Lawsuit claims Mooresville mayor retaliated against employee who reported alleged misconduct

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Jeff Noble, a former IT professional at the Mooresville Town Hall, believes he is paying the price for doing the right thing.

Noble is suing the town and the mayor, claiming he was fired in retaliation. He says this happened after he reported seeing the mayor walking around Mooresville Town Hall without pants on.

This controversy is about a year and a half in the making.

Mayor Chris Carney has been elected several times to the town board. But Noble and his attorney Christopher Adkins believe the mayor has another side.

“We’ve got someone we’ve trusted, an elected official who is taking steps to harm another person for his benefit,” Adkins said.

One of Noble’s job responsibilities was to monitor who would come and go from town hall.

In October of 2024, his life changed.

He says he noticed the mayor’s key card being used and then checked the monitor to allegedly see him with a female contractor who was being paid by the town.

“So you see motion come through the door, and the next motion you see them walking into the mayor’s office again after midnight, and the next motion you see is the mayor exiting his office and he’s not wearing any pants,” Noble said.

Noble says he believes he witnessed a conflict of interest and chose to report it. In July of 2025 he was fired and accused of leaking the security video, a charge he has vigorously denied.

“In order to cover that up or hide that or to make it go away, Jeff is the one who got terminated and it’s not right,” said Adkins.

“Never in my day would I have thought that I do something correct, found something that was unlawful, report it to the proper people and the proper time, and then I get punished for it,” Noble said.

We reached out to the town for comment and got this response:

“The town denies any allegation of wrongdoing and will respond to the claims through the appropriate legal process. Because the matter involves pending litigation we do not plan to comment further at this time.”

“He’s lost his career over it, lost his job over this, suffered embarrassment to the community, suffered financially,” said Adkins. “I want to make that whole for him.”

On Tuesday the town council will meet for the first time since the lawsuit was filed.

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