## Facts

- After a heavy snowfall, snow and ice remained on the ground in Red Cloud, Nebraska.
- Roger W. Heins went to Webster County Hospital with his wife and daughter; he visited his daughter Julie, the hospital’s director of nursing.
- The parties disputed whether the visit was purely social or also involved coordinating Heins’ plan to play Santa Claus for hospital staff.
- As Heins exited through the hospital’s main entrance, he stepped onto the landing, slipped, and fell while holding the door.
- Heins and a witness observed a patch of ice on the landing after the fall and attributed the fall to accumulated snow and ice.
- Heins sued Webster County (operating the hospital) under the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act, alleging negligent inspection, failure to warn, allowing accumulation, and failure to remove snow and ice.
- After a bench trial, the district court classified Heins as a licensee and entered judgment for the county, finding no willful or wanton conduct and no failure to warn of known hidden dangers.

## Issues

1. Whether Nebraska should abolish the common-law distinction between invitees and licensees and require landowners to exercise reasonable care toward all lawful entrants.
2. Whether the hospital owed Heins a duty of reasonable care, rather than the limited duty traditionally owed to a licensee, for conditions at the main entrance.

## Decision

- The Nebraska Supreme Court reversed and remanded.
- The court abolished the invitee/licensee distinction and held that landowners and occupiers owe a duty of reasonable care to all lawful entrants.
- Because the district court applied the licensee standard, the case required reconsideration under the reasonable-care standard.
- A dissent argued that expanding premises-liability duties was a policy decision better left to the Legislature.

## Legal Principles

- For lawful entrants, a landowner/occupier must exercise reasonable care in maintaining the premises.
- The common-law categories of invitee and licensee no longer control whether a duty exists; the visitor’s purpose and relationship to the premises may remain relevant to what reasonable care requires in the circumstances.
- Trespasser duties were not addressed; the holding applies to nontrespassers (lawful entrants).

## Conclusion

Nebraska replaced status-based premises-liability duties for licensees and invitees with a single negligence standard requiring reasonable care toward all lawful entrants, requiring retrial-level factfinding under that unified duty.


Heins v. Webster Cnty., 250 Neb. 750, 552 N.W.2d 51 (Neb. 1996)