North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

A pro se prisoner’s claim that his rights were violated was supported by the failure of prison officials to explain the need to check his mail for contraband outside of his presence. Because the infringement of his First Amendment rights ...

A reasonable jury could find a black homeless man who had been stopped for walking alongside, instead of on, the sidewalk, and who was shot 22 times by West Virginia police officers had been secured, or at a minimum was ...

  In this defamation case, the court declines to extend the absolute privilege—applicable to, among other things, statements made in or related to litigation—to an attorney’s press conference, despite the fact that the attorney’s statements “mirrored” those in a complaint ...

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 ...

  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 ...

Although two stores suffered property damage while law enforcement was executing search warrants, the damage did not rise to the level of a Fourth Amendment violation because it was not “major” and was plausibly connected to the execution of the ...

Where the trial court’s finding that a defendant encouraged a hospital patient to attack the plaintiff was based on its credibility determination of the witnesses, it was affirmed. But where the doctor’s decision regarding treatment was based on his professional ...

Officers sued for wrongful arrest in a case involving employee theft at a Walmart were correctly denied qualified immunity because the record did not provide an objectively reasonable belief in the probable cause required to justify an arrest. Background In ...

An officer who shot a privately owned dog during the course of assisting with an arrest warrant lost his bid for dismissal and qualified immunity. Although the court had not previously held that it is unreasonable for a police officer ...

Where an appellant brought a qui tam action pro se, the court joined other circuits in holding a relator cannot bring a pro se qui tam action under the False Claims Act, or FCA, because the federal government could be bound by an ...