Know Your State’s Landowner Liability Statutes

All 50 states have at least one (most states have multiple) statute that offers limited liability to landowners in the event someone is injured on their property, so long as certain requirements are met.  The National Agricultural Law Center has a collection of various statutes for each state in their Reading Room. All 50 states have passed some version of a recreational-use statute. Recreational-use statutes are designed to encourage private landowners to enter private property for recreational purposes. In order to provide this incentive, these statutory schemes offer limited liability for landowners meeting their requirements. Agritourism statutes are a fairly new form of landowner protection. Over half of the states have adopted some form of agritourism statute. As would be expected, these statues vary greatly by state. In general, the statutes are designed to encourage local tourism and economic development by offering protections to agritourism entities in certain situations. The requirements that must be met to obtain this protection are extremely diverse among states. In Oklahoma and North Dakota, for example, an entity must register with the state in order to be deemed a protected agritourism entity.