Inanimate Objects And Dogs

A preliminary injunction was entered by a judge of the North Carolina General Court of Justice of Wake County Superior Court Division based on findings raising concerns about the health of an attorney.

Dant should be enjoined from engaging in the practice of law as defined in in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 84-2.1 until such a time as she can prove to the satisfaction of the court by clear, cogent, and convincing evidence via a completed mental health evaluation by a qualified mental health practitioner that she does not “have a mental and/or physical condition which significantly impairs her professional judgment, performance, or competence as an attorney,” or until further order of this Court.

For the protection of Dant’ s clients and the administration of justice, Dant should be required to promptly withdraw from all pending cases in which she is counsel of record, and to cooperate with any trustee who is appointed pursuant N.C. Gen. Stat. § 84-28(j) to protect the interests of her clients while she is prohibited from practicing law. Dant should be required to provide the trustee with access to all her client files within 24 hours of the trustee’s appointment and respond to any subsequent inquiries and communications from the trustee within 24 hours.

The Alamance News described the events that had led to the court action

In ordering Dant to prove that she does not have “a mental and/or physical condition that impairs her professional judgment or competence as an attorney,” [Judge] Hicks pointed to a federal suit that Dant filed earlier this year.

Dant filed a 130-page federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of N.C. in February against 60 defendants, including four buildings: the Alamance County Historic Court House; the J.B. Allen, Jr. Court House; the civil annex; and an apartment complex, the Lofts on Haw River.

“As inanimate objects, buildings lack any legal personhood or capacity to be sued,” Hicks pointed out in his order.

“In the complaint, Dant alleges a state-wide conspiracy against herself, while making reference to alleged human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, [the Vietnamese] car manufacturer Vinfast’s CEO, the Bissell Pet Foundation, and the North Carolina Board of Elections,” Hicks wrote.

“As Dant’s [federal] complaint continues, there is a noticeable increase in incomplete thoughts, sentence fragments, and, at times, the wholesale abandonment of the structural conventions that generally govern writing,” Hicks concluded.

Dant accused one of the implausible targets of her federal suit – former Alamance County commissioner Craig Turner, now an Alamance County district court judge, whom she listed among the 60 defendants – of convincing Shirley, the special superior court judge from Wake County, to dismiss one of his own clients from an unspecified court action.

“Plaintiff(s) are also violated by Defendant Alamance County, and Defendant Craig Turner; toxic mold in around eleven schools shut down schools, and to this day; there is mold in the schools,” Dant wrote in her federal complaint, which she voluntarily dismissed in mid-April.  “Continuously there is missing money paid by the citizens through taxes, this year, it is reported to be around $1.6 million dollars; “nobody knows how.” Alamance County Commissioner Craig Turner was responsible for knowing how…The plan to repay that amount is to take money from the School’s [sic] riddled with mold.”

Dant also included an Alamance News story about a delay in posting the county’s results for the 2024 general election among her exhibits for the federal suit, insinuating that Turner won his race for judge “after three hours of counting votes by the Defendant North Carolina Board of Elections.”

Dant further claimed in her federal suit that another defendant, Alamance County, “ forces Non-Disclosures for Jane Doe’s suffering from illness, and attacked, by resident(s), threatening to behead them, with felonies, the building allowed in…At one time, blood stains that looked as if someone had been dragged through the [Lofts on Haw River] and reaching on to the wall.  The response of the building was not to inform the Haw River PD, but to immediately clean it up.”

Dant made headlines last year when she allegedly disguised herself as a veterinary inspector in order to recover two dogs that had been taken to the Animal Rescue Corps (ARC) in Gallatin, Tennessee in April 2024, WRAL News reported at the time.  More than 150 dogs had been seized from a client that Dant was representing in a suspected animal cruelty case in Chatham County, according to the report.

“On April 30, [2024], Dant arrived at ARC’s shelter dressed in medical scrubs matching those worn by the shelter’s staff, surgical gloves, a fanny pack, and carrying a clipboard and camera,” Hicks wrote in his order.

Dant told the shelter’s director that “she had come to inspect ARC’s shelter and presented him with a subpoena that purported to authorize Dant search ARC’s entire property, including outbuildings, storage units, and vehicles, and to take possession of two dogs and return to North Carolina,” Hicks wrote.  She left when the director said she could see the two dogs but wouldn’t be allowed to inspect the premises, according to the judge’s order.

Statements by one of Dant’s former clients, who he identifies as Kecia Pugh, as well as an Alamance County trial court administrator, along with a host of other evidence, ultimately led Hicks to conclude that “prompt action is necessary to protect the public, clients, and administration of justice from Dant’s continuing misconduct, particularly when the available evidence as described in this petition demonstrates that Dant’s mental health status is becoming increasingly unstable over time.”

The injunction against Dant will remain effect until another order may be entered.  An earlier temporary restraining order against Dant expired on April 21, 2025, according to documents on file with the State Bar.

WRAL News reported on the dogs 

A bizarre twist emerged Thursday in the case of dogs rescued from a shocking animal cruelty case earlier this year.

Authorities seized more than 150 dogs earlier this year from deplorable conditions in Chatham County, and the suspect’s attorney now faces accusations of trying to disguise herself while attempting to take some of the dogs back.

The state filed a motion to disqualify attorney Taylor Dant from the case after an incident that took place at Animal Rescue Corps, an agency in Gallatin, Tennessee about 30 miles northeast of Nashville, Tennessee. Dant is based in Graham, North Carolina.

Animal Rescue Corps shelter director Michael Cunningham said it was a bizarre situation.

Court documents state Dant, the attorney for Alicia Culberson, disguised herself as a vet inspector during an April 29 visit to Animal Rescue Corps.

“She was confronted by one of our volunteers and stopped and asked to come in to speak with me. She tried to serve me with the subpoena,” Cunningham said. “She was dressed in hospital scrubs, she had latex gloves on already, a little fanny pack, and a clipboard.”

Dant said in a text message to WRAL News, “I have a law degree, multiple law licenses, and I’m an attorney. Why would I hand a subpoena and pretend to be a veterinarian when the people there know exactly who I am, as we’ve met in court before. Nobody pretended to be a veterinarian, why would we?”

Culberson is charged with multiple accounts of animal cruelty.

“My client was provided a ‘filed’ motion attempting to dismiss her attorney through the news, not the County of Chatham, or the court,” Dant explained.

Dant does not face any charges as of Thursday evening.

“My time in Tennessee attempting to view the dogs, [i.e.] the evidence of her criminal charges, is a matter that I can only discuss in court,” Dant wrote in an email to WRAL News. “Otherwise, that may subject my client to issues preserving her constitutional rights.”

Cunningham said Dant showed up a day before the animal rescue groups planned to release the dogs from their care.

Legally, she had the right to inspect, but Cunningham said the manner in which she showed up and her specific desire to retrieve two dogs to bring to Graham, North Carolina, raised red flags.

Dant told WRAL News she did not receive any notification via email, mail or fax to dismiss her from the case.

(Mike Frisch)