Pinto Coates Kyre & Bowers, PLLC

• In connection with a discovery dispute between the parties, the Court of Appeals held that a blanket general objection asserted by the defendants based on “the attorney/client privilege, the work product doctrine, or any other applicable privilege or doctrine” was inadequate to effect the intended purpose of the objection. The Court noted that even though [...]In a lawsuit involving a mobile home park tenant assaulted by another tenant, the Court of Appeals stated that although North Carolina law has recognized a landowner’s duty to exercise reasonable care to protect tenants from foreseeable third-party criminal acts, such a duty did not include a duty to evict a tenant, and although other [...]
• In a medical malpractice lawsuit brought by the parents of a deceased child alleging that defendant doctors were negligent in failing to discover lacerations to the child’s liver at the hospital following a car accident, the Court of Appeals agreed that the parents’ expert witness’ testimony was not improperly speculative, even though the expert used [...]The North Carolina Supreme Court “adopted” the reasoning of the dissenting Court of Appeals judge and hence held that the age of a lawful visitor injured on property naturally occurring (a creek), in and of itself, did not impose a higher standard of care on the property owner, because such a heightened level of care [...]
• In a product liability action involving a self-propelled wheelchair that caught fire, resulting in the house to catch on fire and burning Plaintiff’s decedent, the Court of Appeals held that the defense of “insulating negligence” (by which a defendant is insulated from liability by an independent act of another) does not apply where it is [...]The Court of Appeals, asserting that it was following established law, declined to allow damages for the loss of a pet dog based upon a strong emotional bond the owners had with the dog, and instead damages were generally limited to the cost of “replacing” the dog, since the Court viewed the dog as merely [...]
• Although Plaintiff filed the Complaint without it being signed and ordinarily that would result in the action being deemed not to have been properly instituted, Plaintiff’s prompt remedial measures of filing an amended, signed Complaint corrected the deficiency, and the amended Complaint related back to the commencement of the action for purposes of timeliness. Estate [...]

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