Campus Protests Across The Country, Scammers and Class Action Lawsuits

Coming up on Judica County Radio, we get into several legal topics including the protests that are going on on college campuses, and we have scammers flooding class action lawsuits.

What are they going to do about that? And the Sheriff's Office cooperating with ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That's all coming up on Judica County Radio. Your hosts, Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. Managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm. They're practicing attorneys here in North Carolina. Remember, Whitaker and Hamer, your law firm for life.

Offices located, Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay-Varina, Gastonia, and in Moorhead City. And that's where our guest host joins us from. Again, fellow attorney from Whitaker and Hamer, Cassandra Nicholas joins us. Joe Hamer on assignment. Actually, he's not feeling well.

Josh, give us a little more information. We'll probably have him back very, very soon, but he's hurting right now. Our good friend Joseph, he got hit with the 24-hour stomach bug. I guess that's going around. I talked to him during very violent stomach bug.

He does report feeling a lot better now, so I think it's a 12, 18-hour stomach bug. But he is not up for it. Well, we're all veterans.

Cassandra, not quite as much a veteran. She's got a young one. But once they start getting into school and they start bringing the sickness home, I mean, the whole family gets to experience it in some form or fashion. That's always fun. I'm not blaming it on the school system.

I don't want the school system to be upset at me. But kids tend to attract germs and they bring it home to you. So we hope that Joe is feeling well. Joe is feeling better quickly. There's a lot going on in the legal world. Protests on college campuses. We're going to get to that.

We're going to focus on that here in the first portion of the program. But there's also scammers. They're out there. They're flooding these class action lawsuits. I'm sure you've heard the ads where, hey, this may have affected you. You may want to jump in on this lawsuit. Well, scammers are now flooding these lawsuits with fake claims. So we'll talk about that. And then the sheriff's office is now cooperating with ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We'll talk about that as well. We're also going to offer up free consults.

If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you've got some questions. There are free. All you've got to do is call the firm, 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. And again, that's a free consult. We'll offer up five of those this week. Again, that's 800-659-1186.

Josh, take it away. Yeah, Morgan, I've enjoyed, you know, we've been doing that for the past couple of weeks. That's something we've been doing on the show that's new, is offering these free consults.

Sometimes we will restrain them to practice area. But what I wanted to do this week is just do, you know, five free consults. You call in, you tell us what's going on. You know, the firm practices a lot of different practice areas, you know, business law, real estate, family law, estate planning, estate probate.

Civil litigation, criminal law, traffic law. So if you've got something going on that's bugging you, that's what we're going to do as part of the show today. Thank you for listening. Give us a call. We have five of those this week. So call in.

We'll have someone reach out to you if you're one of the first five that called and get you set up. But today, we've spent the past couple of weeks really focusing in on estate planning and things like that. Last week, we talked about some national news items. I think I've said before on the show, my undergrad degree is a journalism degree. And of course, I'm a lawyer.

So I've got the legal degree. I like to see how these national legal topics are covered in the news. It fascinates me. It fascinates me how people get news today, right?

We don't all sit around and watch the six o'clock news. We see things on X. We still call it formally known as Twitter or do we just call it X now?

I think it's just X. We just call it Twitter. But one of the things that is just interesting to me that I've been following, and I'm sure everybody's been following it to a certain extent, there's been a lot of campus protest. I guess they're all kind of protesting what's kind of going on over in Palestine and Gaza.

And we're going to talk about that. I've had a lot of people ask me, you know, what's legal under the First Amendment? What's not legal? What can people do? Can people build an encampment? Can people block the roads?

Why aren't the police doing anything? And so the First Amendment's obviously very important. I know Cassandra spends a lot of time. This is, Cassandra said earlier off the air, this is a big law school issue for us, constitutional law.

Most practicing attorneys only get to talk about constitutional law in law school and then with their attorney friends. But we're going to talk about it today, Cassandra. I'm excited.

But yeah, and Cassandra, just to get started, you know, there is kind of a framework for analyzing these. Any protest, really, the First Amendment does protect your freedom of speech in certain situations. And I guess we just started the start of the top. Let's bring it back to law school. There are five things protected by the First Amendment, and these pro-Palestine protests actually touch on all five things protected by the First Amendment.

It's freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and then the really exciting one, petitioning the government for redress of grievances. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

That's right. All of those are relevant to what's going on primarily at college campuses right now. Yeah, we were talking a little bit off the air here in North Carolina. I think UNC Chapel Hill so far at the time that we're in the studio, they've had the largest one of these protests that we've seen.

