North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

Closely held corporations that are named as defendants in a shareholder’s derivative lawsuit may pursue counterclaims against that shareholder, the North Carolina Business Court has ruled in a case of first impression. Bill Gao, Johannes Heckmann, and Ellen Liu were ...

Tagged with: Counterclaim

North Carolina attorneys would be allowed to participate in repsight.com, an online service that offers to help lawyers accumulate more positive client reviews, under certain conditions, but would not be allowed to become members of “Lawyers of Distinction,” a private ...

Tagged with: Ethics

  With few exceptions, municipalities enjoy governmental immunity from common-law tort claims that arise out of their performance of governmental functions. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held recently that the town of Mocksville is liable for the ...

Tagged with: police

North Carolina legislators were forced to scramble back to Raleigh this week for a hastily convened extra session to try to deal with some of the unintended consequences of recent changes to the state’s election laws. Lawmakers are pushing two ...

Tagged with: Elections

The comedian Rodney Dangerfield was ahead of his time when it came to marital independence. “We sleep in separate rooms, we have dinner apart, we take separate vacations—we’re doing everything we can to keep our marriage together,” he liked to ...

Tagged with: bank accounts

This is the second article in a series revisiting some of Lawyers Weekly’s best stories over the years, seeing how issues have evolved since we last covered them, and how well our stories anticipated future developments. In December 2014, we ...

Tagged with: driverless car

A serial killer on North Carolina’s death row had no constitutional right under Simmons v. South Carolina to inform the sentencing jury that because he was already ineligible for parole, he did not pose a continuing danger to society, the ...

Tagged with: 4th Circuit Death Penalty murder Simmons

Earlier this year, the North Carolina Central University School of Law, responding to American Bar Association concerns regarding the school’s academic attrition and low bar passage, said that it was going to raise its own standards. The changes made by ...

Tagged with: aba nccu North Carolina Central University School of Law

If someone breaks your arm or your leg, a competent lawyer can probably give you a reasonably good estimate of how much your prospective case is worth. But if someone breaks your heart, putting a value on your legal claim ...

Tagged with: Heart-balm

  Where the state failed to prove a crucial element of felony indecent exposure—and the jury was never instructed to consider the element—the state Court of Appeals has ruled that the defendant is entitled to a new trial. According to ...

Tagged with: Indecent Exposure