IN THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA
No. 66A25
Filed 20 March 2026
GEORGE ROBERT ARMISTEAD, JR., MADISON ARMISTEAD, GREG RHODES, and WILLIAM YATES, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated
v. COUNTY OF CARTERET
Appeal pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-27(a)(4) from an order on plaintiffs’ motion
for class certification entered on 19 August 2024 by Judge R. Kent Harrell in Superior
Court, Carteret County. Heard in the Supreme Court on 10 September 2025.
Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, PLLC, by Martha A. Geer, Scott C. Harris, James R. DeMay, and John Hunter Bryson; and Lewis & Roberts, PLLC, by James A. Roberts III and Matthew D. Quinn, for plaintiffs-appellees.
Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP, by Sonny S. Haynes, for defendant- appellant.
DIETZ, Justice.
Carteret County does not provide trash and recycling services to county
residents. Instead, it offers access to small waste collection sites spread across the
county. These sites have dumpsters or other waste receptacles. The county also
provides access to a landfill.
For years, Carteret County funded these disposal sites by charging fees to
county property owners. Plaintiffs brought this class action lawsuit alleging that the
county’s fees are unlawful because the fees cannot be charged to those who never used ARMISTEAD V. COUNTY OF CARTERET
Opinion of the Court
the disposal sites and cannot be charged to those who hired a private waste collection
service to handle their trash and recycling. Plaintiffs also alleged that the revenue
collected from these fees exceeded the cost of operating the sites in violation of state
law.
After years of pretrial discovery, the trial court held a class certification
hearing and ultimately rejected one of plaintiffs’ four proposed classes but certified
the other three.
As explained below, we affirm the trial court’s certification order. The key issue
in this case is whether it is possible to ascertain the identity of class members who
hired private waste collection services. We hold that it is. There are only a handful of
firms offering these services, and the customer lists of those firms offer a feasible,
objective means of ascertaining class membership. In addition, on the record before
us, the challenged classes do not present predominance or superiority issues.
The county also contends that, as the facts and law develop in this case,
additional ascertainability, predominance, or superiority issues could emerge. That
does not bar class certification now. Should circumstances change as the case
progresses, the county can move to modify or decertify the class.
Facts and Procedural History
Plaintiffs are property owners in Carteret County. Like many counties,
Carteret County does not have county-wide trash and recycling services. Instead, the
county provides twelve waste disposal sites that the parties refer to as “Green Box
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sites,” apparently because of the color of the dumpsters or other receptacles at these
sites. The county also provides access to a landfill that is operated by a regional
authority serving Carteret County and other nearby coastal counties.
By statute, counties may charge several different types of fees for solid waste
services. N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b) (2025). First, a county “may impose a fee for the
collection of solid waste.” Id. As noted above, Carteret County does not offer its own
waste collection services and therefore does not charge this fee.
Second, a county may “impose a fee for the use of a disposal facility provided
by the county.” Id. The parties refer to this as a “use fee.” This fee “may be imposed
only on those who use the facility” and “may not exceed the cost of operating the
facility.” Id.
Third, a county may charge an “availability fee” to “all improved property in
the county that benefits from the availability” of a county waste disposal facility. Id.
The county cannot charge this fee to property owners “served by a private contractor
who disposes of solid waste collected from the property in a disposal facility provided
by a private contractor that provides the same services as those provided by the
county disposal facility.” Id. As with the use fee, the “fee for availability may not
exceed the cost of providing the facility.” Id.
At the times relevant to this lawsuit, Carteret County enacted ordinances
authorizing two separate waste disposal fees that the county believed were
authorized by these statutes. Carteret County, N.C., Code of Ordinances, § 14-56
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(2007) (amended 2024). First, the county charged a “Green Box Fee” to “each
residential household in the county which does not have household waste collection
service.” Id. This fee was “intended to recover the costs of disposing of solid waste
from households utilizing the county provided solid waste and recycling collection
sites.” Carteret County Code of Ordinances, § 14-57 (repealed 2024). Since 2017, the
Green Box Fee has ranged from $157 to $165 per year.
