Court Opinion

ID: 9764574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:27:54.939307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:58.445946
License: Public Domain

BARNES, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
While I agree with the result reached in this case, I do not agree with all that is said. Therefore, this opinion decides only the issues in this case and may not be cited as binding precedent.4
*140The landowner has a “legal duty” to exercise ordinary care to keep its premises and approaches safe for invitees, and that duty is continuous. OCGA § 51-3-1.5 This duty to exercise ordinary care extends to keeping the common areas of an apartment complex safe. Lidster v. Jones, 176 Ga. App. 392 (336 SE2d 287) (1985). In this case, traffic through the apartment complex parking lot where children played to a construction site next door was an obviously dangerous condition, and allowing it to continue violated the landowner’s duty to keep the premises safe. But the final requirement for establishing the landowner’s liability is establishing that its knowledge of the dangerous condition was superior to the tenants’ knowledge. Roth v. Wu, 199 Ga. App. 665, 666 (1) (405 SE2d 741) (1991), and this the tenants in this case could not show.
The defendant landowner argues that it did not owe a “legal duty” to the minor child who was killed by a car driving through the complex parking lot to get to the property next door, because the premises contained no defective condition. The car that caused the child’s death, asserts the landowner, was not part of the premises, and thus its presence was not a defective condition of the property which triggered any duty on the landowner’s part. This argument misconstrues the basis of the plaintiffs’ claim and the landowner’s liability. The basis for the claim was that the landowner violated his duty to keep the premises safe for his invitees by allowing construction traffic to proceed through the parking lot to the property next door.
Thus, the issue was not whether the landowner had a duty in the first place, but whether he breached his duty to keep the premises safe by allowing a perilous condition to continue, of which his knowledge was superior to that of the tenants. Roth v. Wu, supra at 666. While we have previously framed the issue as “whether the landowner had a duty” to undertake some action as a result of a dangerous condition, this issue follows the premise that the landowner has a duty to keep the premises safe in the first place. See, e.g., Sotomayor v. TAMA I, LLC, 274 Ga. App. 323, 326 (1) (617 SE2d 606) (2005) (physical precedent only) (expert’s testimony created no genuine issue as to whether landowner had duty to install bumper stops in apartment parking lot); Commerce Properties v. Linthicum, 209 Ga. App. 853, 854 (2) (434 SE2d 769) (1993) (landowner has no duty to warn against obvious or patent dangers, such as absence of sufficient speed barriers and warning signs).
*141Decided July 9, 2010
Noble L. Boykin, Jr., for appellants.
Freeman, Mathis & Gary, Sun S. Choy, Jacob E. Daly, Brennan, Harris & Rominger, Mason White, for appellee.
Assuming that the existence of the construction traffic through the apartment parking lot was a defect, it was a patent one, of which the landowner did not have superior knowledge. The plaintiff mother herself said she was concerned about the traffic and had not allowed the child to play in the parking lot until late afternoon, when the construction crews were usually gone. Because “[t]he true ground of liability is the landowner’s superior knowledge of the perilous condition and the danger therefrom to persons coming upon the property,” the trial court did not err in granting summary judgment to the landowner in this case. (Punctuation omitted.) Commerce Properties v. Linthicum, supra at 854 (2).
Accordingly, even though I do not concur fully with the majority opinion, I concur with its judgment affirming the trial court.

 Court of Appeals Rule 33 (a).

 In holding that the existence of a legal duty was a question of law, the Supreme Court of Georgia considered whether a municipality and police chief were entitled to sovereign immunity. City of Rome v. Jordan, 263 Ga. 26, 27 (1) (426 SE2d 861) (1993). Similarly, in this case the landowner’s duty to invitees is a legal question, although the issue of liability for violating that duty is not necessarily a question of law.