Usually, yes. In North Carolina, the workers' compensation system is designed to help people who are hurt on the job. Generally, it does not matter if someone caused your injury, even if that someone was you. That’s because accidents happen, especially if you have been working hard all day. So if you weren’t paying attention and slipped, or lost your concentration and cut yourself, you still should be entitled to worker’s compensation benefits.
The reverse is unfortunately also true, that it generally doesn’t matter if one of your co-workers or supervisors caused your injury by their own carelessness. The North Carolina worker’s compensation system was designed to quickly provide benefits to injured workers who were hurt on the job, and the idea was that fighting over who caused an injury would slow the process down. We don’t want people to wait months or years to receive benefits while investigations go on about how an accident happened, or who was at fault in the situation.
Now that isn’t to say that people always get the benefits they deserve quickly, or even at all. Insurance companies still have ways of denying benefits to injured workers. Workers' compensation claims can still be denied if an employee is alleged to have been intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. And insurance companies often try to deny claims on the basis that an employee was not properly “in the course and scope of employment” or because there was not an “injury by accident”. Or they will try to classify an employee as a temporary employee, as a subcontractor, or as an ”independent contractor” to try to reduce or eliminate recovery rights.