Also known as: business invitee · business visitor · business visitors
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A category of land entrant in premises liability who enters or remains on property for a purpose connected with the possessor's business dealings. This status triggers the highest duty of care owed by the possessor to inspect for and remedy dangerous conditions.
Bright Path Foods sends employee Bianca Baker to Hamilton University for a paid corporate training session in a rented classroom. While walking to the session Bianca slips on a wet floor and sustains injuries. Her status as a business invitee requires the university to exercise reasonable care to inspect and warn of or remedy the hazard.
Daniel owns a family farm holding a public pumpkin patch event. Olivia arrives by prior appointment as a restaurant buyer to inspect pumpkins for a potential supply contract. Olivia trips over uneven ground while evaluating produce. Her presence for a purpose tied to Daniel's business dealings classifies her as a business invitee owed a duty of reasonable care.
Benjamin Brooks enters Baxter Dynamics headquarters to negotiate a supply agreement with the company's procurement team. While crossing the lobby Benjamin trips over an unrepaired tear in the carpet. His visit for business dealings with the possessor establishes business invitee status and the corresponding duty of care.
Interactive Data Corporation hired John Foley in June 1976 as an assistant product manager at a starting salary of $18,500. As a condition of employment Foley signed a confidential and proprietary information agreement. The company's president told Foley that if he performed his job well he would have a long and rewarding employment with the firm. Over the next six years and nine months Foley received steady salary increases, promotions, bonuses, awards, and superior performance evaluations, rising to branch manager of the Los Angeles office with an annual salary of $56,164 plus a merit bonus. In January 1983 Foley learned that his new supervisor, Robert Kuhne, was under investigation by the FBI for embezzlement from his former employer, Bank of America. Foley reported the information to Vice President Richard Earnest because he was worried about working for Kuhne in a supervisory position. Earnest told Foley not to discuss rumors and to forget what he had heard. In early March 1983 Kuhne informed Foley that the company had decided to replace him for performance reasons and offered a transfer to another division. Foley was later told he could continue as branch manager if he agreed to a performance plan, but when Kuhne met with him the next day Kuhne instead gave Foley the choice of resigning or being fired. Foley was discharged on March 13, 1983. Foley filed suit against Interactive Data Corporation alleging three causes of action: tortious discharge in violation of public policy, breach of an implied-in-fact contract to terminate only for good cause, and tortious breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The superior court sustained the company's demurrer without leave to amend and dismissed the action. The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment. The Supreme Court granted review.
View caseBobby Brady, a courier, walks through the common corridor of an office building to deliver documents to a tenant. He catches his shoe on a frayed carpet seam and falls. The courier's presence for a commercial purpose connected to the building's tenants makes him a business invitee.
Nancy Christian was the tenant of an apartment whose lessors had been notified by her on November 1, 1963, that the knob of the cold water faucet on the bathroom basin was cracked and should be replaced. On November 30, 1963, plaintiff Rowland entered the apartment at Christian's invitation as a social guest and was injured while using the bathroom fixtures when the porcelain handle of one of the water faucets broke in his hand. The injury severed the tendons and medial nerve in Rowland's right hand. He incurred medical and hospital expenses, suffered loss of wages, and sustained damage to his clothing. Rowland later filed a complaint alleging that the bathroom fixtures were dangerous, that Christian was aware of the dangerous condition, and that his injuries were proximately caused by her negligence. Christian filed an answer containing a general denial except that she admitted telling the lessors the faucet was defective and should be replaced. She also alleged contributory negligence and assumption of the risk on the ground that Rowland had failed to use his eyesight and knew of the condition of the premises. Christian supported her motion for summary judgment with an affidavit stating that Rowland was a social guest who had used the bathroom on a prior occasion and that the handle broke while he was using the faucet. In opposition, Rowland filed an affidavit stating that immediately prior to the accident he told Christian he was going to use the bathroom facilities, that she had known for two weeks that the faucet handle was cracked, that she had warned the manager of the building of the condition but nothing was done to repair it, that she did not warn him of the condition, and that the handle broke when he turned off the faucet. The trial court granted summary judgment for Christian, and Rowland appealed.
View caseBelinda Baxter, a snack vendor, enters an amphitheater through an unlocked gate during festival setup to sell goods to attendees. She steps into an uncovered trench while positioning her stand. The vendor's commercial purpose tied to event operations qualifies her as a business invitee.