But didn't deal, I think, with as much as of the encampment issues that we're hearing from other universities. And, you know, we're seeing a lot of footage come in. It's kind of hard to figure out exactly what's going on on the ground.

But I guess that's the first thing to talk about, Cassandra. I guess we need to figure out, you know, we talked about the things that the First Amendment protects, but there is a difference between applying this test for a public university like UNC Chapel Hill and a private university like Harvard. There's a difference there that we have to be aware of.

Yeah, absolutely. So the First Amendment, when it's being thrown around in the public, a lot of folks think that no one can infringe on their right to free speech. But that's really not the case. It's that the government can't infringe on your right to free speech. So that's where the difference comes in between public colleges and universities and private colleges and universities, because the public ones are essentially kind of an extension of the government. They're receiving government funding. They are public. The private ones, on the other hand, are similar to how you think of private employers. You're not free from consequences when it comes to free speech on private property owned by a private entity. It really is different.

Yeah. So down the road at good old Campbell University, that's a private university. I'm not privy to what they would do for a protest, but they are private and they have rules and regulations and they're not a government actor.

So a demonstration that UNC Chapel Hill versus Campbell University is going to be treated much differently. And so most of the big protests you've seen on the news are coming at public universities. UCLA has a big one.

There's a couple in New York that are big ones. But yeah, the one at Columbia, Columbia is private. So I have been interested in seeing how they handle that. And they've had what I believe was the most F arrest situation during one of these protests. But it was for one of the encampment situations, which is a little bit different than the free speech issue anyway.

Because then you're getting into where are you supposed to be? Is this peaceable? Are things being destroyed?

There are other legal elements at play than free speech. Morgan, I think we're up against a break. We are up against a break.

We can certainly take that. Judica County Radio, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, your hosts, again, managing partners, Whitaker and Hamer law firm and fellow attorney Cassandra Nicholas joining us on the program as Joe Hamer is on the mend. We've been talking about the protests that are going on across the country on college campuses and, again, how they are being handled, what their rights are. Coming up, we're also going to talk about a class action lawsuit. We often hear about these. But now scammers are involved and sometimes they are flooding these different cases with millions of claims.

Again, scammers flooding class action lawsuits. And then the sheriff's office cooperating with ICE, the immigration and customs enforcement. All that's coming up on this edition of Judica County Radio, plus question and answer. Listen, we are offering up consults. We have five of them.

And this is open season, right? If you've got a situation you're facing and you need some legal help, you can grab one of these consults. 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact information and briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be back and get you in on one of those free consults. 800-659-1186. We've got more Judica County coming up. Music Welcome back in to Judica County Radio. Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer are your host managing partners. Whitaker and Hamer Law Firm, the power behind this program.

And again, your law firm for life. Offices located at Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Morehead City. And Morehead City has Cassandra Nicholas. She is guest hosting today with Josh. Joe Hamer on assignment. His assignment is get better. Not feeling great. There's a stomach bug going around. So if you're suffering from that, we feel for you.

Joe is taking a knee this week. And we have Cassandra joining us on the program. And again, we've been talking about protests on college campuses. We've seen a lot of it. A lot going on, obviously, in the Middle East. The protests have really popped up everywhere. University of North Carolina has a lot going on on their campus and they're in the media.

UCLA, we mentioned Columbia earlier. But you know, you wanted to kind of wrap up your thoughts. Josh, go ahead. Well, you know, Cassandra was doing a really good job talking about the how the First Amendment applies to to these kind of protests on a public university like a like a UNC Chapel Hill or UCLA. And so you certainly do have First Amendment rights. But what we were just starting to talk about was there are there are limits to these rights.

And they're you know, they're they're established. There's there's case law. And then so it has to be peaceful.

Yeah, there's some other limits to write Cassandra. Yeah, there are. So even in public places or at public universities, those entities, governmental entities have rights to restrict free speech and other First Amendment rights. They're able to place a reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner of protests. So typically that takes the form of, you know, out in a city that would be applying for a permit to protest. There are some exceptions to permitting requirements when it's kind of breaking news, when a protest kind of spontaneously happens that is still protected. But if it's more of a planned cause, they're supposed to go through the proper channels to get permission to do that. So it doesn't in in the case of a campus interrupt the learning that's supposed to be happening there. Yeah, it's there's definitely a point where you stop being a peaceful protest and you can't. You're not supposed to be able to interrupt the you know, the campus from operating.

