Chapter 3 - § 3.4 • COLORADO'S PREMISES LIABILITY STATUTE

• Jurisdiction: Colorado

§ 3.4 • COLORADO'S PREMISES LIABILITY STATUTE

The next two sections of this chapter, "Control of Common Areas" and "Dangerous Conditions and Latent Defects," deal with questions of a landowner's (or landlord's) liability for injuries suffered by tenants or guests of tenants while on the rented premises. This is a very active area of the law. Although there are numerous appellate court decisions in this area, anyone presented with legal issues of this kind must first look to Colorado's Premises Liability Act (PLA, or the Act), also known as the Landowner Liability Statute. C.R.S. § 13-21-115. This statute details the different standards of care that a landowner owes to three classifications of persons who might be injured while on the landowner's property: (1) trespassers, (2) licensees, and (3) invitees. As explained below, tenants have been classified as invitees, the group to whom the highest duty of care is owed, although there are several conditions attached to this duty.

A trespasser may recover only for damages willfully or deliberately caused by the landowner. C.R.S. § 13-21-115(4)(a). A licensee may recover only for damages caused by the landowner's unreasonable failure to exercise reasonable care with respect to dangers created by the landowner of which the landowner actually knew, or by the landowner's unreasonable failure to warn of dangers not created by the landowner that are not ordinarily present on property of the type involved and of which the landowner actually knew. C.R.S. § 13-21-115(4)(b)(I) and (II). An invitee may recover for damages caused by the landowner's unreasonable failure to exercise reasonable care to protect against dangers of which the landowner actually knew or should have known. C.R.S. § 13-21-115(4)(c)(I).

The general scope of activities covered by the PLA was addressed in Larrieu v. Best Buy Stores, L.P., 303 P.3d 558 (Colo. 2013). The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals presented the Colorado Supreme Court with the following certified question: "whether Colorado's premises liability statute, § 13-21-115, C.R.S. (2012), applies as a matter of law only to those activities and circumstances that are directly or inherently related to the land?" The supreme court responded with the following:

To the . . . certified question, we answer "no." . . . That restriction does not appear in the statutory language, and we do not adopt it now. But we also reject . . . [the statute's] application to any tort that happens to occur on

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