Legal Question in Civil Litigation in North Carolina

There isn't anything strange about your case. If you are attempting to handle this yourself, it likely just seems strange to you because you have no idea what you are doing. Essentially your description of things is the functional equivalent of someone attempting to rebuild their car's transmission if they aren't a mechanic. As to your questions a notice of appearance is just a formal document filed by an attorney indicating to the court that the attorney represents a particular client in a case. Failure to file a notice of appearance is typically no big deal and some case are done so informally that the notice is never even filed. So very likely the notice of appearance issue is of no consequence. As to punitive damages, of course you can ask but likely the real question you want answered is are you likely to get them. If so the answer to that is likely not. At least not based on the limited information you have provided. Basically you just need to hire an attorney to handle things for you properly before you screw them up more than you likely already have.