North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

Where the shape and color scheme of a chicken feeder served a functional purpose, the feeder was ineligible for trade dress protection. Background In this trade dress infringement case, CTB Inc. appeals rulings granting summary judgment in favor of Hog ...

A ruling could not be made at this stage on whether the Baltimore police use of a cell site simulator constituted a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The case was remanded for information about the device and ...

A defendant who pleaded guilty to two firearms charges did not understand the essential elements of the offense to which he pleaded. Because the district court accepted the plea without giving the defendant notice of an element of the offense, ...

  Once the state provided reasons for its peremptory challenges of African-American jurors and the trial court ruled on those reasons, the question of whether defendant had established a prima facie case of race discrimination became moot. The trial court’s ...

After defendant’s brother was convicted of assaulting a law enforcement officer, defendant, his brother and the brother’s girlfriend told jurors that they had made a mistake, convicted an innocent man, and ruined the brother’s life. However, the state failed to ...

  Reading North Carolina’s Public Records Act together with the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the court agrees with the trial court and the Court of Appeals that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as a ...

The respondent-father was incarcerated pending trial on charges that he had sexually abused his four-year-old daughter, “Amy,” and he was subject to a custody order barring him from contact with his children.  Nonetheless, since other avenues were open to allow ...

  Regardless of whether an SUV passenger’s middle-finger gesture was directed at a state trooper or at another motorist, the trooper did not have reasonable suspicion that the defendant-passenger intended to or was plainly likely to provoke violent retaliation from ...

  Where defendant displayed no plate at all on his truck, the trial court should have granted his motion to dismiss the charge of operating a motor vehicle while displaying an expired registration plate. Though the state’s evidence would have ...

During the year between defendant’s arrest and his trial, the trial court failed to determine whether defendant had waived his right to counsel, yet the court allowed defendant to proceed pro se. Even though defendant waived his right to counsel ...