(Carolina Journal) – A Superior Court judge on Tuesday rejected a request from North Carolina bar owners seeking to split two pieces of their lawsuit over government-mandated COVID-19 closings in 2020 and 2021.
Judge Edwin Wilson ended a 40-minute hearing at the Wake County Courthouse by denying bar owners’ request to bifurcate, or split, their case into two parts. The first part would have determined the governor’s liability for financial losses tied to bar shutdowns in 2020 and 2021. The second part would have involved the discovery process for assessing damages.
During the pandemic era, multiple restrictions on businesses were made by then-Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat this year running for the U.S. Senate. He made a number of them in consultation with Dr. Mandy Cohen, his appointed secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The executive orders by Cooper were criticized for fairness and imbalance, from instructions on everyone to businesses to houses of faith.
The bar owners’ lawyers specifically objected to lawyers from the North Carolina Department of Justice “smothering our clients” with requests for information. The lawyers defended the requests as necessary to determine which bar owners have legal standing to take part in the case.
The Justice Department lawyers work for first-term Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson. Cooper was initially named as the defendant in his official capacity as governor; with an election happening in 2024, that has since switched to Gov. Josh Stein.
Stein was attorney general each of Cooper’s eight years in office.
Wilson did not address a separate request from bar owners to order depositions from Cooper and Cohen.
