Here are a few pictures of the new North Carolina Business Court in Raleigh, thanks to Judge Jolly and his staff giving me a quick tour yesterday. The Court moved to the Campbell Law School’s new Raleigh building on October 1st.
You’ll see that there is a broad stretch of windows behind the Judge’s bench
If you are getting ready to designate a case to the North Carolina Business Court, you might want to go ahead and do that in the next few days. That’s because starting September 1, 2009, it’s going to cost your client a bunch more money to have a case heard in the Business Court.
Effective
Once the Business Court takes jurisdiction over a case, that jurisdiction remains in place for the life of the case, regardless of dismissals of parties or changes in the nature of the claims.
That was the ruling of the Court last week in Mattress Now, Inc. v. KS Bank, Inc. in response to the Plaintiff’s
The Business Court now has jurisdiction over utility pole disputes between communications providers and municipalities. That surprising expansion of the Court’s jurisdiction is thanks to a new law passed at the just concluded session of the North Carolina Legislature.
New section 62-55 of the General Statutes requires a municipality that "owns or controls poles, ducts
Here’s a new one. Can you make a mandatory designation of a case directly from North Carolina District Court to the Business Court? Believe it or not, there are circumstances under which you might want to do that, so the Business Court’s opinion this month in Bailey Pointe Homeowners’ Association v. Strong is worth knowing
Until today, there wasn’t any law in North Carolina on the proper choice of law analysis to decide what state’s law to apply in an accounting malpractice case. That changed with the North Carolina Business Court’s decision today in Harco Nat’l Ins. Co. v. Grant Thornton LLP, 2009 NCBC 11 (N.C. Super. Ct. April
The North Carolina Business Court in Raleigh will be relocating to Campbell University’s Law School. The move will happen in Fall 2009, when the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law finishes its own relocation, from Buies Creek to Raleigh.
North Carolina then will have two law schools with courtrooms on the premises. The other one
Have you ever booked a hotel room through an online reseller like Hotels.com, Priceline, or Orbitz? If you have, you might be interested in this post, even though you might not otherwise be interested in an issue of North Carolina state tax law.
Those companies, and other internet resellers of hotel rooms, have a significant tax dispute pending in North Carolina’s courts. And right now, the Fourth Circuit is directly at odds with the North Carolina Business Court on the proper outcome.
The tax problem comes up because the customer is paying these companies more than the price at which the online company purchases the hotel rooms from the hotel operator. That’s obvious, that’s how they make a profit. What’s not so obvious is that the online companies charge Occupancy Tax based on the full price of the room, but they only remit tax calculated at the lower price they paid to buy the room. They keep the difference, which they call a "nonitemized service fee."
This questionable practice has led to a flurry of litigation by municipalities against Hotels.com, Priceline, and other online vendors, like Orbitz and Travelocity. Four of those cases are being litigated in the North Carolina Business Court, brought by Dare County, Mecklenburg County, Wake County, and Buncombe County. Similar cases are pending throughout the country.
Last week, the online travel companies scored a big win when the Fourth Circuit affirmed the grant of a Motion to Dismiss in a case brought by Pitt County, in Pitt County v. Hotels.com, L.P. (I read about that decision on the North Carolina Appellate Blog). The Fourth Circuit ruling is apparently the first appellate decision in the country on this issue, but that ruling is directly at odds with a decision by Judge Diaz in the Business Court, Wake County v. Hotels.com, L.P., 2007 NCBC 35 (N.C. Super. Ct. Nov. 19, 2007). Continue Reading Taxing Online Travel Companies: The North Carolina Business Court And The Fourth Circuit Don’t See It The Same Way
The parties to the North Carolina lawsuit in which Wachovia’s former CEO, Bud Baker, obtained a Temporary Restraining Order against Citigroup’s efforts to acquire the banking operations of Wachovia have agreed to a Consent Scheduling Order.
The Order, if approved by Judge Diaz of the North Carolina Business Court, will move the Preliminary Injunction
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There were some late breaking developments today in the North Carolina lawsuit regarding the Wachovia-Citigroup-Wells Fargo situation, including the unsealing of detailed Affidavit testimony from Wachovia’s CEO about Wachovia’s courtship dance with its two potential acquirors, a modification of the TRO entered on Sunday evening, a transfer of the case to the North Carolina Business