A landowner owes a duty of reasonable care or ordinary care to guests and invitees to maintain a safe premises.
To make a negligence case against a landowner for a breached duty of reasonable or ordinary care, we must show that the landowner failed to exercise ordinary care in the maintenance of their premises. First, we look for a specific statutory violation; that is, did the owner violate a specific law. For example, if a statute says that all stairwells must have a landing at the top with dimensions of at least three feet deep by four feet wide and the landing is only one foot deep by four feet wide, this is a statutory violation amounting to negligence per se.
Another way to make a negligence case against a landowner for a breached duty of reasonable or ordinary care, is by looking at the circumstances leading up to the injury. For instance, if there are spills that occur in a store or an owner uses specific flooring, there may not be direct statutes that govern the type of flooring to be used or how to clean up spills, but nevertheless the type of flooring and spills can create dangerous conditions. Using a flooring material that is slippery in the wrong environment or leaving a spill unattended for a long period of time could cause injury and an argument can be made that the landowner acted unreasonably by using a certain flooring type or by not diligently cleaning up the spill.
Other examples of a landowner failing to exercise ordinary care would be if a sidewalk was largely uneven and elevated, but not repaired, or an elevator was not flush with the landing when it stopped at a particular floor and prior complaints were ignored.