Yes, alienation of affection and criminal conversation are alive in North Carolina. Last year Robertson, Medlin & Bloss successfully defended two cases. Here is how I began my opening statement to the jury in one case:
"If a man was a lucky man living in North Carolina a hundred years ago, maybe he had a horse. If he was doubly lucky, he had a horse and he had a wife. If another man stole his horse, he could sue him to recover the horse or the value of it. If another man stole his wife he could sue the man to recover for the value of his wife. A wife was a man's property. This was true not only in North Carolina but in most of the country.
Fast forward to the 1960s and 1970s. The civil cause of action where a man could get a jury award for stealing a man's wife were abolished in most states. It is clearly sexist to have laws derived from the concept of wife as property. North Carolina, and a handful of other states, decided not to abolish these legal proceedings. Our courts decided, instead, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. A woman can sue another woman for stealing her husband."
I went on to tell the jury that these causes of action are unwarranted state invasions into the most private area of people's lives. I asked the jurors to award the plaintiff nothing. After 2 days of trial, I approached the lawyer on the other side and said my client would pay a few thousand dollars so that we could end the trial. At this point in the proceedings it appeared that his client would, very likely, get nothing. They took the nuisance payment. My client really needed to get back to work ... in the operating room. In these kinds of cases, its always the truck driver suing the doctor, never the other way around.
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