22.6.1 Invitees.

• Jurisdiction: Arizona

22.6.1 Invitees. Invitees are those persons to whom a landowner owes the highest duty of care. An owner of land owes an invitee a duty to “conform to a particular standard of conduct to protect [the invitee] against foreseeable and unreasonable risks of harm.”²⁹

The law distinguishes between a public invitee and a business invitee. And while the duty of care owed to each class of invitee appears to be identical, the distinction may prove important in future determinations of whether a duty of care is owed in a specific instance. A public invitee is defined as “a person who is invited to enter or remain on land as a member of the public for a purpose for which the land is held open to the public.”³⁰

On the other hand, a business invitee “is a person who is invited to enter or remain on land for a purpose directly or indirectly connected with business dealings with the possessor of the land.”³¹ This does not necessarily mean a prospective customer, for example, a deliveryman is a business invitee.³² And, both registered hotel guests and the guests of registered hotel guests are considered a hotel’s invitees so long as the guests are “engaging in activities in which a guest of the hotel would normally engage.”³³ It matters not whether the unregistered guest is at the hotel in violation of hotel policies or rules.³⁴

A landowner’s duty of care may be “diluted or extinguished if the invitee engages in explicitly or impliedly unpermitted activities or goes beyond the area to which he or she is invited.”³⁵ The invitee who goes beyond the scope of invitation becomes either a licensee or trespasser.³⁶ A landowner has no liability for unsafe conditions beyond those imposed at law for licenses and/or trespassers, on areas of his property that are beyond the scope of the invitation to an invitee.³⁷

The area of invitation has been described as follows:

The special obligation toward invitees exists only while the visitor is upon the part of the premises which the occupier has thrown open to him for the purpose which makes him an invitee. This ‘area of invitation’ will of course vary with the circumstances of the case. It extends to the entrance to the property, and to a safe exit after the purpose is concluded; and it extends to all parts of the premises to which the purpose may reasonably be expected to take him, and to those which are so arranged as to lead him reasonably to think that they are open to him.³⁸

The “area of invitation” includes a duty to provide a reasonably safe means of ingress and egress,³⁹ but not to provide the “shortest route to any destination area.”⁴⁰ A possessor of land also owes no duty to an invitee who “engages in explicitly or impliedly unpermitted activities….”⁴¹

The Restatement (Second) of Torts § 343, which has been adopted in Arizona,⁴² sets forth the standard of care owed to an invitee:

A possessor of land is subject to liability for physical harm caused to his invitees by a condition on the land if, but only if, [the possessor]

(a) knows or by the exercise of reasonable care would discover the condition, and should realize that it involves an unreasonable risk of harm to such invitees, and

(b) should expect that they will not discover or realize the danger, or will fail to protect themselves against it, and

(c) fails to exercise reasonable care to protect them against the danger.⁴³

A possessor of land is not the insurer of the safety of his invitees and is not required to keep the premises absolutely safe.⁴⁴ “The mere occurrence of a injury on a floor within business premises is insufficient to prove negligence on the part of the proprietor.”⁴⁵ A defective condition is not necessarily an unreasonably dangerous condition for which a landowner may be held liable.⁴⁶ A landowner may be held liable for defective conditions that create an unreasonable risk of harm.⁴⁷ A landowner is required to warn of reasonably anticipated criminal acts by third persons.⁴⁸

The relevant inquiry for constructive notice is the establishment of the length of time that the unreasonably dangerous condition has been in existence on the property.⁴⁹ Plaintiff bears the burden of proof on establishing that the unreasonably dangerous condition had been in existence “for a sufficient length of time prior to the injury for the...