Premises Liability

What Is Premises Liability?

Premises liability is negligence applied to land and buildings. The owner or occupier of property, meaning whoever controls it, whether an owner, a tenant, or a management company, owes a duty to people who come onto it. When a dangerous condition on the property injures a visitor, the visitor can recover if the owner knew or should have known about the condition, failed to fix it or warn about it within a reasonable time, and that failure caused the injury. The condition can be physical, such as a spill, a broken stair, ice, or a hole, or it can be a failure of security in a place where crime was foreseeable.

The claim is not about the fact of the injury. Property owners are not insurers of everyone who walks through the door. The claim is about knowledge and reasonableness: did the owner know, or should a reasonable owner have known, about the hazard, and did the owner act reasonably in response? Proof usually turns on how long the hazard existed, whether the owner had inspection and cleaning routines, and whether there was any warning.

How Does Premises Liability Work In North Carolina?

For most of the twentieth century North Carolina, like most states, sorted visitors into three boxes: invitees (customers and others there for the owner’s benefit), licensees (social guests), and trespassers, each owed a different duty. In Nelson v. Freeland, the North Carolina Supreme Court abolished the distinction between invitees and licensees. Since that 1998 decision, a North Carolina landowner owes the same duty of reasonable care under the circumstances to every lawful visitor, whether that visitor is a paying customer or a friend dropping by. The court kept trespassers in a separate category with a much narrower duty; an owner is not required to make the property safe for someone who has no right to be there.

The reasonable-care duty has practical content. The owner must inspect the property with reasonable frequency, correct hazards it discovers or should discover, and warn lawful visitors of hidden dangers the owner knows about and the visitor would not. It does not require warning about dangers that are open and obvious, which is where most North Carolina premises cases are now fought. A premises liability claim must be filed within three years of the injury under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-52(16). Dog bites are a special case: N.C. Gen. Stat. § 67-4.4 makes the owner of a dog that meets the statute’s definition of a dangerous dog strictly liable for the injuries it inflicts, without proof of negligence.

What Is The Open-and-obvious Defense In North Carolina?

A property owner has no duty to warn of a danger that is open and obvious, because a reasonable visitor would see it and protect themselves. In North Carolina that principle does double duty. It defeats the owner’s breach of duty, and it also establishes the visitor’s contributory negligence: a person who sees, or should see, an obvious hazard and walks into it anyway has failed to use ordinary care for their own safety. Under the state’s contributory negligence rule, that failure bars the claim entirely, and the defendant bears the burden of proving it under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-139.

The North Carolina Supreme Court has applied the rule twice in two years. In Cullen v. Logan Developers, decided in 2024, the court held that a visitor who fell through an unfloored opening in an attic was contributorily negligent as a matter of law, because the hole was open and obvious. In Moseley v. Hendricks, decided in August 2025, the court reached the same conclusion for a plaintiff injured at a golf driving range, again holding that the hazard was open and obvious and that the plaintiff’s own negligence barred the claim as a matter of law.

• Hidden hazard: a clear liquid on a tile floor, a loose tread under carpet, a missing cover in a dark stairwell. The owner must fix or warn; the claim is viable.
• Open and obvious hazard: a visible hole, a marked step, a plainly wet entryway. No duty to warn, and proceeding is contributory negligence.
• Distraction and lighting: whether a hazard was truly obvious depends on the conditions, and that dispute is where these cases are won or lost.

What Does A North Carolina Premises Liability Claim Look Like?

Imagine a hypothetical fall in a Raleigh grocery store. A produce cooler has been leaking for two days; employees have mopped around it but never fixed it or put out a cone. A shopper turns the corner of the aisle, steps in the clear puddle, and falls, fracturing her wrist and tearing her rotator cuff. Her lawyer requests the store’s incident reports, maintenance logs, and surveillance video, which show the leak and the absence of any warning. The store knew about the hazard, failed to correct or warn within a reasonable time, and the puddle was clear on a light-colored floor: not open and obvious. That is a viable North Carolina premises liability claim.

Now move the puddle. Suppose the water was in front of the entrance on a rainy day, a yellow wet-floor sign was in place, and the surveillance video shows the shopper looking at her phone as she walked in. The store will argue the hazard was open and obvious and the shopper was contributorily negligent, and under Cullen and Moseley that argument may end the case before trial. The same injury, in the same store, becomes worthless. The difference is evidence, which is why a lawyer sends a preservation letter for the video within days of a fall.

Why Does Premises Liability Matter For A North Carolina Injury Claim?

Because North Carolina makes these claims harder to win than almost any other state. The lawful-visitor rule from Nelson v. Freeland is generous on the duty side, but the contributory negligence rule and the open-and-obvious cases are unforgiving on the defense side. A shopper in a comparative-negligence state who was 30% at fault for not watching her step recovers 70% of her damages; the same shopper in North Carolina recovers nothing. Insurance carriers for retailers, landlords, and property managers know this, and their first move in nearly every North Carolina fall claim is to build a contributory negligence file.

The answer is to build the other file first. Photographs of the hazard before it is cleaned up, names of witnesses, the incident report, the video, the store’s cleaning and inspection policies, and medical treatment that begins the same day all go to the two questions that decide the case: what the owner knew, and whether the hazard was really obvious. If you were hurt on someone else’s property, a North Carolina slip and fall lawyer should review the facts before you give a recorded statement to the property’s insurer.