented prior complaint changes everything.
- The available insurance. A commercial property's liability policy is usually the source of recovery, and its limits shape what is possible.
- Your share of fault. Because the 50 percent bar can reduce or erase a recovery, defending the comparative-fault fight protects the value of the case.
Any figure you read online is a past result or a range, never a promise, because every premises case turns on its own proof of what the owner knew.
How Long Do You Have to File a Georgia Premises Liability Claim?
A Georgia premises liability claim generally must be filed within two years of the injury under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33.[4] If the property belongs to a city, county, or the state, a separate ante litem notice is due far sooner, in six to twelve months depending on the entity.
The deadline that bites first is the evidence. Sweep logs, inspection records, and surveillance footage are the proof these cases are won on, and they are overwritten or discarded within days or weeks. A letter demanding the property preserve them has to go out early. Our breakdown of the Georgia statute of limitations covers the deadlines and the narrow exceptions.
How a Georgia Premises Liability Lawyer Proves the Owner Knew
Because the case lives in the owner's superior knowledge, the work is proving what the property knew and when. That proof comes from the records an owner is least eager to produce, paired with the surveillance footage from the day of the fall.
Each of those records can close the distance between what the owner knew and what it claims. Preserving them before they are purged, and pairing them with the medical evidence of the injury, is how a premises case is built to full value.
We take the cases we believe in and prepare every one as if a jury will decide it. The firm's attorneys have been recognized by Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, and the National Trial Lawyers, and that trial-ready posture is what an insurer weighs when it decides what a claim is worth.
These cases often come down to what the property knew, and what it would rather not have exposed. In most premises cases, the hazard is not hidden. It is documented, reported, and ignored until someone gets hurt. We go get the inspection logs, the prior complaints, the work orders, because in Georgia the owner's knowledge of the hazard is the case, and it is almost always sitting documented in a record someone hoped no one would ask for.