North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

Years after the defendant-agencies developed their original environmental impact statement (EIS) for a proposed bridge over Currituck Sound, the state renewed its plans to build the bridge. In the interim, coastal development and traffic projections decreased, and expected sea level ...

Tagged with: Environmental

Even though plaintiff’s decedent, an ERISA plan participant, was incapacitated by illness during the period when he could have converted his employer-provided life insurance policy to an individual policy, and even though the participant tried to make the conversion 26 ...

Tagged with: Insurance

To the extent several subsections of North Carolina’s Property Protection Act punish newsgathering activities, those subsections violate the First Amendment. We affirm the district court’s determination that the subsections or the Property Protection Act (the Act) violate plaintiffs’ constitutional rights ...

Tagged with: Constitutional

Defendant’s supervised release could not have been revoked if he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, so defendant was not excused from invoking his right to remain silent by the “classic penalty situation” when his probation officer asked if ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

Even though defendant has languished in pretrial detention for nearly six years while the government attempts to restore his competency to stand trial, since (1) the grave offenses – involving child sexual abuse material – with which defendant is charged ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice

The plaintiff-salvage company argues that, after it spend a decade locating the wreck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the parties entered into a contract (the 2013 Agreement) to govern the treatment of the digital media and other matters related to ...

Tagged with: Contract

Even though individual defendant Crider is not a party to plaintiff Mary Annette, LLC’s operating agreement, defendants’ breach of contract counterclaim concerns an alleged breach, not of the Mary Annette operating agreement, but of an alleged oral agreement relating to ...

Tagged with: Contract

The bankruptcy-debtor formerly produced asbestos-containing products. Its commercial general liability insurer seeks relief from the debtor’s bankruptcy plan because, under the plan, claims under the insurer’s policy do not get the same anti-fraud screening protection that uninsured claims will get ...

Tagged with: Bankruptcy

The founder of the defendant-Dutch software company learned of the plaintiff-North Carolina software company’s product and reached into North Carolina to initiate a deal between the two companies. The companies entered into an oral contract that was to be substantially ...

Tagged with: Intellectual Property

Defendant’s presentence report (PSR) recommended a sentencing enhancement because defendant possessed a firearm in connection with his larceny of a car, but the issue of whether defendant had stolen the car – in which he fled from police – came ...

Tagged with: Criminal Practice