North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

  Two new justices will be joining the North Carolina Supreme Court, and four new judges are headed for the Court of Appeals, but the identity of the state’s next chief justice remains unknown pending a recount due to be ...

Tagged with: N.C. Supreme Court

Instead of welcoming Amy Wooten with coffee and pastries and showing her to her new office on her first day as a litigator at Ward and Smith’s Raleigh office in April, her new colleagues watched from a distance as she ...

Tagged with: hired

  The owners, builders, and architects of five Triad apartment complexes will spend $1.3 million to settle a complaint that apartments and public areas in their communities were inaccessible to disabled residents, their attorney reports. Jack Holtzman, of the North ...

Tagged with: ADA Violations

  The town of Carolina Beach has settled a class action claim that it illegally charged builders water and sewer fees for $850,000, the plaintiffs’ attorney reports. Hunter Bryson of Whitfield Bryson in Raleigh said that the settlement affects about ...

Tagged with: Class Action

North Carolina voters have spoken, although in some races it will still be a few more days until we find out what exactly they’ve said. By the end of the night on Nov. 3, the state’s board of elections had ...

Tagged with: election

  With jury trials resuming in courtrooms across the state, North Carolina attorneys are preparing for unprecedented challenges. While lessons gleaned from other states where trials are already underway can give attorneys a glimpse of what to expect, they’re grappling ...

Tagged with: jury trials

  A six-year delay between arrest and trial constituted a violation of a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, particularly where the state failed to explain the wait, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled, reversing ...

Tagged with: speedy trial

  A police officer who was driving at nearly twice the posted speed limit isn’t entitled to immunity from a lawsuit stemming from the resulting car crash because he wasn’t responding to any genuine emergency, a divided 4th U.S. Circuit ...

Tagged with: Qualified Immunity

  Considering a question of first impression in the state, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled that a trial court erred by ordering distributions from a disputed trust to some putative beneficiaries, but not others, and declining to ...

Tagged with: Trusts and Estates

An insurance company must honor its business interruption coverage for 16 North Carolina restaurants that closed on the orders of the state due to COVID-19 because the restaurants suffered actual “physical loss,” a Durham County Superior Court judge has ruled. ...

Tagged with: coronavirus Insurance