The Court entered a series of discovery rulings in this case.
In a July 2007 ruling, the Court struck a Motion to Compel because the moving party had not included a certificate of compliance with Business Court Rule 18.6(a). The Court found an attachment including the correspondence between the parties over discovery matters to
A party must comply with Business Court Rule 15.8 (word limitation for briefs) and 18.6 (requiring certification prior as to resolution efforts before filing a motion to compel) even when pursuing discovery from a non-party.
Although Plaintiff’s claims were timely against the insurance agent they claimed had defrauded them, those claims were not timely against the agent’s employer. The agent had terminated his relationship with his employer several years before the lawsuit was filed. Although the statute did not run against the agent, because the alleged fraud continued, the Court
A manager of an limited liability company may not, as a condition of the payment of consideration from a merger of the LLC, require that the member receiving the consideration execute a general release exonerating the manager and insiders from any misconduct. Holding the consideration "hostage" in exchange for such a release might amount to willful and
Plaintiff sought Defendant’s psychiatric records in discovery to determine whether she had ever been treated for bipolar disorder. The Court determined that the Defendant had not met her burden of establishing that the information sought was subject to the Psychologist-Patient privilege, and ordered the records to be produced.
Paintiffs, who had suffered signficant losses on variable annuity policies sold to them by the defendant agents and insurance companies, asserted claims on multiple theories: breach of fiduciary duty, constructive fraud, unfair and deceptive practices, negligence, negligent misrepresentation, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty, and unjust enrichment.
The Court dismissed some claims and ordered
The Court denied Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s unfair and deceptive practices claim. It rejected the argument that the matter before the Court was simply a private dispute which did not implicate the consuming public or the general marketplace, and was therefore not "in commerce."
The Court held that the statute reaches "derivative claims arising
Defendants moved to dismiss on the ground that their signatures did not appear on the agreement which was the subject of the suit. The Court denied the motion based on plaintiff’s claim that the defendants were co-adventurers. Since adventurers in a joint venture are treated as partners in a partnership, the signature of one alleged
The issue here was the timeliness of Plaintiff’s claim against the estate of one of the defendants. The Plaintiff had failed to serve that defendant’s personal representative with notice of his claim within the 90 day period prescribed in N.C. Gen. Stat. §28A-19-3(a).
The Plaintiff argued that it was excused from the notice requirement because
The Court found a shareholders agreement between the parties to be poorly drafted and ambiguous, determined that it would need to consider extrinsic evidence in order the properly interpret the agreement, and denied the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment.