A Wilmington premises-liability lawyer who takes the cases other firms turn down.

Premises liability is the area of personal injury law that holds a property owner or land possessor responsible when a failure to keep the property reasonably safe causes someone to be hurt. Since the North Carolina Supreme Court's 1998 decision in Nelson v. Freeland, North Carolina has used a two-category framework: lawful visitor (anyone on the property with the owner's express or implied consent — what older case law called invitees and licensees) and trespasser (a person on the property without permission). That classification controls how much the owner owed you. Most of my premises cases involve lawful visitors — restaurant patrons, hotel guests, and vacation-rental occupants.

A lawful visitor is any person on the property with the owner's express or implied consent — a restaurant patron, a hotel guest, a vacation-rental occupant, a friend invited over, a delivery driver, a meter reader. North Carolina abolished the older invitee/licensee distinction in Nelson v. Freeland (1998) and merged them into a single category. To a lawful visitor, the owner owes reasonable care to keep the premises safe and to warn of hidden hazards the owner knew or should have known about. A trespasser is a person on the property without consent. The duty owed to a trespasser is much narrower: generally, only the duty not to willfully or wantonly injure them — with limited exceptions, including the attractive-nuisance doctrine that can apply to children. These definitions follow the North Carolina Pattern Jury Instructions (NCPJI, Civil) on premises liability.

Three rule-edges stack in one case type. Contributory negligence — North Carolina is one of only four states where being 1% at fault can bar recovery. The notice requirement — you have to prove the owner knew or should have known about the hazard, which is a real evidentiary lift. And the open and obvious doctrine — if the hazard was plain, the duty to warn can weaken. Most firms call that combination too hard. I take these cases when the negligence is clear and the injury is serious.

Actual notice means the owner knew about the hazard — a spill they were told about, a broken stair they were warned about, a railing complaint on file. Constructive notice means the hazard was there long enough that the owner should have known about it through reasonable inspection. Constructive notice is how most slip-and-fall cases get built — through the housekeeping schedule, the maintenance log, the surveillance footage, and the testimony of employees on shift.

If a hazard is so plain that a reasonable person would have seen and avoided it, North Carolina law may say the property owner did not owe a duty to warn about it. The defense uses this doctrine aggressively on stairs, curbs, parking lots, and vacation-rental decks. It is fact-specific, not an automatic bar. Lighting, distraction, the angle of approach, prior complaints — all of that matters. Many cases the defense calls open and obvious are anything but, once the facts come out.

Knowing about a hazard does not automatically end the case under North Carolina law, but it does raise both the open and obvious doctrine and the contributory negligence question. The facts decide it — whether you had a reasonable alternative, whether the owner created a trap, whether the warning was adequate. Tell me what happened. I will tell you honestly whether I think the case can be defended under NC's rules.

Three years from the date of injury for most premises cases in North Carolina. Two years if the case is a wrongful-death claim. Evidence degrades much faster than the statute runs, so the first call matters now, not later. The consultation is free. No fee unless I win your case.