J. Frank Huskins

This case involves an employee, Cullen Walston, seeking workers' compensation benefits from Burlington Industries and its insurer for respiratory conditions including chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and possible byssinosis, which he attributed to thirty years of cotton dust exposure. The Industrial Commission denied the claim after finding the diseases were ordinary conditions of life not proven to result from causes peculiar to his employment. The Court of Appeals reversed, but the Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed that ruling and reinstated the denial of benefits. The court held that the medical testimony established only a possibility of causation from workplace dust, with smoking identified as the likely primary factor, which was insufficient to meet the statutory requirements under G.S. 97-53(13) for an occupational disease. Findings supported by competent evidence are conclusive on appeal, and the employee failed to prove the requisite causal connection.

labor & employment

In State v. Hall, defendant Ezekiel Hall was convicted of kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury after he and an accomplice robbed a gas station, abducted the attendant at gunpoint, and shot him during their escape. Hall appealed, arguing that the kidnapping indictment was defective for omitting explicit language about lack of consent and that there was a fatal variance between the indictment's charge of kidnapping to facilitate armed robbery and the evidence, which he claimed showed the kidnapping occurred only to aid flight after the robbery was complete. The North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed the convictions, holding that the term "kidnap" in the indictment sufficiently implied seizure against the victim's will under state law and that the evidence supported the charged purpose because the kidnapping served dual purposes of facilitating both the robbery and flight, with the robbery not being fully "completed" until the entire episode ended. A dissent argued that the evidence failed to prove the specific purpose alleged in the indictment, creating a fatal variance under prior precedent like State v. Faircloth.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved Mario Lopez Stedman, who was fifteen years old when he allegedly committed offenses in December 1978 that led to juvenile petitions in district court. Under both the pre-1980 juvenile statutes and the new Juvenile Code effective in 1980, the district court held exclusive original jurisdiction over such cases unless transferred to superior court, rendering the 1979 superior court indictments void for lack of jurisdiction. The court also addressed the application of new provisions (G.S. 7A-596 et seq.) allowing nontestimonial identification orders like fingerprinting of juveniles, rejecting ex post facto challenges because those rules did not alter offenses, defenses, or required proof. Jurisdiction over the juvenile ended upon his eighteenth birthday in February 1981, after which the district court lacked authority to act. The North Carolina Supreme Court vacated a later district court order and directed that Stedman be tried in superior court as an adult.

criminal lawprocedure

In State v. Johnson, the defendant appealed his North Carolina criminal conviction, challenging the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress a statement on grounds that voluntariness was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the denial of his request for new counsel due to disagreements over pleas and investigation, the sufficiency of evidence that a ballpoint pen used in an assault was a dangerous weapon, and the trial court's jury instructions implying a verdict was required. The Supreme Court of North Carolina affirmed the conviction, ruling that the prosecution need only prove voluntariness of a statement by a preponderance of the evidence under state and federal law, that the defendant failed to show prejudice from counsel issues or that the pen could not be deemed a deadly weapon, and that the instructions were proper. The court based its decision on precedents like Lego v. Twomey for the evidentiary standard and found no prejudicial error in the record.

criminal lawprocedure

This case involved whether a police officer's search of the passenger compartment of a defendant's truck after his custodial arrest violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The North Carolina Supreme Court held that the search was permissible under the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in New York v. Belton. The court reasoned that Belton establishes a bright-line rule allowing such searches as a contemporaneous incident of the arrest of a vehicle occupant, even if the defendant has been secured in a patrol car, and rejected arguments that the search was not contemporaneous, that cases like Arkansas v. Sanders applied, or that Belton should not be applied retroactively. The decision of the Court of Appeals was reversed and the case remanded for reinstatement of the original judgment.

criminal law

The case concerned whether two savings accounts held at Mechanics & Farmers Bank had been validly assigned by the original depositors to the Rosensteins. The trial court ruled the assignments effective and awarded the funds to the plaintiffs, but the Court of Appeals reversed on the ground that a bank rule required the bank's consent for any transfer. The Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed, holding that the bank's rules and regulations restricted only assignment of the passbooks themselves and contained no restriction on assignment of the underlying accounts, so the accounts were validly transferred even without the bank's consent.

business & regulatoryproperty