Premises Liability in DC: Invitees, Licensees, and the Reasonable-Care Standard Explained
You walk into a grocery store, a friend's apartment building, or an office lobby, and the floor gives way beneath you — a puddle nobody mopped, a broken stair nobody fixed, a stretch of ice nobody treated. Suddenly you're facing surgery, missed work, and an insurance adjuster asking what you did wrong. Whether the property owner has to answer for your injuries depends on premises liability law — and in the District of Columbia, that law is more sensible, and more protective of injured people, than many visitors from Maryland or Virginia expect.
The old way: labels first, fairness second
For most of American legal history, courts sorted injured visitors into three rigid boxes before asking whether the property owner did anything wrong:
- Invitee — someone on the property for the owner's benefit, like a shopper in a store. Owed the highest duty: reasonable care, including inspecting for hidden dangers.
- Licensee — a social guest or someone present with mere permission. Owed less: typically just a warning of known dangers.
- Trespasser — someone with no right to be there. Owed almost nothing.
Under that system, the same wet staircase could produce a winning case for a shopper and a losing case for a dinner guest — even though the owner's carelessness was identical.
The DC way: reasonable care under all the circumstances
The District abandoned that box-sorting exercise decades ago. Under DC law, a property owner or occupier owes a single duty of reasonable care under all of the circumstances to people lawfully on the premises. The invitee/licensee distinction no longer controls. See Sandoe v. Lefta Associates, 559 A.2d 732 (D.C. 1989), where the DC Court of Appeals confirmed that abolishing the old categories was never meant to water down protection for anyone lawfully present — and that the duty of reasonable care includes an affirmative obligation to inspect the property for hidden (latent) defects, not just to warn about dangers the owner already happens to know about.
In practice, "reasonable care under all of the circumstances" asks common-sense questions a jury is well equipped to answer:
- How foreseeable was it that someone would be hurt?
- Did the owner know about the hazard — or should a reasonable inspection have revealed it?
- How long had the condition existed?
- How hard would it have been to fix it or warn about it?
One important caveat survives: trespassers are still treated differently. A person on the property without any right generally cannot recover for ordinary negligence; the owner must only refrain from intentional, willful, or wanton misconduct. There are humane exceptions in genuinely compelling circumstances, but the general rule remains firm.
How DC compares to its neighbors
| District of Columbia | Maryland | Virginia | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visitor categories? | Abolished for lawful entrants | Retained (invitee/licensee/trespasser) | Retained |
| Duty to lawful visitors | Reasonable care under all circumstances, including inspection | Varies by status; full care owed to invitees only | Varies by status |
| Duty to trespassers | No willful/wanton injury | No willful/wanton injury (narrow exceptions) | No willful/wanton injury |
| Plaintiff's own fault | Contributory negligence — any fault can bar recovery | Same | Same |
That last row deserves emphasis. The District's premises law is comparatively humane on the duty side, but DC remains one of the few American jurisdictions where contributory negligence — the rule that a plaintiff even 1% at fault recovers nothing — still applies. Property insurers know this, and "you should have watched where you were going" is the first argument out of their mouths. Beating it takes evidence: photographs, incident reports, witness names, and prompt investigation before the hazard is repaired and the camera footage is overwritten.
What this means for injured people in DC
If you were hurt on someone else's property in the District, do not let an adjuster tell you that you were a "mere guest" owed nothing. That is not DC law. Whether you were shopping, visiting, delivering, or attending an event, the owner owed you reasonable care — including reasonable inspections for dangers that were not obvious. What matters is what the owner knew or should have known, and what a reasonably careful owner would have done about it.
The flip side: because contributory negligence looms over every DC premises case, these claims are won or lost on early facts. Report the incident, photograph the scene and your footwear, identify witnesses, and get medical care immediately — gaps in treatment become the defense's favorite exhibit.
If you or a loved one has been hurt, call Posey Lebowitz at (202) 524-0123 or send us a message for a free consultation.
Part of our DMV case law archive, compiled in 2026 to reflect the archive of some of the most important decisions in injury law.
Update: The duty framework described here has remained stable, but DC’s rules on duties to trespassers were meaningfully refined by the Whiteru litigation, which recognized a duty of reasonable aid to known injured trespassers — see our coverage of Whiteru v. WMATA and the litigation’s 2025 finale.