Personal Injury Lawyers Nc
The North Carolina Court of Appeals held today in Cury v. Mitchell, (COA09-238, filed February 16, 2010) that a woman may sue her ex-boyfriend for a $25,000 contribution she made toward the purchase of a house titled in his name. In reversing the trial court’s dismissal of the lawsuit, the appellate court held that the woman alleged two valid equitable claims – constructive trust and resulting trust.
A constructive trust is a duty or relationship imposed by courts of equity to prevent the unjust enrichment of the holder of title to property which the holder acquired through fraud or some other circumstance making it inequitable for him to retain it against the claim of the beneficiary of the constructive trust. The Court of Appeals held that proof of fraud is not required to support a claim of constructive trust where the title holder owed some duty to the one equitably entitled. The ex-boyfriend had a fiduciary duty to the woman at the time he purchased the house because she was pregnant with his child and they were in a “trusting” relationship.
A resulting trust arises “when a person becomes invested with the title to real property under circumstances which in equity obligate him to hold the title and to exercise his ownership for the benefit of another.”
It is reassuring to see that North Carolina appellate courts are not going to countenance a sleazy ex-boyfriend realizing a $25,000 windfall at the expense of a formerly love-struck girlfriend. Even so, better practice dictates that girlfriends (and boyfriends) require that their names be included on the title before contributing $25,000 toward the purchase of a house.
On February 7, 2010, an explosion at the Kleen Energy Systems in Connecticut blew out the walls of an unfinished power plant and set off a fire during a test of natural gas lines. According to an article on Philly.com, the explosion killed at least five workers and injured a dozen or more.
The cause of the gas explosion was unknown and is under investigation. It left huge pieces of metal that once encased the plant peeling off its sides. A large swath of the structure was blackened and surrounded by debris, but the building, its roof and its two smokestacks were still standing.
The article said that 50 to 60 people were in the area at the time of the explosion, and multiple contractors were working on the project.
Workers for the construction company, O&G Industries, were purging the gas line when the explosion occurred.
At least a dozen people had injuries ranging from minor to very serious.
Safety board investigators have done extensive work on the issue of gas line purging since an explosion last year at a Slim Jim factory in North Carolina killed four people. They’ve identified other explosions caused by workers who were unsafely venting gas lines inside buildings.
The workers here who sustained any injuries and the families of the workers who died because of the explosion are entitled to workers’ compensation benefits through the employer. These benefits often are inadequate and may not be enough to cover a worker and his family, especially if the incident involves serious injuries that could keep the worker away from his/her job for a long time. It may be in the worker’s best interest, however, to also contact an experienced worker’s compensation attorney who can carefully examine the incident to identify any negligence or wrongdoing.
