In State v. Mills, defendant Kenneth Wayne Mills appealed his jury convictions for assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury and robbery with a dangerous weapon arising from an attack on victim William Baker outside a residence in 2009. The court affirmed the trial court's denial of the defendant's motions to dismiss both charges, holding that the State presented substantial evidence including testimony about the victim's injuries, a bent and bloody lawn chair found near blood at the scene, and the defendant's statements, which supported an inference that the chair was used as a dangerous weapon. The court also ruled that lay testimony from officers identifying blood on the chair was admissible and that the victim's testimony about stolen cash and items sufficiently supported the $730 restitution order.
The case involved Chad Braswell's appeal from convictions for driving while impaired under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-138.1 and leaving the scene of an accident under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-166(c). The Court of Appeals vacated the leaving-the-scene conviction because the record showed no indictment on that charge after its dismissal pursuant to a district-court plea agreement, even though the defendant was entitled to de novo review in superior court and the State could recharge. It affirmed the driving-while-impaired conviction, finding sufficient evidence from the blood-test results showing controlled substances and from failed field-sobriety tests, and holding that any jury-instruction issue did not amount to plain error.
This case involved three plaintiffs suing multiple defendants, including cemetery operators like Stonemor and SCI, over alleged failures to maintain grave sites at York Memorial Cemetery, resulting in misplaced or unlocatable headstones and burial plots for their deceased relatives; the claims included negligence, breach of contract, fraud, fraud upon the public, and unfair and deceptive trade practices. The North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's dismissal of all claims against all defendants under Rules 12(b)(2) and 12(b)(6). The court held there was no personal jurisdiction over SCI as a non-resident parent company because the long-arm statute did not apply based on its ownership of a subsidiary and plaintiffs failed to meet their burden. It further reasoned that the fraud claims lacked the required particularity in pleading misrepresentations, the unfair trade practices claims amounted to mere breach of contract without aggravating circumstances, and other claims were insufficiently stated.
Inmates in the North Carolina Department of Correction sued state agencies and officials seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, claiming that their sentences under the Structured Sentencing Act should be calculated using thirty-day months rather than calendar months, which would reduce the length of sentences exceeding twelve months. The trial court granted the defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The court held that N.C. Gen. Stat. § 12-3(3) controls by defining "month" as a calendar month unless otherwise expressed, while § 12-3(12) creates a narrow term of art limited to the phrase "imprisonment for one month" and does not redefine "month" for sentencing purposes. The opinion emphasized that execution of sentences is an administrative function governed by the plain language of the statutes.
Plaintiffs sued multiple defendants, including Hunter Construction, for damages from land-disturbing activities on adjacent property, asserting claims including negligence, nuisance, trespass, and violations of the Sedimentation Pollution Control Act (SPCA). The trial court granted summary judgment to defendants on the SPCA claims but allowed the others to proceed to trial, where the jury awarded plaintiffs $675,000 in damages. On appeal, plaintiffs challenged only the dismissal of the SPCA claims against Hunter. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the SPCA requires actual or potential sedimentation into bodies of water and does not apply to land-disturbing activities that cause no such deposition, so plaintiffs failed to state a viable claim under the statute. A dissent argued that the SPCA covers risks of sedimentation without requiring actual deposition into water.
This case involved a bank seeking to reform a 2009 deed of trust, which secured a loan on only one tract of a 1.3-acre property, to cover the entire parcel after the original owners transferred the land to satisfy a judgment held by the defendants. The trial court granted summary judgment to the defendants on the bank's claims for deed reformation, an equitable lien, and foreclosure. The Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of reformation, holding that the defendants, as subsequent transferees without notice of any mistake in the deed's scope, would be prejudiced by the change and thus reformation was unavailable; it reversed and remanded in part on the remaining claims. The decision rested on principles that reformation cannot impair the rights of bona fide purchasers for value and that summary judgment was appropriate where no genuine issue of material fact existed regarding prejudice.
