Revolving Door Injuries: Entrapment and Crush Claims in Georgia

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A revolving door is a machine the public walks into without thinking, and when it speeds up unexpectedly, reverses, or catches a hand, a coat, or a cane between a rotating wing and the fixed drum, the injury can be a crushed finger, a fractured wrist, or a fall inside a confined glass enclosure. In Georgia these claims do not run on the law of the road; they run on premises liability, often with a second track for a defective or negligently maintained mechanism. A single incident at a hotel or office-tower entrance can therefore point at the building owner, the management company, the maintenance contractor, and the door manufacturer at once, and the case is decided by which of them had control over the failure.

The Property Owner’s Duty Under Premises Law

A person entering a commercial building, hotel, hospital, or office tower for business is an invitee, owed the duty of ordinary care to keep the premises and approaches safe under OCGA 51-3-1. A revolving door at the threshold is part of those approaches. The duty is not a guarantee that the door will never injure anyone; Georgia imposes no strict liability on a landowner for a premises condition. Liability rests on the owner’s superior knowledge, the principle that the owner is answerable for a hazard it knew of, or should have discovered through reasonable inspection, that the injured invitee could not have avoided through ordinary care. A door that simply malfunctioned, standing alone, does not establish a claim; what establishes it is notice that the door was prone to malfunction.

That notice comes in two forms. Actual knowledge exists where the owner had received complaints, logged prior incidents, or been told by maintenance staff of a recurring fault. Constructive knowledge exists where a reasonable inspection of equipment that is known to require periodic service, sensor testing, lubrication, and component replacement, would have revealed the defect the owner now claims it could not have anticipated.

The Inspection Record Often Decides the Case

Because a powered revolving door is mechanical equipment a manufacturer expects to be serviced on a schedule, the maintenance file frequently becomes the center of the dispute. Gaps in the inspection log, deferred repairs, and ignored warnings from a service technician are the evidence that converts a one-off malfunction into a hazard the owner should have known about. The same file can work the other way: a complete record of regular inspection and sensor testing with no detected problem supports a defense that the failure was sudden and unforeseeable. The duty to inspect carries particular weight here precisely because the public has no way to test a door before stepping into it.

When the Mechanism Itself Is Defective

A second body of law can sit alongside the premises claim. Where the door malfunctioned because of a flaw in its design, its manufacture, or a negligent repair, the claim may reach beyond the building owner to the parties responsible for the machine:

  • The manufacturer, under product-liability principles, if a design or manufacturing defect, including a failed safety sensor or inadequate speed control, made the door unreasonably dangerous. Georgia’s strict product-liability statute, OCGA 51-1-11, applies to the manufacturer of a defective product, with its own ten-year statute of repose running from the product’s first sale, distinct from the ordinary limitations period.
  • The maintenance contractor, for negligent repair or for failing to identify a fault during servicing.
  • The installation company, where improper installation created the hazard.
  • The property management company, which controls day-to-day operation, may share the owner’s premises responsibility.

Sorting these defendants is an exercise in tracing control: the premises duty follows possession and control of the property, while the product claim follows the chain of the machine’s manufacture and service. A modern door is expected to include sensors and safety features designed to detect a person in the path and stop or slow the wings, and a sensor that should have functioned but did not can implicate both tracks at once.

The Equal-Knowledge and Prior-Traversal Arguments

Georgia premises defense frequently turns on the invitee’s own knowledge. Under the equal-knowledge rule, an owner is not liable where the invitee knew of the hazard as well as the owner did, and under the related prior-traversal idea a person who had successfully used the same approach before may be charged with awareness of its static conditions. These doctrines fit an obvious, fixed hazard far better than a mechanical failure. A wing that suddenly accelerates or a sensor that silently fails is not a condition the visitor saw and chose to confront; it is a latent malfunction, which is why the distinction between an open static condition and a hidden mechanical fault is often the hinge of a revolving-door case.

Accessibility and Vulnerable Users

Revolving doors are designed around an able-bodied pedestrian timing entry and exit, which makes them disproportionately dangerous to small children, elderly people who move slowly within the compartment, and people using wheelchairs, walkers, or canes. Federal accessibility requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act generally call for an accessible alternative entrance near a revolving door, and the absence or poor marking of that alternative can factor into a premises claim, though the ADA is a federal access standard rather than a Georgia tort statute and supplies context rather than the cause of action itself.

Medical-Evidence and Apportionment for a Door Injury

Every Georgia injury claim is now screened against the 2025 reform known as Senate Bill 68, effective for claims arising on or after April 21, 2025. Its headline change, the negligent-security framework codified at OCGA 51-3-50 et seq., governs injuries caused by a third party’s crime and does not apply to a mechanical door injury, which involves no third-party criminal conduct. The provision that does reach this claim is the medical-evidence rule: recoverable medical expenses are limited to the reasonable value of necessary care, with the amounts actually paid admissible alongside the billed charges. SB 68 also allows either party, in a qualifying case with at least $150,000 in controversy, to request that fault and damages be tried in separate phases, and its apportionment rules govern how fault is divided where more than one defendant, owner, contractor, or manufacturer, contributed. The mechanics of apportionment and the 50% bar are owned by the comparative-negligence guide (#29), and damages valuation by the damages guides (#53 and #12), referenced here rather than repeated.

Dividing Damages Between Owner and Manufacturer

The figures below are illustrative and show only how the apportionment arithmetic operates, not what any claim is worth. Suppose a crush injury is traced partly to a building owner that ignored repeated service warnings and partly to a manufacturer whose speed sensor was defective, and the claim survives on both tracks. Suppose a jury assigns 55 percent of the fault to the owner and 45 percent to the manufacturer, with no fault to the injured invitee, on total damages calculated at $100,000. Under OCGA 51-12-33 the owner’s apportioned share is $55,000 and the manufacturer’s is $45,000. The numbers are arithmetic only and predict no outcome.

Frequently Asked Questions

What law governs a revolving door injury in Georgia?
Premises liability under OCGA 51-3-1, because the injured person is ordinarily an invitee owed ordinary care to keep the approaches safe. Where the door itself was defective, a product-liability claim under OCGA 51-1-11 may run alongside it against the manufacturer.

Is a building owner automatically liable when a revolving door malfunctions?
No. Georgia imposes no strict liability on a landowner for a premises condition. The owner is liable only where it had superior knowledge of the hazard, through actual notice or through a defect a reasonable inspection should have revealed.

Can more than one company be responsible for a revolving door injury?
Yes. Depending on the cause, the building owner, property manager, maintenance contractor, installer, and door manufacturer may each bear a share, with fault apportioned among them under OCGA 51-12-33.

Does using the same door before defeat a later claim?
Not necessarily. The equal-knowledge and prior-traversal arguments fit an obvious, fixed condition, not a sudden mechanical malfunction, which a prior successful use would not have revealed.

  • Duty of owner or occupier of land to invitee, OCGA 51-3-1
  • Strict product liability for a defective product, OCGA 51-1-11
  • Modified comparative negligence and apportionment, OCGA 51-12-33
  • Americans with Disabilities Act accessible-entrance requirements (federal)
  • Senate Bill 68 (2025): negligent-security framework, OCGA 51-3-50 et seq.; reasonable-value medical evidence; trial bifurcation; apportionment

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about how Georgia law treats revolving door entrapment and crush injuries, including the overlap between premises liability and product liability. It is not legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and may not reflect the most recent changes in the law. Which parties are responsible depends on the cause of the malfunction and the specific facts of each case. A person dealing with a revolving door injury in Georgia should consult a licensed Georgia attorney about the particular situation.

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