These are these encampments. They they present like a pretty good issue here because you're you're you're putting. I don't know if fixtures is the right word, Cassandra, but you're putting you're doing some stuff. You probably shouldn't be doing to pee on the right side of the First Amendment. Yeah, definitely. It's definitely disrupting the function of whatever, you know, a facility is meant to be doing. If you're actually encamped in a building, if you're, you know, handcuffing yourself to radiators, things like that. That's that's disruptive to what's happening there.

Yeah. And I had some people ask me about how especially the Columbia, the one in Columbia, because there were a lot of non students there, arguably, I still haven't seen a really good, hard hitting piece of journalism that's reported out of this. I don't know. Three hundred plus people that were arrested at that one. How many were students? How many weren't students?

It really doesn't matter. You know, if it's if it's a place where non students were allowed to be in most campuses, public campuses, you don't have to be a student to be on campus. You know, so that was something that I think a lot of people, at least on on X, formerly known as Twitter, was, you know, we saw a lot of things coming through there and that was something that that isn't that important. I think officially we need to call it X Twitter because it is formally Twitter, X Twitter. I feel uncomfortable calling anything just X. You know, I feel like I'm talking about a drug or something taboo, something taboo. Yes. The way we get in from most of the Web sites with X's are a different type of taboo than drugs.

For the record, Sandra went there. We did not. You know, but it's you know, we talked about this. It's changing the way people get their news. And and we all are you know, we really have to fight not to live in a little bubble of the news that we, you know, want to hear. And and and so it's hard to figure out what's exactly going on. But I think it's safe to say just by the letter of the law, a lot of these protests are violating. They're kind of going above and beyond your normal First Amendment rights to to protest. Yeah. Once there's damage to property, that's definitely an offense. So it's not protected by the First Amendment.

So that's that's a lot of what I'm seeing. It's like you could, you know, if you wanted to protest something here in Raleigh, you decided that you're going to protest outside the courthouse. Well, that's fine.

You can do that. Arguably, maybe you need a permit, but you can peacefully protest in places like that. But you can't like prevent people from getting in to get their court case heard or, you know, to pay taxes or do whatever they need to do. So I think a lot of those universities were kind of not that got it, especially in Columbia. I think it got to a point where they couldn't really operate the university. And that clearly, you know, these these these folks want to be careful. They don't want to get sued. They want to protect student rights.

So they always kind of make every effort not to call on the cops and clear it out. But I guess that's where we got to on a lot of these because they were they were a little over the line. It's it's definitely a hard balance that I think these institutions and local law enforcement are having to find with all of these protests. Well, you know, there's another there's another pending law talking about things that are happening in North Carolina that are legal. There's a pending law right now.

I know it was a big story. It's been a couple of years, but it was a big news story how some county sheriffs, you know, sheriffs are elected in North in North Carolina. Sheriffs are elected on the county level. And so you have your county sheriff that's responsible to the to the people. And we have some sheriffs who refuse to work with federal agencies regarding immigration. And so we've had we've had some sheriffs in some of the bigger cities when they detain or arrest someone who might have a questionable status, immigration status. How does that work, Sandra?

How does that work right now? So right now, North Carolina sheriffs are already required to report immigration status of folks that are detained to ICE. But then there's a second part that happens where ICE then responds and will frequently request that local sheriffs hold the the individual for 48 hours for 48 hours. And right now, North Carolina sheriffs are not required to do that. Some of them do comply and hold folks. And there are some other sheriffs that are not complying with those requests and are not currently required to. So they're just if there's not a local law or reason to hold them, they release them. When this first started becoming a thing that happened in North Carolina some years back, it seemed crazy to me that that sheriffs had that that power. They weren't required to detain and and some of the sheriffs who didn't want to comply, cite resources and and staffing and say they're just not able to to hold someone for that long waiting for ICE or the feds to come take take them into custody or whatever. And some people just don't want to do it kind of on a on political like a political standing. You know, that's a that's a stance that some sheriffs take that they don't you know, they don't want to enforce that. It's not their job.

And they don't feel like they should have to. But there's a law pending in North Carolina. I think it's going to get through. You never know until the final vote. But that is going to actually require sheriffs to do that.

Second party won't be optional anymore. Yeah, it's a comply with the hold requests. I do think that gets into an interesting legal area because it's not just folks where they've determined they are not here legally. It's also folks where they cannot determine whether they're here legally or not. So they're kind of in a gray area. So should those folks really be able to be held for 48 hours if there's not like a local law that's been broken to the extent that would allow them to be held for a separate reason? Well, that's good. That's a good question.

