The court shall award reasonable attorneys' fees, resulting from the defense against the punitive damages claim, against a claimant who files a claim for punitive damages that the claimant knows or should have known to be frivolous or malicious. The court shall award reasonable attorney fees against a defendant who asserts a defense in a punitive damages claim that the defendant knows or should have known to be frivolous or malicious.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1D-45
Frivolous or malicious actions; attorneys' fees
Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case 149 N.C. App. 672 - Rhyne v. K-Mart Corp. (2002)
Most recently applied in Raynor v. G4S Secure Solutions (USA) Inc. (June 2018)
1995, c. 514, s. 1.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: North Carolina General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain North Carolina statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.