No privilege shall be grounds for any person or institution failing to report that a juvenile may have been abused, neglected, or dependent, even if the knowledge or suspicion is acquired in an official professional capacity, except when the knowledge or suspicion is gained by an attorney from that attorney's client during representation only in the abuse, neglect, or dependency case. No privilege, except the attorney-client privilege, shall be grounds for excluding evidence of abuse, neglect, or dependency in any judicial proceeding (civil, criminal, or juvenile) in which a juvenile's abuse, neglect, or dependency is in issue nor in any judicial proceeding resulting from a report submitted under this Article, both as this privilege relates to the competency of the witness and to the exclusion of confidential communications.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7B-310
Privileges not grounds for failing to report or for excluding evidence
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case 168 N.C. App. 452 - Smith v. Jackson County Board of Education (2005)
Most recently applied in 250 N.C. App. 424 - State v. Godbey (November 2016)
1979, c. 815, s. 1; 1987, c. 323, s. 1; 1993, c. 514, s. 3; c. 516, s. 10; 1995, c. 509, s. 133; 1998-202, s. 6; 1999-456, s. 60.
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.