I haven't thought about it that way, you know, if it's definitely it definitely is different than if it's someone, you know, if ICE responds and says, oh, yeah, yeah, that person, you need to hold on to them or just not being able to identify them or get a good reading. It certainly does seem different, but I think it'll be out of their hands here before too long. We'll see if the law makes it through.

You know, Governor Cooper, of course, holds a veto so could veto it and have to go back. But anyway, that seems to come up in the news a lot. This this law that's coming through now, I thought it would have been talked about more than that has been because this is always a it's kind of turns into a politically charged legal issue. But so far, no one's talked about it too much.

But I thought we would. Well, yeah, I like to consider myself informed, but I I wasn't aware of this until you sent it my way today. So I was glad to be able to look into it, know a little bit more about what's going on in North Carolina. Well, I tell you, Cassandra, you you know, 100 percent more about it than our friend Joseph Woods.

So that's your towel. Judica County radio, Josh Whittaker and Cassandra Nicholas again joining us as a guest host. Joe Hamer is on the bench. He's on the man.

He's taken a knee this week. Whittaker and Hamer, the power behind this program. We have more to get to. Obviously, we've got question and answer coming up. But just remember, if you're facing a legal situation, we have completely complimentary consults.

That's a lot of C's, right? Completely complimentary consults. All you've got to do is call eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. We have five of them.

It'll get you on books. And again, you can ask your questions about your situation. Again, free consult available right now. Five of them. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Call the number. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whittaker and Hamer will be in touch.

That's eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. We've got Q&A coming up, followed up by our final segment, which will be about scammers. They're out there.

Be careful. Welcome back in to Judica County Radio, your host, Josh Whittaker and Joe Hamer. They're attorneys. They're the managing partners at Whittaker and Hamer law firm. And again, practicing attorneys here in North Carolina.

Offices located conveniently for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Morehead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Each and every week the attorneys go back and forth on legal topics.

So we are hitting question and answer on real estate today. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you can always call Whittaker and Hamer. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact information briefly with the calls about an attorney will be in touch with you.

Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six or email your questions to the show. We'll answer it on a future broadcast. It's info at Judica County dot com.

That's info at Judica County dot com. Again, Q&A, real estate, the focus. Josh. Yeah. Yeah. We had some we had we had a real estate question before the break, but we're going to we're going to move into something else.

We might come back to real estate. But this next one, this guy, this guy asking this question. I'm trying to boil it down because it's like a paragraph. But basically, this guy was in a car accident, right? He was in a car accident. The parties couldn't settle. He was not at fault. He was injured significantly or severely and they ended up going to trial.

Right. Because that's what happens. You're in an accident.

Sometimes you try to meet. You know, there's a mediation and there's a whole process to try to settle a personal injury claim. A lot of times they won't settle until you have to prepare for and go to trial. So this one went to trial. I got one, a judgment. It doesn't have an amount here. I must say it was a million bucks.

And he's basically asking now what? So he won. He won the trial. The insurance company was on the hook for a small amount.

Let's say really small. Let's say thirty thousand dollars. So he gets a judgment against the driver that hit him for a million dollars. That driver has insurance, but not enough to cover it. So that insurance company just turns over what they owe.

And his question is now what? And so basically this could be any situation where you have a judgment against somebody. It's nice when there's insurance there to cover it. A lot of times that's what personal injury attorneys are looking for.

They're looking for insurance coverage. So sometimes you sue people and they're what we call judgment proof. Meaning you can get a fifty million dollar judgment against a defendant, but that defendant may be judgment proof.

What does that mean, Joe? What does it mean when somebody is judgment proof? So, yeah, basically if you're judgment proof, it just means that there's nothing for you. Own nothing that a judgment could attach to.

Right. So you don't have real property that a lien could be placed on. You don't have there. There's just no way for you to realize any value from this judgment. So you could have an infinite a ten billion dollar judgment against somebody. But it's only as good and as valuable as the person that the judgment is against.

Yeah. This, you know, when we have folks who move, you know, me and Joe, it's good time to remind you that we're only licensed to practice in North Carolina. So we're always talking about North Carolina law. But when people move here from other states like Florida and Texas and New York, they ask me questions at closing about what do they need? What do they need to do to set this up as a homestead? They ask about homestead exceptions. And in some states you can exempt your residence from a judgment. That's what that's what a homestead exception here in North Carolina.

You don't really have a homestead exception. You have statutes that reserve a certain amount of equity in your home, a certain amount of equity in a vehicle, certain personal effects. So the statutes automatically protect some of your more basic property from the execution of a judgment protected in a bankruptcy, that kind of thing. And so when we go out to serve our million dollar judgment on this defendant, he's got to have something in he's got to own something in excess of what's protected by statute. And a lot of people don't own anything in excess of what's protected by statute.

