Are commercial warehouses require to have grounded electric recepticles?

I am renting a warehouse that was built problably in the 70s and recently one of the machine I operate in the warehouse had a short circuit and caused damage to the machine part. The service department of the machine manufacture told me that the machine was short curcuited because the electric recepticle was not properly grounded. And I checked the recepticle myself and found that what they said was true, the recepticle was not grounded. I want to know are electric recepticles required to be grounded by law? Does the National Electric Safety Codes defines the requirement of grounded recepticles? If yes, then I will have ground to ask for the landlord to reimburse my repair cost.