CompuServe Incorporated operates one of the major national commercial online computer services through a proprietary nationwide computer network that provides subscribers with access to its content and a link to the Internet for exchanging electronic mail. Defendants Cyber Promotions, Inc. and its president Sanford Wallace are in the business of sending unsolicited e-mail advertisements on behalf of themselves and their clients to hundreds of thousands of Internet users, many of whom are CompuServe subscribers. Over the past several months, CompuServe received many complaints from subscribers threatening to discontinue their subscriptions unless the company prohibited electronic mass mailers from using its equipment. In or around October 1995, CompuServe employee Jon Schmidt specifically told Sanford Wallace that he was prohibited from using CompuServe's equipment to send junk e-mail messages. CompuServe later posted an online policy statement declaring that it does not permit its facilities to be used by unauthorized parties to process and store unsolicited e-mail. Despite the notification, defendants sent an increasing volume of e-mail solicitations to CompuServe subscribers. CompuServe attempted to block the messages with software programs, but defendants modified their equipment and messages to circumvent the screening by falsifying the point-of-origin information in the headers, removing sender information, and configuring their servers to conceal their true domain name. CompuServe submitted affidavits from software developer Michael Mangino on the burden to its equipment, customer service manager Patrick Hole on receiving approximately 9,970 e-mail complaints in November 1996, and others documenting the evasion tactics. On October 24, 1996, the court issued a temporary restraining order, and following a hearing on December 15, 1996, the court considered CompuServe's application for a preliminary injunction to extend the order and enjoin defendants from sending any unsolicited advertisements to CompuServe subscribers.
View caseBeatrice Brown purchases a ticket and enters a stadium to watch a professional baseball game. While proceeding to her seat she falls on a loose step in the concourse. Her paid admission for the business purpose of the stadium operators establishes business invitee status.
eBay, Inc. operates an Internet-based person-to-person trading site that allows sellers to list items for auction and buyers to search listings and place bids directly with sellers. The site has over 7 million registered users, adds more than 400,000 new items daily, receives 10 million searches per day, and processes 600 bids per minute across nearly 3 million items. Users register by clicking an “I Accept” button on a seven-page User Agreement that prohibits robots, spiders, or other automated devices from monitoring or copying web pages without prior written permission. Bidder’s Edge, Inc., a 22-employee company founded in 1997, operates an auction aggregation site that compiles data from more than one hundred auction sites into its own database containing over five million items. When a user searches on the BE site, the site queries its database rather than the original host sites. Approximately 69 percent of the items in BE’s database come from eBay auctions, and BE estimates it would lose one-third of its users if it stopped covering eBay. In early 1998 eBay permitted BE to include Beanie Babies and Furbies listings. In April 1999 eBay verbally approved BE crawling the site for a 90-day period while the parties negotiated a licensing agreement, but they failed to reach terms. After BE briefly stopped posting eBay listings in late August or early September 1999 and then resumed in November, eBay sent a November 9 letter demanding that BE cease access, alleging trespass, and offering a license. eBay then blocked 169 IP addresses it believed BE was using; BE evaded the blocks by routing queries through proxy servers. BE sent eBay’s systems between 80,000 and 100,000 requests per day, accounting for 0.70 to 1.53 percent of eBay’s requests and data transfer during October and November 1999. eBay calculated alleged damages of $45,323 to $61,804 over ten months but did not identify specific incremental costs caused by BE. The motion for a preliminary injunction was heard on April 14, 2000.
View caseBusiness invitees enter for a purpose directly or indirectly connected with business dealings with the possessor. Public invitees enter as members of the public for a purpose for which the land is held open. Both categories receive invitee protections but arise from distinct invitations.
Supporting sources
A possessor must exercise reasonable care to discover dangerous conditions and either make them safe or warn the invitee. This duty exceeds the limited warning obligation owed to licensees.
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No. The categories are mutually exclusive based on the purpose of entry. A visitor qualifies under only one invitee subcategory at a time even if the land is open to the public.
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No. Permission without a business purpose connected to the possessor produces only licensee status. The visitor must enter for a purpose tied to the possessor's commercial dealings.
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…266 [4 L.Ed.2d 697, 705, 80 S.Ct. 725, 78 A.L.R.2d 233]; 2 Harper and James, The Law of Torts, supra , 1430 et seq.; Prosser, Business Visitors and Invitees , 26 Minn.L.Rev. 573; Marsh, The History and Comparative Law of Invitees, Licensees and Trespassers , 69 L.Q.Rev. 182, 359.) The courts of this state have also recognized the…