The county also charged a “Landfill Fee” that was “based upon optional use
privileges at county solid waste convenience sites.” Carteret County Code of
Ordinances, § 14-56 (2007) (amended 2024). This fee was $15 per year.
In 2020, plaintiffs brought this putative class action lawsuit alleging that the
Green Box Fees and Landfill Fees charged to certain county property owners are
unlawful and must be refunded. Specifically, plaintiffs alleged that the county
unlawfully charged the Green Box Fee to people who never used a Green Box site and
unlawfully charged both the Green Box Fee and Landfill Fee to people who had
private waste collection services. Plaintiffs also alleged that the fees the county
charged exceeded the cost of operating these county waste disposal sites.
More than three years after filing the complaint, and after extensive discovery,
plaintiffs moved to certify four proposed classes. The trial court declined to certify the
first proposed class, labeled the “Green Box Fee/Failure-to-Use Class.” This class
concerned plaintiffs’ allegation that the county charged the Green Box Fee to people
who never used a Green Box disposal site in violation of N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b). The
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trial court concluded that determining whether each proposed class member “did or
did not use a county-provided waste disposal unit” would “predominate over the
common issue” for the class.
The trial court certified the other three classes, which involved plaintiffs’
allegations that the county illegally charged the Green Box Fee and Landfill Fee to
people with private waste collection services, in violation of both N.C.G.S. § 153A-
292(b) and its own ordinance, and that all the fees exceeded the cost to operate the
waste disposal sites in violation of N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b).
The county appealed the trial court’s class certification order directly to this
Court as provided by N.C.G.S. § 7A-27(a)(4). Plaintiffs did not cross-appeal the trial
court’s decision not to certify the first proposed class, and that issue is not before us.
Analysis
I. Class certification criteria
The county challenges the trial court’s certification order on multiple separate
grounds. We therefore begin our analysis by briefly summarizing the legal standard
for class certification. “As a threshold matter, the party seeking class certification
bears the burden to show that a proper class exists, meaning the named and unnamed
members each have an interest in either the same issue of law or of fact, and that
issue predominates over issues affecting only individual class members.” Jackson v.
Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 388 N.C. 109, 113 (2025) (cleaned up). “Beyond this
threshold requirement, the party seeking class certification also must satisfy a
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number of other certification criteria” designed to protect the interests of the absent
class members, such as notice and adequacy of representation. Id. These legal criteria
for class certification are questions of law that we review de novo. Empire
Contractors, Inc. v. Town of Apex, 388 N.C. 552, 556–57 (2025).
“Once these legal prerequisites are met, the trial court may, in its discretion,
certify a class.” Jackson, 388 N.C. at 113. “In evaluating whether class certification
is appropriate, the trial court should consider whether a class action is superior to
other available methods to adjudicate the controversy and whether the class action
is likely to serve useful purposes such as preventing a multiplicity of suits or
inconsistent results.” Id. The court also considers whether the class mechanism is
“efficient and economically reasonable” given the administrative costs and the likely
recovery for individual claimants. Surgeon v. TKO Shelby, LLC, 385 N.C. 772, 781
(2024). Because these final factors for class certification are more subjective than the
legal prerequisites, trial courts have broad discretion when assessing them. Empire
Contractors, 388 N.C. at 557. On appeal, we review these factors solely for abuse of
discretion. Id. With this standard of review in mind, we turn to the county’s
arguments against class certification.
II. Ascertainability
The county first argues that two of the classes certified by the trial court—the
“Green Box Fee/Waste Collection Class” and the “Landfill Fee/Waste Collection
Class”—cannot be certified because the class members are not ascertainable. The
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class definitions for these two classes apply only to people who paid either the Green
Box Fee or the Landfill Fee but who used private waste collection services. According
to the county, the parties “do not know how many taxpayers had waste collection
services during the proposed class period.” Thus, the county argues, no one can
identify the members of these two classes.
This argument concerns a prerequisite for class certification known as
“ascertainability.” This class prerequisite, like the other legal criteria for class
certification described above, is “designed to protect the absent class members.”
