North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

They came, they saw, and they talked for hours about legal fees. A disgruntled client wondered whether his attorneys were “churning’ his case to produce billable hours. A divorcing mother said she sold her grandmother’s silver to pay her legal ...

Even though a blood test indicated a near 100 percent probability that the defendant was the father of a seven-year-old child, an expert witness could not offer an opinion on paternity, the Court of Appeals ruled March 3. In a ...

The defense of habitation should be available to a man who killed an intruder who was re-entering his home to assault him, the Court of Appeals said March 3. “This case opens up the habitation defense,’ said Nags Head lawyer ...

North Carolina continues to have fewer lawyers per capita than any other state, according to an American Bar Association study. With 10,238 lawyers ‘ or one for every 634 residents ‘ the state ranks last in lawyer saturation, the ABA ...

A steel worker whose own negligence contributed to severe injuries he suffered in a fall has nevertheless recovered $185,000 from a general contractor who was found willfully negligent by an Iredell County jury. The case is Ballard v. R.L. Casey, ...

A dissent in a Feb. 18 Appeals Court ruling would make it easier to retroactively modify alimony awards in emergency situations, lawyers say. The key question raised by the dissent: what should judges be allowed to do when a financial ...

The nation may have been racked by recession in 1991, but the state’s 25 largest law firms managed to hold their own, a Lawyers Weekly survey has found. Overall, North Carolina’s biggest firms registered an average growth of 1.8 percent ...

A $1,300 damage award to a restaurant worker who was sexually assaulted by her night manager was inadequate as a matter of law, the Court of Appeals ruled Feb. 18. The verdict was flawed because it only reimbursed the teenage ...

The general rule that wrongdoers may not profit from their misdeeds was overcome by an innovative plaintiff in a Feb. 18 Court of Appeals decision. In Evans, Adm’r v. Diaz (North Carolina Lawyers Weekly No. NA0253 – 4 pages), a ...

Chief Judge R.A. ‘Fred’ Hedrick, the longest-tenured judge on the N.C. Court of Appeals, including eight years as chief judge, has announced he will not seek reelection in November. Citing his 23 years on the court and the state’s mandatory ...