You know, if you have an extra if you have a super fancy car, a lot of the equity in that car, if you have and he's not going to be protected, if you have a big house, you know, only a certain amount of equity is protected. And so this lien, this judgment lien can attach to everything you own that's not protected by the North Carolina exemptions exemption statute. So that's what judgment proof means. Like I can try to collect on this judgment and the sheriff will go out there, not be able to find anything to sell.

You know, you can use a judgment to foreclose on on real property, but there has to be real property that's not exempt for you to be able to do that. And so there's a lot of protections against a debtor to a certain extent. And so a lot of times personal injury attorneys will look at that.

They'll say, OK, this is all the insurance that's available, but we know these folks own this or they own that. But that is that's what's next. And then the other thing that could be next is it could be appealed.

Right. You know, if you if you go to Superior Court in Wake County and you lose, you might have an appealable issue and you can go to the North Carolina Court of Appeals if you have an appealable issue. So that's the other thing that could happen.

You either have to go and start collecting this judgment or in a certain amount of time, the defendant can appeal it to the court of appeals. I think that answers this guy's question. What happens now? Yeah, you're welcome, guy. That's a good answer, man. Well, I got to I got to I lost my my next question.

But you were in the zone on that one, man. Like if you never answered another question like that's your I feel like a slam dunk. I feel like I walk off for a walk off question.

Yeah, it's a walk off we should do. I mean, we should do that more, man. Get better and better at answering the same question every week, man. All right. About I'm about to my next question here. All right.

Well, I'll do this. You're listening to Judica County radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer. They're the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer and again, offices conveniently located for you.

Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Morehead City. And their their motto, your law firm for life, Whitaker and Hamer. If you've got a legal situation that you're facing, look, we get it.

It can be frustrating. You can get answers to your questions by calling Whitaker and Hamer 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186.

Leave your contact info briefly what the call's about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. We are in the middle of question and answer doing some real estate, doing a car accident question there. What's up next, Josh? I got the next question I have. I'm going to bounce back to real estate because the next question is a private road question. And we just talked about an easement, usually easements. Another word for those in the in the vernacular is a private road. Right. An access easement. And so here we've got someone who who has access. That's not the issue.

So they've gotten over that issue. They have access to a main road versus a private road. But their question is maintenance. And so they're basically asking, hey, we purchased a home. Several homes in the cul-de-sac share a private road.

There is no maintenance agreement. How do we go about maintaining the private road? And so that actually comes up quite a bit. Joe, you probably see that a lot. Yeah, I see it a good amount, man.

A good amount. And it's it's one of those things. And, you know, kind of to piggyback on that private road maintenance agreement issue. You've also got a lot of people don't understand that when when a new subdivision is developed around these parts, the roads aren't automatically made public.

Right. Like you're going to the plat of the subdivision is going to be the dedication of those roads to become public. But for them to be accepted, there's various things that have to happen. And there are standards that must be met for the NC DOT or whatever municipality is going to be maintaining these roads to accept them. So there's also going to be a component in those situations where a road is going to ultimately be public.

But it's the same concept. You need an agreement in place dictating how the maintenance of that that road is going to take place. So you're going to set forth who's responsible for it, whether it's an individual, whether it's a developer, whether it's a group of people, and the more firmly and the more, you know, the more well spelled out.

You can talk about the obligations of each person and what they're going to do and what they're going to owe and what the maintenance obligation is going to be the better. Yeah, a lot of these when I think about private maintenance, a private road, in my mind, I'm thinking about a country road that comes off like, you know, a highway like off Highway 401 and not a not a planned subdivision, kind of like family land that's been sold over the years. And so it wasn't created with a purpose of other people coming in. And so you end up with a situation where you might have access, which is what a closing attorney is concerned about. They want to make sure you have access if you go buy this property.

But the closing attorney is not very concerned about maintenance. But when that comes up, you know, everybody does have an obligation for for maintenance. But how are you going to enforce it?

How are you going to get everybody to chip in? And this is a big problem. You know, we have some clients up in the mountains and this is always a big problem in the mountains because a lot of those mountain roads see some pretty bad weather. And they have to be some of those mountain roads are scary. Those gravel mountain roads. Yeah, man, they're scary, dude. They're scary to drive on.

There's bears. And they have to be maintained and they have to be maintained that that can be kind of costly. And so most most homeowners get together and figure it out.

