Thomas D. Schroeder

This case involves the U.S. government's effort to collect approximately $1.6 million in unpaid federal income taxes and penalties from attorney Jerry B. Clayton for tax years 2002–2007, along with foreclosure on jointly owned property to satisfy a tax lien. Clayton moved for summary judgment, arguing that a general discharge in his Chapter 7 bankruptcy case barred the claims and that the government lacked sufficient evidence of willful tax evasion. The court denied the motion, holding that genuine disputes of material fact exist regarding whether Clayton's conduct constituted willful evasion that would render the taxes nondischargeable. Those disputes center on evidence of the Claytons' substantial discretionary spending (including large credit card charges, loans, and support payments) despite reported high income, contrasted with Clayton's claims that he delegated finances to his wife, was unaware of specific liabilities, and faced medical and educational expenses. The court found these factual issues must be resolved at trial rather than on summary judgment.

taxespropertyprocedure

This case involves the United States seeking a judgment for over $1.9 million in unpaid income taxes, interest, and penalties from Jerry Clayton for tax years 2002–2007, along with foreclosure on jointly owned property to satisfy the tax lien. Clayton moved for judgment on the pleadings, arguing that his Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharge barred the claims because the government’s complaint alleged only nonpayment and neither party had litigated dischargeability exceptions in the bankruptcy court. The court denied the motion conditionally, allowing the government to file an amended complaint; absent amendment, the motion would be granted in part. The core reasoning was that tax debts are not automatically discharged if they fall under statutory exceptions such as willful evasion under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(1)(C), which the current complaint failed to plausibly allege, and that a general discharge does not preclude the government from pursuing nondischargeable liabilities through proper pleading.

taxespropertyprocedure

In United States v. Wen Bin Chen, the defendant moved to suppress evidence, including American Express gift cards, seized from his person during a police encounter at a Mebane, North Carolina Walmart on January 21, 2011. The court denied the motion after an evidentiary hearing. The opinion found that Sergeant Davis had lawfully approached Chen's minivan as part of an ongoing credit card fraud investigation involving multiple suspects who had used the vehicle, and that the officer's observation of a bulge in Chen's pocket during this encounter justified a pat-down for safety reasons. Upon feeling the bulge, which immediately felt like credit cards consistent with the fraud, Davis had grounds to seize the items under the plain-feel doctrine; independently, probable cause supported Chen's arrest and a search incident to it.

criminal lawprocedure

This ERISA case arose after Pitney Bowes denied retirement benefits to the estate of long-time employee James Barker and a co-plaintiff, because Barker had elected an October 1, 2006 retirement date but died on September 12, 2006, before that annuity starting date while still classified as an active employee on long-term disability. The court previously granted summary judgment to the company and its benefits committee, and the defendants then sought attorneys’ fees of roughly $35,000 plus costs. Applying the five Quesinberry factors, the court denied fees, finding no bad faith by the plaintiffs, uncertainty about their ability to pay, limited deterrent or plan-wide value, and that the defendants’ stronger merits position did not justify fees absent an ERISA presumption in favor of a prevailing party. Costs were awarded, however, because Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d) creates a presumption favoring the prevailing party that ERISA does not override.

labor & employmentprocedurebusiness & regulatory

This case involves two white Greensboro Police Department officers who sued the City of Greensboro and various officials, alleging racial discrimination and related wrongdoing stemming from accusations that they participated in a 'secret police' unit targeting black officers through improper investigations and a 'black book' photo array. The plaintiffs claimed defendants promoted these allegations despite knowing them to be false, conducted flawed investigations, and engaged in conspiracies to discredit them, asserting federal claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and related statutes along with state-law claims. The court granted the defendants' motions to dismiss all federal claims, finding the amended complaint's allegations conclusory and insufficient to state plausible claims of discrimination, conspiracy, malicious prosecution, or due process violations. It declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claims, dismissing them without prejudice. The decision rested on the lack of specific factual support for the plaintiffs' assertions of racial animus and improper conduct.

civil rightscriminal lawprocedure

This case involves multiple African-American police officers employed by the Greensboro Police Department who sued the City of Greensboro under Title VII, alleging racial discrimination including a hostile work environment and disparate treatment by white supervisors. Earlier in the litigation, the court partially granted the City's motion to dismiss, leaving most plaintiffs' hostile work environment claims and two disparate treatment claims intact. The City then moved for judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12(c), arguing that certain claims were not properly exhausted through EEOC charges and that the pleadings did not support the remaining claims as a matter of law. The court denied the motion, holding that Rule 12(g)(2) did not bar the request but that, when viewing the allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs and considering the scope of the EEOC charges and related filings, genuine issues remained that prevented judgment on the pleadings.

