Trip, Slip, and Fall Injuries in Grocery Stores
People fall in grocery stores ALL the time. In North Carolina, injuries resulting from falls aren’t always the responsibility of the property owner. The law is tricky!
So, when are property owners responsible for injuries related to falls on their property. In short, victims have to show that the owner was aware of the “dangerous condition” that caused their fall, OR that by the exercise of reasonable care they should have been aware of it, AND that they failed to adequately warn the victim of the dangerous condition.
That’s a mouthful. In layman’s terms, you have to show that what caused your fall was something they knew about, or should have if they were doing their job, that you had no reasonable way of knowing about it, and that caused your fall. Not an easy task, as you might imagine.
On top of that, North Carolina is a contributory negligence state, which means that if you’re even 1% at fault in your accident, you can’t recover from the person who’s 99% at fault.
The way this plays out in these case is like this: The better you are at proving that dangerous condition was so darn dangerous and so darn obvious, the more help you give the defendant in proving that you should have known about it, too, and should have been able to avoid it. It’s almost a Catch-22.
These injuries can be life-altering and the cases can be complex. If you are injured in a fall in a grocery store, or any commercial area, give me a call. 919-929-2992
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