There's always one homeowner who doesn't want to doesn't want to or isn't able to contribute. And you kind of have to figure that out. But but hopefully there's a recorded maintenance agreement, you know, and that's something you can ask about.

If you're buying a home on a private road, your closing attorney is going to make sure you have good access. That's something you watch out for bears. Watch out for bears, bears, man. You know, but but maintenance is sometimes a good question to ask, because that's yeah, that's that's that's that's a question that can kind of dangle. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to have those questions dangling.

All right. Judica County Radio, Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer. They're your host. They're also the managing partners at Whitaker and Hamer law firm. They have offices almost in every corner. They're kind of like Starbucks or McDonald's.

Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and Morehead City. Again, Whitaker and Hamer, the motto, your law firm for life. If you've got a legal question you're facing, you need some answers.

You can always call the firm. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. Leave your contact info briefly what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch.

Again, the number eight hundred six five nine one one eight six. And you can always email your questions to the radio show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast info at Judica County dot com. When we return, we've got more question and answer with Josh and Joe. Welcome back in to Judica County Radio. Your hosts are Josh Whitaker and Joe Hamer, managing partners Whitaker and Hamer law firm. Of course, Whitaker and Hamer, the power behind this program. They have offices located conveniently for you.

Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Verina, Gastonia and in Morehead City. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, you can always call the firm and get some answers to those questions. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

Eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Leave your contact information briefly what the call's about and an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. And you can email your questions to the show. We'll answer them on a future broadcast info at Judica County dot com.

Josh, take it away. You know, when we do this, when we sit around and answer these questions, we hope it's useful. I think the hope is it's entertaining and useful, but at least at the very least useful. And we take these questions as they come.

And some of them are more interesting than others. But anyway, with that said, here's the first question I got out of our pile here is how do you get your court case continued? All right. That's the question. How do you get your court case continued? And they're not telling us what kind of case it is. So we're going to have to go through a couple of cases here.

But how do you get your court case continued? You walk in. Front kick to the door. Bam. Smack it open.

Storm in. No, it's a you know, you're you go and you ask for a continuous man. That's really it. And like you said there, the court is going to have leniency in some situations, and they're going to be less lenient than others. And they're going to look at a variety of factors. And, you know, if this is your if this is the first time you've come to court, it's a minor infraction or offense. Assuming this is some kind of a criminal matter, you're likely to to get a continuance fairly easily, right? Yeah, I think in traffic, I think in traffic court, you know, small claims court, maybe some district court, you know, it's it's it's easier to get a continuance. And you like say at least once, at least when maybe several times, right? Like there's traffic tickets that you may be able to get several continuances on that you might have to be.

You might have to give a reason, you know, and an attorney would, you know, if you're if you've got an attorney, you're going to let the attorney know ahead of time, the attorney can probably do more than you can walking in the day. But there's the court understands and there's some things built in. Now, it's hard to do without actually being there. Yeah. Right. So you've already made the trip down and but that being said, but once you move up to like Superior Court, Court of Appeals, continuances are doled out easily. No, you're going to you're going to need a fairly compelling reason, especially after that initial continuance, if you get that.

Yeah. So, you know, when you're when they're setting stuff, Superior Court is very regimented. Things get set for mediation. They get set for trial.

And, you know, the courts just aren't going to move that because that inconveniences, you know, once you get to the Superior Court level, you've got witnesses, you've got jurors, you've got, you know, attorneys, you've got parties and usually a lot's riding on it and it's not as as easy to move. And so you should always be ready to deal with a case when it's scheduled because it's, you know, things happen. People go, you know, have to go to the hospital.

You have health, you have you have things. But, you know, the dog eating your homework kind of stuff is not going to go over very well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. And has it ever worked for anything in the history of things? I think I knew somebody. I think I knew somebody whose dog actually did chew up their homework. Yeah, I don't know if it worked, even if they did. Like, did it work? I mean, I feel like that's the most tragic thing that can happen to you.

Like if that genuinely happens to you and you have to give that as a legitimate reason, you're gonna have a tough time. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Anyways.

All right. So that question was easy enough. Good question. But I remember, you know, I've seen people in traffic court, you know, which is designed, you know, for folks without it, without attorneys. And you get to talk to the judge, get to talk to the ADA. But I've seen people, you know, yeah, like on their eighth continuance, you know, or whatever.

And sometimes you're waiting for something else to happen. But that's that's definitely not the rule. That's the that's the exception, I would think. Yeah.