Empire Contractors, 388 N.C. at 556. In particular, the ascertainability requirement
protects the absent class members’ right to notice. Cf. Surgeon, 385 N.C. at 777. All
class members are bound by the judgment obtained by the named plaintiffs. See
Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Epstein, 516 U.S. 367, 379 (1996). Thus, the trial court
cannot certify a class unless it is “possible to provide sufficient notice to all putative
class members.” Empire Contractors, 388 N.C. at 557. Without that notice, due
process does not permit a judgment that binds the absent parties. Phillips Petroleum
Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797, 811–12 (1985); Crow v. Citicorp Acceptance Co., 319 N.C.
274, 283 (1987). This is the source of our state’s ascertainability requirement: To
ensure that class members receive the required notice, the trial court must confirm
that there is a feasible, objective way to identify who those class members are.
Importantly, ascertaining the members of the class cannot be done in a manner
that defeats other legal criteria for class certification. For example, if class members
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cannot be identified without “separate evidence for each class member and then
separate resolution by a factfinder,” the ascertainability requirement would not be
satisfied because the identification process would devolve into “a series of mini-trials
that would dwarf the adjudication of the common issues.” Empire Contractors, 388
N.C. at 558, 560 (cleaned up). This, in turn, would defeat the predominance prong of
class certification because the common issues among class members would no longer
predominate the proceeding. Instead, the predominant part of the litigation would be
figuring out who is a member of the class. Id.
The trial court’s reasoning concerning the first proposed class in this case is an
example of a proper ascertainability analysis. That proposed class applied to people
who “paid a Green Box Fee” to the county but “did not use a Green Box site.” In other
words, this class covers anyone who was charged the fee to use the county’s “Green
Box” disposal sites but never actually visited one of those disposal sites to throw out
any trash or recycling. Plaintiffs argued that this class could be ascertained by
sending notice to every person who paid the Green Box Fee and then permitting
prospective class members to self-identify by filing “affidavits asserting that they paid
the fee but never used the Green Box.”
The trial court concluded that this self-identification process would cause the
case to “devolve into individualized mini trials, including the need for discovery, to
determine if the claimant in fact did or did not use a county-provided waste disposal
unit despite having no private waste collection service.” This, the court explained,
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would mean the common issues in the class would no longer predominate, defeating
the legal criteria for class certification.
This analysis is correct and no party challenges it on appeal. But the county
argues that the trial court erred by failing to apply the same analysis to the next two
proposed classes, which involve people who hired private waste collection services.
The county argues that plaintiffs “do not know how many taxpayers had waste
collection services during the proposed class period” and “waste collection services
can change on an annual basis and can change when properties are transferred from
one owner to another in any given year.” Thus, the county argues, identifying the
members of these two classes will require the same sort of fact-intensive investigation
that prevented certification of the first proposed class.
This argument fails because of how the fact issues for these two classes can be
resolved. Unlike the first proposed class, which required individualized
determinations to identify each class member, the latter two classes can be identified
efficiently and objectively on a class-wide basis. Specifically, after the opportunity for
extensive discovery on this issue, the parties have only identified a handful of private
waste collection services operating in Carteret County. At oral argument, plaintiffs
acknowledged that they obtained the business records of these private firms during
discovery and asserted that the lists can be used to identify the class members.
The parties did not include those customer lists in the record on appeal, leaving
us with no way to evaluate them. We must therefore presume that these customer
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lists support the trial court’s ascertainability determination. See Nicholson v. Thom,
236 N.C. App. 308, 325 (2014). If, as this case moves to the notice phase of class
certification, the customer lists prove insufficient to identify and notify the class
members, the county can move to decertify the class. See, e.g., Jacobs v. Physicians
Weight Loss Ctr. of Am., Inc., 173 N.C. App. 663, 677–78 (2005).
Moreover, we emphasize that the county is not required to accept the accuracy
of these business records, just as it is not required to take class members at their
word in affidavits. See Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 269 (1970). The county can
investigate these businesses and make any appropriate challenges to the truthfulness
of their records. But even if fact disputes arise over the accuracy of the customer lists,
those issues would not predominate the case in the same way that the class member
affidavits would. Instead, because of how few firms offer private waste collection
services in the county, those fact disputes could be resolved without overshadowing
the core, common issues for all class members.
