Baseball is America’s national pastime, but has time perhaps passed it by? It’s the sort of question that might be debated in bar rooms and living rooms, but Sidebar never expected to hear the question put forward in court room ...
Read More »Litigant cries foul over court’s Baseball Rule
Sidebar shakes family tree, finds N.C.’s first female lawyer 
Sidebar knows that many attorneys are history buffs, and we recently came across a tidbit that’s germane to not only our history, but practice of law in North Carolina as well. It’s well-known in legal circles that Tabitha Anne Holton ...
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Read More »Basket case: Worker left hanging after laundry-related injury 
Remember traveling? Getting dressed for work? Those were the days, but they weren’t without their risks, as Sidebar was reminded while reading a recent North Carolina Court of Appeals decision from the safety of his home office. Jerry McSwain filed ...
Read More »Law grad presses on with libel suit against judge, law blog 
A recent law school graduate isn’t giving up on his lawsuit alleging the online site Above the Law defamed him in a 2018 story that referred to him as a “dumb kid” and “entitled ponce.” On Jan. 6, U.S. District ...
Read More »N.C. attorneys help rapper win Fyre fight 
It’s hard to imagine how the Fyre Festival could have possibly been a bigger disaster. Promoters had hyped it as the experience of a lifetime, a luxurious music festival set on a dazzling Bahamian island, but in the end absolutely ...
Read More »Passive voice was written about 
Sidebar is always gently reminding his reporters to be thoughtful in choosing whether to use the active or passive voice in a story. There’s a time to write “a spy planted the bug in the office” (active), and a time ...
Tagged with: passive voice
Read More »In RV-turned-office, new firm is popping up
The 33-foot Winnebago Vista was hard to miss when Sidebar rolled into the parking lot of a shopping center in northeast Raleigh—which, for the law firm that operates out of it, is sort of the point. The new firm, Osborn ...
Read More »If mascots came to moot courts 
The 2019 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament was tipping off just as Lawyers Weekly went to press, so Sidebar won’t embarrass itself by publishing its picks for the Final Four, but March is also the time of year for ...
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Read More »Guilford judge sounds off, gets sent off 
“Radical transparency” is a hot new trend in tech and political circles, but a Guilford County District Court judge has—perhaps—provided some fairly radical transparency about why he’s just been suspended from the bench. Guilford County District Judge Mark Cummings was ...
Tagged with: allegations
Read More »To all the toys I’ve loved before 
Appellate judges are often called upon to review cases in which a person’s freedom, or livelihood, or constitutional rights may hang in the balance. And then there’s also this stuff: The North Carolina Court of Appeals recently handed down an ...
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