North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

  Since the paternal grandparents intervened in a custody battle before the defendant-father died, the trial court had statutory authority to grant the grandparents custody rights. However, the trial court violated the plaintiff-mother’s constitutional right to the custody, care and ...

  During the respondent-mother’s termination-of-parental-rights hearing, the active participation of respondent’s counsel consisted of a short cross-examination of one of DSS’s witnesses in the course of the adjudication stage, along with the presentation of a conciliatory closing argument after both ...

  The respondent-mother’s child, “Kelly,” had been out of respondent’s care for four years at the time of the termination of parental rights hearing. She was no longer living in a house where Kelly’s father was manufacturing meth and had ...

Judge Elizabeth Trosch presided at earlier permanency planning hearings and determined that a permanent plan of adoption was in the minor J.A.M.’s best interests. This did not require the judge to recuse herself from the hearing on the petition to ...

  While there was evidence of ill will between the respondent-mother and petitioners—respondent’s relatives who had custody of the minor child, Anne—and while a custody order did not give respondent a right to visitation, respondent’s failure to even attempt any ...

  The defendant-hospital’s action—dismissing its counterclaim against the plaintiff-patient and binding itself not to seek payment from him—does not moot plaintiff’s class action on behalf of uninsured patients who were charged pursuant to the hospital’s “Chargemaster” rates. The relation back ...

  Defendant’s convictions for felony assault inflicting serious bodily injury (felony assault) and misdemeanor assault inflicting serious injury (misdemeanor assault)—which led to sentences for felony assault and habitual misdemeanor assault—stemmed from the same incident. Since G.S. § 14-33, which defines ...

  Where (1) defendant was ordered to submit the satellite-based monitoring (SBM) solely due to his conviction of an aggravated offense; (2) he will not actually enroll in the program for approximately 15 to 20 years, after he has completed ...

  Although defendant failed to object when the trial court ordered him to submit to satellite-based monitoring, we invoke N.C. R. App. 2 to consider defendant’s appeal because (1) the Fourth Amendment right implicated by the imposition of SBM is ...

  Even though the administrative law judge found that respondent had failed to prove that petitioner had stolen from a co-worker—the stated grounds for his termination—petitioner’s remedies could nevertheless be limited by after-acquired evidence: that petitioner had omitted several criminal ...