• Blog Post

    North Carolina Business Court Weights in on Attorneys’ Fees in Class Action Settlements

              Recent decisions by the North Carolina Court of Appeals and North Carolina Business Court (NCBC) shed light on a previously unsettled question of law: when can a North Carolina trial court award attorney’s fees as part of a class-action settlement in the absence of additional statutory authority?             Long-standing precedent is that a court can award attorneys’ fees to a prevailing party when statutorily authorized to do so.[1]  This practice is known as the “American Rule.”  The intended purpose of the American Rule is to encourage the conservation of judicial resources by promoting settlement and discouraging unnecessarily prolonged litigation.[2]  Regarding…