By Nicholas A. Hurston  Where a claimant’s defamation suit was dismissed with a warning that further frivolous pleadings might justify sanctions, her subsequently filed claims based on new conduct were not frivolous and did not warrant sanctions.  The 4th U.S. ...

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Repeated discovery violations committed by a real estate holding company and its owner-founder justified the “harsh” of striking their pleadings and entering a default judgment, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled in a case involving a billionaire currently ...

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The trial court’s findings support its conclusion that this Orange County lawsuit was filed for the improper purpose of driving a wedge between defendants and their attorneys in a previously filed Durham County lawsuit – e.g., by making one of ...

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Attorneys’ “egregious” conduct was designed to, and did, mislead the district court, the 4th Circuit affirmed. They challenged the authenticity of a loan agreement for two years before revealing that they possessed an identical copy, obtained from their client, before ...

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Despite defendants’ egregious violations of Industrial Commission orders, leading to a decline in plaintiff’s condition, the Commission can only impose the sanctions set out in the Workers’ Compensation Act. We affirm the Commission’s opinion and award and its denial of ...

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  The dreaded terminating sanction, also known as the doomsday sanction, is the nuclear option of civil benchslaps. And Davidson County Superior Court Judge Jeff Carpenter pushed the button. Apparently fed up with alleged electronic discovery-related chicanery, Carpenter granted a ...

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Whitehurst v. East Carolina University (Lawyers Weekly No. 011-056-18, 20 pp.) (Valerie Zachary, J.) Appealed from the Office of Administrative Hearings (Donald Overby, ALJ) N.C. App. Holding: Petitioner, a ECU campus police officer, responded to a report of an “assault”; ...

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Plasman v. Decca Furniture (USA), Inc. (Lawyers Weekly No. 011-037-18, 23 pp.) (Linda McGee, C.J.) Appealed from Catawba County Superior Court (Louis Bledsoe III, J.) N.C. App. Holding: Defendants clearly indicated in their motion to dismiss the second amended complaint ...

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Gillespie v. Majestic Transport, Inc. (Lawyers Weekly No. 020-050-17, 16 pp.) (Gregory McGuire, J.) 2017 NCBC 43 Holding: Even though plaintiff has been unable to retain new counsel since his original attorneys withdrew, he consented to the withdrawal, he has ...

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A Texas Credit Union will be able to recoup a bigger chunk of the attorneys’ fees it incurred as a result of opposing counsel’s misleading the court about the existence of a crucial document. A North Carolina federal judge ruled ...

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