North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure

8,750 Words Is All It Takes, After All?
    05/06/2014   Appellate Procedure, Potential Pitfalls

I wrote in this earlier post that O’Neal v. O’Neal, 738 S.E.2d 190 (2013) may have created a new hurdle for the appellants in North Carolina. The North Carolina Court of Appeals in O’Neal criticized the Appellant’s attempt to challenge the trial court’s findings of fact. Ultimately, the Court of Appeals even refused to review that challenge to the findings of fact. That was unexpected because the Appellant in O’Neal had taken all the ordinary steps to accomplish her challenge. In her Issues on Appeal, she listed the offending findings by number; in her Brief-in-Chief, she listed the findings by number…

Uh-oh. I Think I Need a Bigger Box.
    03/23/2014   Appellate Procedure, Attorneys, Motions, Potential Pitfalls, Recuse a Judge, Sanctions

A year ago, the North Carolina Court of Appeals handed down an opinion in O’Neal v. O’Neal, a small domestic case. The O’Neal opinion keeps me awake at night. When I need to pull an all-nighter, I sometimes re-read a couple of pages, and it shakes me right up. I thought the appellate bar would say something about O’Neal, but it went quiet. Pamela O’Neal moved to recuse the trial judge—historically speaking, an unremarkable occurrence in the North Carolina domestic courts. Pamela first perceived bias at a settlement conference when the trial judge presiding over her case commanded Pamela…

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