Anything over those very like the super lowly infractions in traffic court. And yeah, you're going to need a fairly compelling reason, most likely. All right. Next question I got here is, can you sue a veterinarian for malpractice? That's the next question I got.

Yeah, brother. You can you can sue a veterinarian for negligence. You can technically sue anyone for anything.

I mean, you may not win. But that didn't stop you from suing them, man. So you can you can sue a veterinarian or a lot of different people for for negligence. Right. That's not performing their duties up to the normal standard of care. And so if they do something wrong, you know, I've seen where some veterinarians have you sign some waivers. Right. Where, you know, kind of like a kind of like a doctor, you go in for surgery, you're going to sign a waiver.

Well, there's risk attendant with any creature surgery, just like there are for any human surgery. Yeah. And, you know, the the law looks at dogs and cats. I mean, their personal property. Right. They're the same as a car. Are they the same as the car? Yeah, I guess they would be the same as any personal property. So it's it's not a it's not a human. So it's not like a medical malpractice. But it's, you know, they screw up your dog.

Now, what's the value of a dog? I feel like we've talked about that before, too. Yeah, we talked.

Yes. Have we? Are you doing another radio show? Did we get into the conversation about if another person's dog bites you like they're like it's. Yeah, we talked about dog bites for sure. We talked. Yeah, we talked about dog bites and the statute.

Speaking of which, man, as an aside. Yeah. There's apparently a wild, wild pack of dogs terrorizing Barbour Mill Road area of Clayton. That's always crazy to hear that.

No, I haven't heard that. I heard that they're attacking. They're killing like other people's pets and stuff.

They're at large to this day. Now, are we are we sure their dogs or could they be coyotes? It's a ragtag group of dogs like whoever seen him has described them. It's like six dogs and they're all different breeds. And they're like, it's not like just all of one aggressive dog. It's like six random dogs that have just formed a gang. And they're terrorizing the community. It seems like that would be an easy enough thing to stop after the first.

You would think so. Tell it to these dogs that are still at large, though. So they might have been hurt, I guess, or they just think they're getting animals to this point. But you don't want to get rolled up on by the the gang, the sixth street posse of dogs.

You know, that's kind of crazy. That's like that should be like a anti Disney movie, right? These dogs. Yeah, it's like what was the what was the movie where the dog and the cat and they're all friends and the incredible journey or something. Homeward bound.

Is that what it is? Well, there's two homeward bounds and you've got I could actually tell you a lot about these movies. They run away from home. They actually know they don't run away from home.

They get taken like that anyways. They form a group. They don't form.

They are in a group. They're a part of a family from the jump, Josh. And so they they. OK, well, I was thinking about that, that movie, except they're not good. They're not good dogs. So it's the opposite of homeward bound. They run into some rough characters in homeward bound.

The dogs do. You never seen Homeward Bound, man. I think I had to read the book. I'm pretty sure you've got I know the dog.

I know the animals names, but the actors. I think you got Michael J. Fox. That's the first one at both of them. There's two. And maybe there's more. I know of two.

You got Michael J. Fox. And you got I'm pretty sure you have Sally Field as the cat, Sassy, the flying. I don't know who plays Shadow. Shadow is the old wise golden retriever. Does he die? I think he's almost I think he's going to die. And then I think he just doesn't.

Anyways, I want to look at who that actor. They usually kill. That's very important. They usually kill off an animal in one of those movies. Yeah. They pretend like they're going to. And then they. Yeah. Disney is usually the mother. The mother usually passes away in some form or fashion. Homeward Bound.

The Incredible Journey is the I didn't know that had a subtitle, but it does. Let's see. Judica County radio. Josh Whitaker, Joe Hamer, managing partners at the firm Whitaker and Hamer, the power behind this program, you law firm for life offices conveniently located for you in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Gullsboro, Fuquay, Farina, Gastonia and in Morehead City, couple of ways you can get in touch with the firm if you've got any legal questions. You can certainly email the show info at Judica County dot com. We'll answer the question on the future broadcast info at Judica County dot com. If you need something a little bit quicker, you can always call the firm. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch. We've got more questions and of course, some antics between Josh and Joe. That's all coming up in our final segment of Judica County radio.

We're back right after this. Welcome back into Judica County radio. Your host, Josh Whitaker and Sandra Nicholas filling in for Joe Hamer again, managing partners. Whitaker and Hamer law firm. That would be Josh and Joe and Cassandra is out of the Morehead City offices. And again, convenient office locations for Whitaker and Hamer there in Raleigh, Garner, Clayton, Goldsboro, Fuquay, Farina, Gastonia and as I mentioned, Morehead City, where Cassandra is located this week.