Simply put, the customer lists provide an objective means of ascertaining class
membership, and any fact disputes concerning those lists can be resolved efficiently
on a class-wide basis. Accordingly, the trial court did not err by determining that
these two proposed classes were ascertainable.
In a few stray sentences in its brief, the county also points to two other
potential ascertainability issues. First, the county argues that the text of the
applicable ordinances requires anyone who uses a Green Box site to pay the Green
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Box Fee, even if they also use a private waste collection service. This means that
people who typically rely on their private waste collectors but occasionally use the
Green Box site—for example, during a holiday when they accumulated too much
trash to wait for collection day—would not be entitled to a refund of the Green Box
Fee. The county contends that separating these people from the rest of the class
creates individualized ascertainability issues as well as other class certification
problems.
Second, the county contends that its ordinance permits it to collect the
challenged Green Box Fee upfront so long as the county provides a refund to anyone
who submits proof of private waste collection services later. The county argues that
assessing whether class members submitted the necessary refund information
likewise creates ascertainability issues as well as issues with other certification
requirements.
The flaw in these arguments is that they concern the merits of plaintiffs’
claims. Plaintiffs do not agree with the county’s interpretation of its ordinances. In
plaintiffs’ view, the ordinances prohibit the county from collecting a Green Box Fee
from anyone who uses private waste collection services, regardless of whether those
people ever use a Green Box site. Likewise, plaintiffs contend that the ordinances do
not permit the county to collect these fees upfront and put the burden on the fee payer
to submit documentation and obtain a refund later. As a result, the county’s
arguments on these class certification issues cut to the heart of some of the key legal
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issues in this case.
Ordinarily, merits questions in class certification proceedings “may be
considered to the extent—but only to the extent—that they are relevant to
determining whether the Rule 23 prerequisites for class certification are satisfied.”
Amgen Inc. v. Conn. Ret. Plans and Tr. Funds, 568 U.S. 455, 466 (2013); see also
Surgeon, 385 N.C. at 781–82. Thus, it might be appropriate to examine these merits
issues at the class certification stage solely to assess the certification criteria. But
when doing so, these merits issues are subject to the same appellate preservation
requirements as everything else. N.C. R. App. P. 10(a)(1). Here, we are not confident
that these merits issues were presented to the trial court and ruled upon below as
required to preserve them for appellate review.
The hearing transcript indicates that both parties expressed their intent to
pursue cross-motions for summary judgment on the merits after the court ruled on
the class certification question. Moreover, at various points during the hearing, the
trial court emphasized that it was reluctant to get “more into the substance of the
claims as opposed to the identification of the class.” Then, when addressing whether
the law permitted the county to collect the fees upfront but refund them upon proof
of private waste services, the trial court directly responded, “That’s another one of
those kind of arguments for another day in the sense that I would expect I’ll probably
hear from you again on that issue when we get to summary judgment.” The county
did not assert that the trial court must make a ruling on these issues as part of the
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certification analysis and did not object when the court declined to do so.
Ultimately, the trial court’s class certification order did not address these
questions about the meaning of the county’s ordinances and their interplay with the
enabling statutes. Because these questions go to the heart of the merits of plaintiffs’
claims, we are reluctant to rule on them now—particularly where the county did not
“obtain a ruling” from the trial court on the issue as required by the Rules of Appellate
Procedure and neither party devoted much attention to these issues in their briefing
to us. Id. Accordingly, we leave these issues for further proceedings in the trial court.
III. Predominance
The county next argues that the third proposed class does not meet the
certification criteria because individualized issues predominate over the common
ones.
This third proposed class, called the “Landfill Fee/Waste Collection” class,
alleges that the county’s Landfill Fee violated N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b). This statutory
provision permits a county to charge an “availability fee” to property owners to fund
a “disposal facility provided by the county.” Id. But the statute prohibits counties
from charging this fee to property owners who hire private waste collection using a
private facility that offers “the same services as those provided by the county disposal
facility.” Id. (emphasis added).
