What Must Be Shown Under North Carolina Law
Most campus slip-and-fall cases are handled as premises liability, which is usually a form of negligence. In plain English, the question is whether the property owner or operator failed to act reasonably to prevent a foreseeable injury.
Key Requirements
- Duty: The campus generally must use reasonable care to maintain the property for lawful visitors and address unsafe conditions.
- Breach: You typically need facts showing the campus created the hazard (for example, a spill) or knew or should have known about it and did not fix it or warn in a reasonable time.
- Causation: The dangerous condition must be a real cause of the fall and the injuries (not just something present in the area).
- Damages: You must have actual losses, such as medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering.
Evidence That Commonly Helps
- Documents: Incident reports, maintenance/cleaning logs, prior complaints, and any written communications about the hazard.
- People: Witnesses who saw the condition before the fall, how long it was there, or what staff did afterward.
- Data: Photos/video of the area, timestamps, and information showing whether the condition existed long enough that the campus should have discovered it through reasonable inspection.
Common Defenses & Pitfalls
- “Open and obvious” condition: North Carolina property owners often argue there was no duty to warn because the hazard was obvious.
- Contributory negligence: North Carolina follows a strict contributory negligence rule in many negligence cases. If the campus proves you were even slightly negligent and that contributed to the fall, it can bar recovery.
- Lack of notice: The campus may argue it had no reasonable way to know about the hazard in time to fix it or warn.
- Governmental immunity (public campuses): If the campus is part of a public school system or a public college/university, immunity issues can become a threshold problem before you ever reach the “was it negligent?” question.
How This Applies
Apply to these facts: Because the incident happened on a campus and the attorney is trying to identify the correct claim contact and general liability coverage, a key early step is confirming what entity controls the property (public vs. private, and which board or institution). If it is a public school or public college, the availability of a claim may depend on whether immunity has been waived (often tied to liability insurance) and on getting the claim routed to the correct risk/claims contact. Separately, the claim still needs proof of the dangerous condition, how long it existed, and why the campus should have addressed it.
What the Statutes Say (Optional)
- N.C. Gen. Stat. § 115C-42 (Local boards of education: liability insurance and immunity) – Allows a local board of education to waive governmental immunity by purchasing liability insurance, but only to the extent of coverage and subject to statutory conditions.
- N.C. Gen. Stat. § 115D-24 (Community colleges: waiver of governmental immunity by obtaining liability insurance) – Authorizes waiver of governmental immunity through liability insurance, limited to the extent the institution is indemnified.
Conclusion
A campus can sometimes be held responsible for a slip-and-fall in North Carolina, but the outcome often turns on (1) whether the campus knew or should have known about the hazard and failed to act reasonably, and (2) whether governmental immunity applies for public campuses. One practical next step is to preserve and request time-sensitive evidence (photos/video, incident reports, and maintenance records) while confirming the correct campus entity and claim contact.
