North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

An employer may use statistics to disprove it retaliated against a knitter for filing a workers’ compensation claim, the Supreme Court ruled Dec. 3. In overturning the knitter’s $82,000 jury award, the court said the company could compare its treatment ...

A Cabarrus County hairdresser who fractured her leg in a 1990 auto accident has collected $250,000 in a settlement ‘ including more than $200,000 for a ‘lost career opportunity.’ The hairdresser’s medical expenses were $29,000, and lost earnings were another ...

Is infertility a disease or a condition? That question may soon be answered by the U.S. Middle District as it decides whether an employee’s health plan should have covered her in vitro fertilization. A Ciba-Geigy employee underwent a series of ...

An Appeals Court panel, apparently frustrated in its attempts to pin down the boundaries of emotional distress claims, has permitted another Ruark case to go to trial. But the court reversed the trial judge’s decision allowing uninsured motorist coverage when ...

A shareholder’s common law right to inspect a public company’s accounting records is not pre-empted by the Business Corporation Act, the Supreme Court held March 12. In the first major ruling on the state’s 1990 Business Corporation Act, shareholders came ...

To recover punitive damages in a wrongful death action, a plaintiff must only prove gross negligence, the N.C. Court of Appeals held April 6. The higher standards of ‘willful and wanton misconduct’ or ‘maliciousness’ don’t have to be met, the ...

Judgment Day may be near for the General Assembly: three bills now in the legislature have civil judgments as their focus. The timing for entry of a judgment would be greatly simplified under one bill. Lawyers would know with more ...

A Mecklenburg County woman has no equitable distribution claim to $2 million in real estate commissions that her husband earned after separation but prior to trial, the state Court of Appeals ruled May 18. The post-separation income was merely a ...

A mother whose own negligence led to her son’s auto death may not renounce her rights under the Wrongful Death Act in favor of her daughters, the state Supreme Court ruled June 4. As a tortfeasor, the mother was disqualified ...

Looking for the really big money? It’s time to sign on with a partner in Gastonia or Fayetteville or Jacksonville. Due to the small number of responses in some categories, the NCBA’s economic survey is prone to statistical blips. A ...