The county argues that “the determination of whether the services provided by
any of these companies are the ‘same services’ as those provided by the County
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disposal facility requires individualized inquiries into the provisions of the service
contracts and potentially multiple contract analyses per property, particularly in
cases where the waste collector or the service contract has changed over time.” These
individualized issues, the county argues, would predominate over the common issues
in the case.
This argument fails because it mischaracterizes common issues as
individualized ones. To be sure, this “same services” issue is likely to be a key fact
issue in this case. But it is not an issue that is individualized to each class member.
There could be many thousands of class members; the parties have identified only a
handful of private waste collection firms.
Because there are only a few private firms, there will be—at most—only a few
private disposal facilities to examine. Indeed, in its brief, plaintiffs point to deposition
testimony from a county employee indicating that all county waste services, both
private and public, are taken to facilities operated by a regional waste management
authority that jointly serves Carteret County and several of its neighboring coastal
counties. In other words, plaintiffs believe these private services are not just offering
comparable services at their facilities, they are literally offering the same services.
Now, to be fair to the county, this is a fact question that will need to be resolved
either at summary judgment or at trial. But the trial court correctly concluded that,
on the current record, this fact question will not involve numerous individualized
inquiries.
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In sum, the county has not established that there are individualized fact issues
that will predominate over common issues for the third proposed class. Instead, the
county has simply highlighted a shared factual issue among class members that is
amenable to resolution through a class action. Accordingly, the trial court did not err
by concluding that plaintiffs’ third proposed class satisfied the predominance prong
of class certification.
IV. Superiority of the class action mechanism
Finally, the county argues that a class action is not the superior method of
adjudicating the claims in the fourth proposed class. That class, which the parties
label the “Cost-to-Operate” class, alleges that the county collected more in fees than
it cost to operate its waste facilities. Plaintiffs allege that this overcollection violates
N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b), which prohibits counties from charging fees that exceed the
“cost of operating” the facilities. Id.
As noted above, once the legal prerequisites to class certification are met, the
trial court should evaluate whether the class action mechanism is superior to other
available methods of adjudication. Surgeon, 385 N.C. at 777. Importantly, this
superiority analysis is not a legal question. It involves a more subjective component
and is therefore “left to the trial court’s discretion.” Empire Contractors, 388 N.C. at
557.
Here, the county argues that the trial court abused its discretion by failing to
recognize that, if any single plaintiff prevails on a cost-to-operate claim, the county
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would be obligated to issue a refund to everyone who paid the illegal fees, not just to
that plaintiff. Thus, the county argues, a class action cannot be superior to an
individual action by the named plaintiffs because the result will be the same either
way.
To support this argument, the county relies on an unpublished Court of
Appeals opinion. See Manning v. Halifax County, No. COA03-1118 (N.C. Ct. App.
Sept. 7, 2004) (unpublished). That opinion, of course, is not precedential. Moreover,
the holding that the county identifies in Manning is, at best, an implied one.
But even assuming the county’s position is correct, that would not compel the
trial court to deny class certification in this case. Class actions are designed as “a
means for potential litigants with valid legal claims to have those claims aggregated
in an efficient and economically reasonable manner.” Surgeon, 385 N.C. at 781
(cleaned up). “The entire notion of class actions is grounded in this concept of
efficiency.” Id.
Here, it was well within the trial court’s sound discretion to conclude that
joining all fee payers together in a class action is superior to the alternative because
of efficiency. Nothing in that initial, individual lawsuit proposed by the county would
prevent others from filing similar suits. Thus, there could be “a multiplicity of suits
or inconsistent results”—important concerns that underpin the existence of class
action litigation. Crow, 319 N.C. at 284. Moreover, it is arguably more efficient to
identify and bring all fee payers together now, rather than relying on the county to
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locate them later. If the county were, shall we say, less than vigorous in tracking
down those entitled to a refund, it could lead to a stream of future lawsuits that the
class mechanism could have avoided. Simply put, the trial court’s superiority analysis
reflects a consideration of important efficiency issues that are at the core of the class
action process. The court’s analysis is a reasoned one and not an abuse of discretion.
Conclusion
For the reasons explained above, we affirm the trial court’s class certification
order.
AFFIRMED.
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