Landowners, or a person is possession or real property, have different duties of care depending on the category of person who is on their land.
Colorado law employs the Premises Liability Statute. The Premises Liability Statute. This statute requires the court to determine the plaintiff’s status as an invitee, licensee, or trespasser to determine which standard of care is owed to the plaintiff at the time of injury.
A trespasser is a person that enters the property without invitation or permission. Under the Premises Liability statute, a trespasser on land may only recover from a landowner for damages that are willfully or deliberately caused by the landowner.[2] This means that there is no recovery for the negligence (carelessness) of a landowner; rather, there would only be recovery for the landowner’s intentional torts.
A licensee (social guest) is a person who enters or remains upon the property with the consent of the landowner for licensee’s own purpose.[3] A licensee may recover damages caused by, “(1) the landowner’s deliberate failure to exercise reasonable care in the conduct of the landowner’s active operations upon the property or (2) the landowner’s failure to warn of dangers that are not ordinarily present on the property of the type involved and of which the landowner actually knew.”[4]
An invitee (a person that enters the property to transact business) is a person who is expressly or impliedly invited by the landowner onto the real property for the purposes of the landowner.[5] An invitee may recover damages caused by the landowner’s unreasonable failure to exercise reasonable care to protect against dangers that they actually knew or should have known.[6]