PACT Act To Provide Expanded Resources and Benefits to Veterans

Jocelyn Mallette is a Black woman with brown eyes and curly, shoulder-length hair. She is wearing a teal blouse, gold necklace, and black suit jacket, and she is standing against a warm camel-colored wall. By Jocelyn Mitnaul Mallette

On August 10, 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022. The PACT Act was championed by Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Ranking Member Jerry Moran (R-Kan.). This bipartisan effort was the largest single bill in American history to address our service members’ exposure to burn pits and other toxic substances. Among its many provisions, this bill will provide much-needed access to health care and disability benefits for veterans harmed by certain toxic exposures, including water contamination at Camp LeJeune. Read more

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Hot Ticket Alert – 2022 Family Law Fall CLE Program

Meredith Parker is a white woman with shoulder-length golden brown hair She is wearing a blue shirt, black jacket and silver necklace, and she is pictured smiling and standing against a grey background.By Meredith Parker

Are you looking to broaden your knowledge of family law?

Are you in need of CLE hours?

Have you missed the excitement of attending a fun-filled, in-person CLE with your favorite family law colleagues?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you’re in luck – registration for the 2022 Family Law Fall CLE Program is happening now! Here’s what you have to look forward to (in addition to seeing all of your favorite family law friends):

Assumptions and Presumptions and Suppositions, Oh My! 2022 Family Law Fall Program
September 9, 2022 – Hilton Charlotte Uptown Hotel

We encounter assumptions, presumptions, and suppositions nearly every day in the practice of family law. Some of these are set out in statutes, some are derived from case law, and some come from local practice or personal experience. Read more

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Recent Administrative Law Cases

By the Communications Committee

Recent Administrative Law Cases and Articles

Zoila Sorto-Guzman v. Merrick Garland. 4th Circuit.

Docket: 20-1762 . Opinion Date: August 3, 2022.  Here is an extract from Justia.com’s summary: “An immigration judge (IJ) found Petitioner’s testimony was credible and that one of the death threats she received had a nexus to her statutorily protected right to religion. However, the IJ then concluded that the death threat did not rise to the level of past persecution because the threat never came to fruition. It thus denied her application for asylum and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed that decision.” 4th Circuit finds failure to apply precedent.

North Carolina Supreme Court

Bartley v. City of High Point, NC Supreme Court, June 17, 2022, Published.

Whether the Court of Appeals properly affirmed the trial court’s partial denial of defendant’s motion for summary judgment as to the claims against him in his individual capacity, finding genuine issues of material fact exist concerning whether defendant acted with malice when arresting plaintiff, thereby overcoming the presumption of public official immunity that would otherwise bar such claims against defendant.

Read more

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Save the Date for the 2022 Health Law Boot Camp CLE

Iain Stauffer is a white man with brown hair. He is wearing a pale grey suit, white shirt and light blue tie. He is standing in front of a window and is pictured smiling.By Iain Stauffer 

The Health Law Section is pleased to announce the inaugural Health Law Boot Camp CLE, an exciting new program for early-career lawyers, seasoned lawyers looking for a refresher, and other professionals serving the health care industry. Please join your health law colleagues in person for this exciting new CLE program, Friday, October 21, 2022, at the North Carolina Bar Center, 8000 Weston Parkway, Cary, or by Live Webcast. Registration information will be coming soon!

This program is designed for professionals working with stakeholders across the entire health care spectrum, covering cutting-edge topics that are applicable to providers, drug/device manufacturers, payers, digital companies, telemedicine and more.

Topics at the Boot Camp program will include:

  • Best practices for contracting and transactions;
  • Privacy and information security;
  • Health care innovations and disruptive technologies;
  • Litigation in the health care industry; and
  • Industry-specific fraud and abuse risks.

Join us as our speakers dive into the most pressing issues facing health care companies and offer practical advice on the nuances of practicing health law.

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Through Our Eyes – A Paralegal’s View into Child Custody and Child Support

By Peggy Pardue is a white woman with light brown, shoulder-length hair. she is wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a bright blue blouse. She is pictured smiling.Peggy Pardue

As a Family Law paralegal, assisting clients with regard to child custody and child support is an important skill used daily. A paralegal may be the first point of contact for a client. Sometimes, when a client comes to your office in the early stage of their case, they are like a deer in headlights. As a paralegal, we can help give them direction and guidance.

Helping a client navigate a child support case can be challenging because there are so many documents necessary. You would be surprised at how many people do not know how to access their financial information, insurance information, or child care information – all of which are necessary to calculate child support. It is the paralegal’s duty to walk them through how to obtain this type of information. Another challenge is when the party that has to pay child support is resentful of having to pay. They think they are paying the other person money for that parent to use when in reality, it is for the benefit of the children. Paralegals need to remind clients that child support helps to pay for food, clothing, and housing for their children. Keeping clients focused on the needs of their children is key in a relationship between a paralegal and their client.

Read more

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Profile of Cordon Smart – Brooks Pierce

Cordon Smart, a white man with brown hair, stands in front of a well-lit stairway. He is pictured wearing a white shirt, grey tie and blue jacket, and he is smiling.

Cordon Smart

By Rick Kolb, L.G.

