For many moons, North Carolina was one of the few jurisdictions in which the losing party at the Court of Appeals could pursue an appeal as of right to the Supreme Court if the party managed to snag a dissenting opinion from the intermediate appellate court. The 2023 budget bill eliminated that statutory right, leaving
The North Carolina Supreme Court is not stingy with extensions. If a lawyer needs more time to file a brief, the Court will generally allow it.
But with the Court largely caught up on its docket, you might not want to bank on that extension request being granted right now.
Take the April 22-23, 2025
A decade ago, talk of fonts was all the rage in North Carolina appellate circles. Jurists were increasingly reading briefs on screens, not on paper. And what works on paper might not work so well on an iPad. (Here’s looking at you, footnotes.)
The central antagonist at the time was the Courier family of fonts—non-proportionally
Ever had to explain to a client why a sweet win in the lower courts doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s time to dig in and eat?
In City of Martinsville, VA v. Express Scripts, a Fourth Circuit majority opinion used a palatable analogy to explain the appellate stay concept in layman’s terms. In that
You can hit your snooze button a little later on Tuesdays. Effective January 1, 2025, the Court of Appeals’ scheduled filing days for opinions will be the first and third Wednesday of the month, Since the Court will be issuing a big batch of opinions on New Year’s Eve (and no one wants to read
In appeals, the general rule is that litigants cannot appeal an interlocutory order until a final judgment is entered. But in North Carolina, a major statutory exception to the general rule exists: When the trial court’s interlocutory ruling “affects a substantial right” that will be lost absent immediate appellate review. See N.C. Gen. Stat. §
The Supreme Court’s Technology Department has done it again. Quietly adding even more features to the appellate courts’ electronic filings site, www.ncappellatecourts.org.
The filing site has long allowed attorneys and the public to locate and view records, briefs, and other appellate filings by using a flexible search engine. A few years ago, a direct
It’s not every day that the Court of Appeals spends almost 12 pages talking about the appellate rules, including why rules compliance is so important. But that’s exactly what the Court of Appeals did in Harney v. Harney. Why? The appellant’s brief used an appendix to circumvent the 8,750 word-count limit. And then the
A dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals has long been a litigant’s Golden Ticket, at least until a recent statutory change. The mere existence of the dissent bestowed an automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court of North Carolina. But what if the dissenting opinion didn’t track what you argued? What if
When you read about someone breaking into an unlocked door in rural North Carolina you may hear sighs about the death of the good old days. But leave the front door wide open all night and even the sweetest southern grandma will shake her head in disbelief. That’s the picture that comes to my mind