And again, she's there every week, but she's joining us on the show this week from there. We have free consults available. There are five of them.

We've carved them out for our radio listeners. If you've got a legal situation you're facing, get a consult. Eight hundred six five nine one one eight six.

That's eight hundred six five nine eleven eighty six. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate. Josh, I turn it over to you.

I believe we're going to get into class action lawsuits because there are scammers everywhere. Well, you know, earlier in the show, Cassandra was mentioning one of our topics she had not been following. And I brought it to her attention when we were talking about sheriffs and and ice and retainers and things like that. Well, this one is one that she brought to my attention.

So I'm going to let Cassandra tell us a little bit. This is a this is a kind of a national news story. But I always I always talk about these class action lawsuits.

These are the ones I was part of one whole time ago. Something happened with blockbuster video. I got free rental for blockbuster video just in the mail out of nowhere.

I was pretty, pretty stoked, but I can't. Now, Josh, do you remember the the movie that you used the free rental on? I do.

Actually, I do. This is back in the day when you'd go to the blockbuster on. You were smart.

You went on Thursday, but a lot of times you got stuck going Friday. And I remember the movie. All the other movies I wanted to see were gone. But we were we rented American History X.

That's that's the movie we got stuck with that day. I do remember that using my voucher. That's pretty exciting.

Yeah. My the so class actions frequently it's money you're getting, but sometimes when it's a broader type of class action, you can get, you know, a voucher for a free rental or free product. So my favorite one that I've gotten anything from was Red Bull. It was a class action because Red Bull does not actually give you wings. So I did not get wings and I was successful in joining this class action. And instead of getting a ten dollar check, I chose to get a case of Red Bull. And like a year later, it showed up at my door.

It was great. Nice. You know, a lot of people get these notifications like, hey, you were you bought this or you're used in and you got to sign up for it.

They've got to confirm. A lot of people just throw these things in the trash. But these class action lawsuits, they're they're they're big business. And as scammers figure out a lot of stuff, I guess they figured out how to make the class actions a lot harder to administrate.

So there are kind of two areas, two types of classes. There are known closed classes where you have an account with some sort of provider like cell phone providers. So if there's a class action and it goes all the way through, they'll just deposit it to your account.

The issue that's coming up is with open class. So they just open it up to anyone to submit claims. And that's where the issue is coming in.

The example that the article about was Chico. It's like a children's brand. They have booster seats and they allegedly misinformed people about how to use them. But the thing is, they only sold eight hundred and seventy five thousand of these booster seats in their class action. They have three point three million claims for these fifty dollar vouchers.

So clearly that's not the case. And now now what do they do? How do they fix that? Yeah.

What do you do? Yeah. Well, they have not figured that out yet.

The court was nice enough to put the settlement on hold while they figure out what to do about it. But I really don't know how you'd go about sorting through something like that. I don't know. It gives me a gives me a headache to try to think about it. But but maybe they could just maybe they could just dole out some blockbuster rentals to all these folks. It could become like Bitcoin. It could become like we could we could trade using these blockbuster rental certificates. There we go. But if this is the case with open class class actions moving forward, if they're all going to be inundated with scammers, the options might need to be more severely limited to kind of make the process for submitting claims harder proof.

But that also impacts the rights of people that are, you know, kind of victimized by these corporations in whatever way where they have a right to recover, but don't necessarily still have their receipt from their booster seat they bought seven years ago. Well, we're we're going to have to close it out. I thought these were very interesting topics, but we're going to run out of time. Cassandra, it has been fantastic to have you back with us. Thanks for having me back. Judica County radio again. Special guest host Cassandra Nicholas from the Moorhead City office, a fellow attorney at Whitaker and Hamer. Josh Whitaker, as always. He's our rock. He's here each and every week. Joe Hamer again, not feeling well. We hope that he is back.

He's on the mend, obviously, and back with us for our next airing of Judica County radio. Just a reminder, if you're facing a legal situation, we have a complimentary consult waiting for you. We have five of them.

They do fill up fast. You can call 800-659-1186. That's 800-659-1186. Leave your contact information briefly what the call is about. And an attorney with Whitaker and Hamer will be in touch again.

These are cometary consults. 800-659-1186. Big thank you again to Cassandra Nicholas joining us from Moorhead City. Josh Whitaker, as always. Your host, Joe Hamer, again, will be back with us next week. I'm Morgan Patrick, consumer advocate, and we'll see you on the radio next week. Thank you.