Environmental law has been a practice in North Carolina since only the 1980s, and the early practitioners in North Carolina are now approaching the end of their careers if not already retired. In the past for the section newsletter, and later the section blog, I have profiled “senior” environmental attorneys Amos Dawson, Charles Case, and Billy Clarke and “mid-career” environmental attorneys Mary Katherine Stukes, Emily Sherlock, and Amy Wang, thinking that profiles of veteran environmental attorneys may be of interest to those relatively new to the members of the Environment, Energy & Natural Resources Law Section. Recently, I asked past section chair Amy Wang of Ward & Smith for a recommendation of a younger attorney to profile, and she suggested Cordon, who is entering his second year on the section council.

Read more

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2022 is not “2020, Too”

ByKetan Soni is a man with dark hair and brown eyes. He is pictured in a black-and-white photo, wearing a white shirt and a dark suit jacket. He appears smiling and has a black background behind him. Ketan Soni

Thanks for reading this post and for allowing me to be your Chair this year. Don’t sit on me too hard, please! Our esteemed and more likeable Vice Chair is Jill Jackson.

If you’d rather not go through this entire post, there is a tl;dr version at the bottom.

After reading this post, ask yourself:

“What’s stopping me from contributing to the success of our section?”

Read more

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Remembering Bob Mendenhall

By Wells Hall

Bob Mendenhall is a man with a grey beard and dark eyes. He is pictured smiling and wearing a white shirt, a black jacket and a red tie with a white pattern.

Bob Mendenhall

Bob Mendenhall, former Chair of the North Carolina Bar Association Tax Section, passed away on July 14, 2022, at the Charlotte Rehab Center, one day before his 68th birthday. His obituary is available here.

When I spoke to Bob shortly before his death, he told me about his surgery to remove a blood clot after a head injury resulting from a fall in late May. He knew that his recovery would take some time, but he looked forward to resuming his law practice at Holland & Knight in Charlotte. He shared with me his daughter Lauren’s summer plans prior to her junior year at Elon. He was so proud of her. Read more

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Building for a Better Tomorrow

By W. Bain Jones Jr.

As I begin my year as your Chair, I am humbled to have this honor to serve such a talented, committed group of attorneys. I have been privileged to work with you in my practice and while at the Office of Administrative Hearings. We all work very hard to apply administrative law to help our clients, the citizens of North Carolina and the administrative process. Each day, we are building for a better tomorrow.

James Madison in the Federalist papers talks of the need to have a strong, effective form of government which includes the administrative process. Fundamental to this effort is the requirement of due process and equal opportunity to access and participate in the administrative process. Attorneys have been the core of the effort to make Administrative Law the best it can be for many years. With the chaotic atmosphere we are living in and the seemingly strong desire to find quick simple solutions to the myth of less government is better, there is no time like now for your strong efforts and leadership. Do we want a government that acts as it wishes with no meaningful recourse for public engagement and response? Do we want processes which do not place primary emphasis on notice and appropriate time and means to respond? Do we want professions or trades to be licensed without appropriate training to practice their professions or trades, or to have them not licensed at all when they may affect the health and safety of our people? Do we want elected leaders or members of the judiciary to act without the benefit of respectful and honest guidance?

Read more

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Greetings from Your Section Chair

By Tammy NicholsonTammy Nicholson is a Black woman with shoulder-length black hair and brown eyes. She is wearing a black and white patterned shirt, a bright blue blazer, and tortoise shell glasses. She is pictured smiling and standing against a white background.

Welcome to a new bar year! Your membership is greatly appreciated and valued.

It is my honor and pleasure to serve as your section Chair for the 2022-2023 bar year.  Our section leadership team is committed to continuing our tradition of offering exciting events, from our annual CLE in January, to our Thought Leadership event in the spring and networking and pro bono activities throughout the bar year. We are also very hopeful that we will be able to come together in the fall for our first in-person event in two years! We are planning a new, exciting, and engaging program.  We can’t wait to share more details with you in the upcoming months!

Joining a Committee

Our committees are responsible for executing on the section’s goals and objectives. The good work of our committees results in our successful events and programming. The committees have already begun planning their activities for this bar year, so if you are interested in being a member on any of our amazing committees listed below, or learning more about any committee’s work, please let me know. We are always looking for new committee members who can add new and diverse ideas and thoughts. Committee work also establishes an opportunity to network with other members and to be a part of section leadership. Committee work is virtual, so do not allow travel to be a barrier to you joining a committee!

CLE
Communications
Ethics
Legislative
Knowledge Resource
Membership
Pro Bono

Renew Membership

If you have not done so already, please renew your NCBA membership for this bar year and be sure to join the Corporate Counsel Section – the deadline to renew is July 31!

Corporate Counsel Community

We have learned over the last two years how important community is during difficult times. We look forward to making our Corporate Counsel Section community even stronger, as we re-establish friendships and make new ones. Please check out the NCBA website’s Corporate Counsel Community page to learn more about our section, and to stay in touch on our activities and connect with fellow section members.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly if you have ideas on section events or any ideas on how we can continue to add value to your membership. I look forward to a fantastic year serving as your Chair!

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