What Must Be Shown Under North Carolina Law
Most slip-and-fall cases in North Carolina are built on negligence. In plain English, you generally need to show the store failed to use reasonable care to keep the area reasonably safe or to warn about a hidden danger it knew about (or should have known about through reasonable inspection).
Key Requirements
- Duty: A retail store generally must use reasonable care to maintain safe walking areas for lawful visitors.
- Breach: You must show the store did something unsafe (or failed to do something it should have done), such as not cleaning a spill within a reasonable time or not warning about it.
- Causation: The puddle (and the store’s failure to address it) must be a real cause of the fall and the injuries.
- Damages: You must have actual harm, such as medical bills, time missed from work, and pain and suffering.
Evidence That Commonly Helps
- Documents: The incident report, any internal notes, photos of the area, and any available store video.
- People: The employee witness (and any customer witnesses) who can describe what they saw and what the floor looked like.
- Data: Timing details (when the spill likely appeared, when staff last inspected the area, when cleanup happened) and medical timing (when symptoms were reported and documented).
Why an Employee Witness and Incident Report Can Help
- Confirms the basics: A witness can help lock in the date/time, location in the store, and that a fall occurred (which sometimes becomes disputed later).
- Supports “notice” of the hazard: In many North Carolina slip-and-fall cases, a central fight is whether the store knew (or should have known) about the spill long enough to fix it. A witness account may help show the spill’s size/condition, whether there were tracks, whether staff were nearby, or whether cleanup happened right away.
- Preserves early observations: Reports made close in time to the fall can capture details that fade later (what shoes you wore, whether warning cones were present, what the liquid looked like, etc.).
Important Limits: What an Incident Report Usually Does Not Prove
- It is not automatically an admission of fault: Stores often write reports as a routine business practice. The report may simply document what was said, not who was responsible.
- It may be incomplete or one-sided: Some reports are brief, use generic checkboxes, or include summaries that do not capture your full description.
- It may be used against you if it contains inaccuracies: If the report suggests you “weren’t watching,” “didn’t see anything,” or gives an incorrect timeline, the store may rely on that later.
Common Defenses & Pitfalls (Especially in North Carolina)
- Contributory negligence: North Carolina generally follows a strict contributory negligence rule. If the store proves you were even slightly negligent and that contributed to the fall, it can bar recovery. The store may argue the puddle was “open and obvious” or that you should have seen it and avoided it.
- “Open and obvious” arguments: If the hazard was easy to see, the store may argue it had no duty to warn. On the other hand, facts that reasonably distracted attention (crowding, displays, normal shopping behavior) can matter, and these cases often turn on details.
- Evidence disappears quickly: Spills get cleaned, video gets overwritten, and witnesses become hard to locate. Early documentation matters.
- Inconsistent descriptions: Differences between what you told staff, what appears in the report, and what later appears in medical records can create avoidable disputes.
How This Applies
Apply to your facts: Because an employee appeared to witness the fall and helped complete an incident report, you may have stronger proof of the basic event and early observations about the puddle and the immediate aftermath (including that you hit your head and felt dazed). The next steps usually focus on preserving any store video, identifying the employee witness, and building a clear timeline that addresses notice (how long the liquid may have been there) while also anticipating contributory negligence arguments about whether the hazard was avoidable.
What the Statutes Say (Optional)
- N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-139 – The party asserting contributory negligence generally has the burden to prove it.
Conclusion
An employee witness and an incident report can be helpful evidence in a Durham-area slip-and-fall claim, especially for confirming what happened and supporting arguments about the store’s notice of a hazard. They do not automatically prove the store was at fault, and North Carolina’s contributory negligence defense can still be a key issue. One practical next step is to write down your timeline now (what you saw, what the employee said, and what happened right after the fall) so it stays consistent with the records being gathered.