civil rightslabor & employment

This case involves a trademark dispute in which plaintiffs Rebel Debutante LLC and Anna Stubblefield, who registered the mark "Rebel Debutante" in 2009 for clothing and related goods and sold merchandise online, sued defendant Forsythe Cosmetic Group for using the same term on a limited nail polish collection sold under its Color Club brand starting in 2010. Plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction to halt the use, recall products, and obtain other relief, while Forsythe moved to transfer the case to the Southern District of New York. The court evaluated the request under Lanham Act standards, including the Dawn Donut rule on geographic markets, but determined that plaintiffs' prior registration, nationwide internet publicity, and evidence of potential confusion supported entry of a preliminary injunction at this stage, while noting that permanent relief would require further proof.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case arose from a 2004 plane crash of a Beechcraft aircraft owned by Hendrick Motorsports during an instrument approach to a Virginia airport, resulting in wrongful death claims by the estate of a passenger against the aircraft operators. After a jury trial, the jury returned a verdict finding no liability on the part of the defendants. The plaintiff moved for a new trial under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59, arguing that the verdict was against the great weight of the evidence, based on false evidence, and would result in a miscarriage of justice. The court denied the motion, concluding after weighing the evidence and assessing credibility that the jury's verdict was supported by the record of the pilots' navigation and approach procedures.

torts & liabilityprocedure

This case involved claims under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) by plaintiff Crystal Garcia-Contreras against debt collector Brock & Scott, PLLC and creditor Bullhead Investments, LLC. The defendants sent a debt collection letter threatening immediate litigation and then filed a state court lawsuit without first verifying the debt after the plaintiff disputed it in writing. The court granted summary judgment to the plaintiff on liability, finding that the letter and subsequent filing violated 15 U.S.C. § 1692g(b) by overshadowing the statutory rights to dispute the debt and request verification, and by continuing collection activities without providing verification. The court rejected arguments that service of the state court complaint itself constituted sufficient verification or that constitutional protections barred the claims.

business & regulatory

In Weaks v. North Carolina Department of Transportation, an African-American DMV employee sued under Title VII and Section 1983, alleging racial discrimination in the employer's failure to promote him to Assistant Director-Emissions and in disparate treatment. The plaintiff had applied for the position along with a Caucasian colleague who had longer tenure and more supervisory experience; an interview panel selected the other candidate after scoring both on qualifications, interview performance, and other factors. The court granted the employer's motion for summary judgment, holding that the plaintiff failed to present evidence creating a genuine dispute that the stated reasons for the decision were a pretext for race discrimination or that any procedural irregularities violated policy in a way that suggested bias. The opinion emphasized the absence of direct evidence of discrimination, the objective scoring process, and the plaintiff's inability to show that he was clearly more qualified than the selectee.

civil rightslabor & employment

This case involves multiple African American police officers suing the City of Greensboro, its police chief, and other officials, alleging racial discrimination, hostile work environment, retaliation, conspiracy, and related state-law claims such as breach of contract and invasion of privacy arising from employment actions within the Greensboro Police Department. The court addressed motions to dismiss the amended complaint and a proposed second amended complaint under Rule 12(b)(6), along with immunity and other defenses. It granted the motions in part and denied them in part, allowing certain federal claims under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983 to proceed where plaintiffs plausibly alleged municipal policy, custom, or individual conduct supporting disparate treatment and hostile environment, while dismissing others for insufficient pleading, failure to state a claim, or immunity. State claims were similarly parsed, with some surviving based on allegations of malice or specific misconduct and others dismissed. The decision applied standards from cases like Domino's Pizza and Twombly/Iqbal to evaluate the sufficiency of each plaintiff's individual allegations.

civil rightslabor & employment

This ERISA case involved plaintiffs, the estate of former Pitney Bowes employee James Barker and his designated beneficiary, seeking retirement benefits after Barker's death in 2006 while on long-term disability leave. The plaintiffs claimed that Barker had properly elected an early retirement lump-sum distribution or rollover before his death, but the plan's Benefits Committee denied the claim on the grounds that no valid election or annuity starting date had been established under the plan terms. The court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment, holding that the plan granted the Benefits Committee discretionary authority to interpret its terms and that the denial was reasonable because Barker had not satisfied the requirements for an early retirement election or pre-retirement death benefits. The decision rested on the plan's plain language regarding termination of service, annuity starting dates, and the effect of death before those dates, along with the deferential standard of review applicable to the administrator's factual and legal determinations.

