Marthella Andrick and Joseph R. Andrick, Plaintiffs Below, Appellants v. the Town of Buckhannon, a West Virginia…

Summary

The court held that a restaurant operator may owe its invitees a duty of reasonable care for dangerous conditions in an adjoining parking lot when the operator obtains the right for customers to park there and expressly invites them to do so. The operator's lack of responsibility for maintaining the lot may relieve it of a duty to correct defects, but does not eliminate a duty to warn of hazards it knew or reasonably should have known about. Because the record presented a genuine issue regarding the operators' knowledge of the alleged pavement defect, summary judgment was improper. Justice Workman, dissenting, would have retained a control-based limitation on premises-liability duties and expressed concern about the majority's broader liability rule.