Dismissal of lawsuit against Team Berger upheld. (Uncle Phil is pleased.)
It must be nice to preside over hearings about your own job performance and to stomp any and all of those complaints into the dirt. Only in state government. Only in Raleigh.
Only — apparently — if you owe your very professional existence to the autocratic, iron-fisted machine that appears to run everything governmental and political in this state. Team Berger is trying really hard to kill the Rockingham County-based lawsuit (against key players in its political operations) in the cradle. It MAY have finally done it:
A state judge who previously dismissed a defamation case that has revealed secret moves to legalize casinos in North Carolina rejected an effort to remove him from the case, and said he would report the attorneys involved to the NC State Bar for disciplinary proceedings. In a hearing Friday afternoon, Special Superior Court Judge Hoyt Tessener denied any bias in the case involving a hotly contested Rockingham County commissioner race, and said he found no legitimate claim that candidate Craig Travis had been defamed.
He sided with the defendants’ attorneys who said in court that they viewed Travis’ lawsuit as a frivolous attempt to revisit the state legislature’s failed effort in 2023 to land three casinos in Rockingham, Anson and Nash counties. State Senate leader Phil Berger of Rockingham County sought the legislation, and his son Kevin is a Rockingham commissioner who voted to rezone property that would have been developed for a casino. Records obtained by the lawyers bringing the defamation suit reveal moves the Cordish Companies of Baltimore and its advocates made in Anson and in the legislature. The News & Observer obtained those records from Anson County in a public records request. Travis, a former county commissioner and a casino opponent, had narrowly lost a Republican primary election against Kevin Berger last year that would have put him back on the board.
He claimed Berger, two other commissioners on the board last year, a Rockingham GOP leader and two political groups had defamed him during his campaign, in which his opposition to casinos was prominent. Tessener dismissed the lawsuit after a hearing on April 23, writing in a brief order that Travis lacked a valid claim. In court Friday, Tessener said the majority of the facts laid out in the complaint had to do with issues linked to the failed 2023 effort to legalize casinos in this state and not Travis’ claims that he was defamed. He also noted that Travis’ attorneys did not raise issues about his impartiality, which he defended, until after his decision. […]
I seem to remember something about the choice of Tessener to hear the case was a move that caught the plaintiffs by surprise and off-guard. In their motion protesting the dismissal, plaintiffs attorneys alleged that Tessener had not even read the filed case documents before hearing the case.
MORE:
[…] “I do not have any relationships with any of the parties, I do not even know them,” Tessener said. He sparred with two of Travis’ attorneys – Kimberly Bryan and Alicia Jurney – throughout Friday’s hearing in Wake County Superior Court. […]
You may remember Alicia Jurney as the attorney representing Scott Lassiter in his divorce case a little while back. Then-state House speaker Tim Moore was dragged unceremoniously into the case’s proceedings — which ended up forever linking the little guy from Kings Mountain to the Biscuitville franchise. Moore ended up reaching a confidential settlement with Lassiter. So, you might expect there to be some hard feelings between now-congressman Moore’s camp and Jurney.
As we’ve explained before, Tessener is one of a number of *special* Superior Court judges appointed and approved by the state legislature. These appointees don’t face the voters like other judges do. As you know, nothing gets approved out of the legislative building without the blessing of the House speaker (then-Moore, now-Destin Hall) and the Senate president pro tem (Phil Berger).
So, if you are a *special* Superior Court judge appointed in the last few years, you owe your very professional existence to Tim Moore and Phil Berger. Berger and Moore have both apparently served on the board of GOPAC — one of the defendants in the case.
Who knows where this leaves this matter now. But this all certainly does bring the issue of *special* judges -and their necessity – to light.
Rockingham and Guilford voters — that 2026 GOP primary for state Senate is getting more and more important. You have a chance to do a real service for your fellow North Carolinians from Murphy to Manteo.