labor & employmentbusiness & regulatory

This case involved a dispute over a subcontract for construction work on a Navy facility in North Carolina, where plaintiff SCCB claimed it was wrongfully terminated by subcontractor Broadband after performing its obligations. SCCB sued Broadband for breach of contract and the prime contractor P. Browne and surety Arch under the federal Miller Act payment bond, and a jury awarded SCCB $260,267.10 in damages. In this post-trial motion, the court addressed SCCB's request for attorneys' fees and interest under the subcontract's collection provision. The court granted the motion, holding that the subcontract qualified as evidence of indebtedness under North Carolina law, making the fee provision enforceable, that Miller Act precedents permitted recovery of fees when authorized by contract, and that contractual interest terms applied to both pre- and post-judgment amounts against all defendants.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case involves a federal habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 filed by Donald John Scanlon challenging his 1998 North Carolina state convictions for first-degree murder and related theft offenses, as well as his death sentence. Scanlon argued that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to adequately investigate the victim's medical records to support a defense that the death was not a homicide. The district court denied the petition after reviewing the state court proceedings, concluding that the state courts' rejection of the ineffective assistance claim was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of Strickland v. Washington and related precedents, as counsel's performance and any prejudice were reasonably assessed based on the record. The court issued a certificate of appealability due to the close nature of the questions presented.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved a qui tam lawsuit by the North Carolina Farmers’ Assistance Fund against Monsanto and other seed companies, alleging false marking of Roundup Ready soybean seeds with references to U.S. Patent No. 5,352,605 in violation of 35 U.S.C. § 292. The court granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(6) and 9(b), treating a related motion for judgment on the pleadings the same way, and dismissed the complaint without prejudice. The court found the complaint failed to plead with sufficient particularity the elements of a false marking claim, including that the defendants marked unpatented articles with intent to deceive the public. Because the claims were dismissed on pleading grounds, the court did not reach the constitutional challenge to section 292.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case consolidated claims against the United States arising from the October 2004 crash of a Beechcraft King Air aircraft near Martinsville, Virginia, in which all aboard were killed while attempting an instrument approach in poor weather. After a bench trial on the non-jury claims, the court issued findings of fact and conclusions of law determining that the pilots breached their duties by failing to verify their position upon reaching the missed approach point, descending below minimum altitudes, and not executing the published missed approach procedure as required by federal regulations and the Aeronautical Information Manual. The court held that air traffic controllers generally met their standard of care under the ATC Manual and common law, that any arguable controller shortcomings did not proximately cause the accident, and that the pilots' negligence constituted an intervening and superseding cause under Virginia law.

torts & liabilityprocedure

The case involved a former U.S. Postal Service rural letter carrier who sued the Postmaster General under the Rehabilitation Act and ADA, alleging disability discrimination, failure to accommodate her mental health conditions, and constructive discharge based on workplace incidents from 2004 that she claimed created a hostile environment and led to her resignation and disability retirement. The court treated the defendant's motion as one for summary judgment and granted it, dismissing all claims. The core reasoning was that the plaintiff failed to timely exhaust administrative remedies by contacting an EEO counselor more than 45 days after the last alleged discriminatory act, and equitable tolling did not apply because she was not shown to have been misled by the employer or to have suffered profound mental incapacity that prevented timely filing, with posted notices providing constructive notice of the deadline.

civil rightslabor & employmentprocedure

In Blackburn v. Trustees of Guilford Technical Community College, the plaintiff sued her former employer, a community college, alleging termination in violation of Title I of the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act after workplace injuries led to work restrictions and the employer perceived her as disabled without providing accommodation or allowing return to modified duties. The defendant moved to dismiss under Federal Rules 12(b)(1), (2), and (6), citing failure to state a claim and sovereign immunity. The court granted the motion, dismissing the amended complaint without prejudice, as the ADA Title I claim was barred by Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity and the pleadings did not sufficiently allege facts supporting discrimination or qualification for relief under the statutes.

civil rightslabor & employmentfederal power

This case concerns a dispute over the priority and avoidability of a deed of trust lien held by SunTrust Bank on two tracts of real property owned by a bankruptcy debtor in Orange County, North Carolina, where the county uses a parcel identifier number (PIN) system as its official land records index alongside a traditional grantor/grantee index. SunTrust appealed the bankruptcy court's grant of summary judgment to the Chapter 7 trustee and competing lienholders, which allowed the trustee to avoid SunTrust's lien on Tract I under 11 U.S.C. § 544(a) because the deed of trust had not been indexed under Tract I's PIN until after the bankruptcy filing. The district court affirmed, holding that the PIN index is the official system, so the lien was not properly registered as to Tract I despite correct indexing in the grantor/grantee system, and the risk of improper indexing falls on the filer rather than subsequent searchers. The court distinguished prior case law on mis-indexed deeds and rejected arguments for substantial compliance or required cross-index searches.

propertyprocedure

The case involved a former employee's lawsuit against his employer Cemex for wrongful discharge in violation of North Carolina public policy, common law, and the Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act (REDA), which was removed to federal court on diversity grounds. The magistrate judge recommended remand sua sponte on the basis that the REDA claim arose under state workers' compensation laws and thus could not be removed under 28 U.S.C. § 1445(c). The district court rejected the recommendation, holding that any violation of § 1445(c) is a procedural defect that is waived if not raised by a party within 30 days of removal, and that the plaintiff had not timely objected. The court further found that the defendant had shown by a preponderance of the evidence that the amount in controversy exceeded $75,000, satisfying the requirements for diversity jurisdiction, and therefore denied the motion to remand.

labor & employmentprocedure