White v. Northwest Property Group-Hendersonville 1, LLC

739 S.E.2d 572, 225 N.C. App. 810, 2013 WL 791524, 2013 N.C. App. LEXIS 219
CourtCourt of Appeals of North Carolina
DecidedMarch 5, 2013
DocketNo. COA12-1037
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 739 S.E.2d 572 (White v. Northwest Property Group-Hendersonville 1, LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of North Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
White v. Northwest Property Group-Hendersonville 1, LLC, 739 S.E.2d 572, 225 N.C. App. 810, 2013 WL 791524, 2013 N.C. App. LEXIS 219 (N.C. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

STROUD, Judge.

Mark White and Tanis T. Duffie (“plaintiffs”) appeal from judgment entered 17 May 2010 in Superior Court, Henderson County, granting a motion for partial summary judgment filed by Northwest Property Group-Hendersonville #1, LLC (“defendant”). Plaintiffs argue that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment because defendant is not entitled to governmental immunity. For the following reasons, we affirm the trial court’s order.

[811]*811I. Background

Plaintiffs previously appealed this same order. We dismissed their appeal as interlocutory. White v. Northwest Property Group-Hendersonville No. 1, LLC, 2011 WL 721051 (N.C.App.) (unpublished) (“White /”). In our previous opinion we laid out the factual background to this case:

Plaintiffs Mark White and Tanis T. Duffie (“plaintiffs”) are the owners of lots 48 and 49 located in a subdivision known as Jackson Farms Subdivision in Henderson County, North Carolina. A subdivision plat depicting the Jackson Farms Subdivision was recorded on 19 June 1950 in Plat Book 4, Page 102, Henderson County Registry, now Plat Cabinet B, Slide 342A. The Jackson Farms Subdivision plat outlines various lots and road rights-of-way in the subdivision, including the location of a forty-foot road extending the length of the subdivision from Old Spartanburg Highway to Spartanburg Highway/U.S. 176.
Beginning in April 2007, the City Council of Hendersonville (the “City Council”) began to consider the opening of the forty-foot road depicted in the Jackson Farms Subdivision plat as part of a redevelopment plan titled the Southside Transportation Study. The Southside Transportation Study was adopted by the City Council on 5 October 2006 with the goal of improving connectivity in the Southside area. As part of the redevelopment plan, a connector street was proposed between Old Spartanburg Highway and Spartanburg Highway/U.S. 176 [(“the Spartanburg Connector”)], where the forty-foot road in Jackson Farms Subdivision already existed.
Defendant Northwest Property Group-Hendersonville # 1, LLC (“defendant”), proposed construction of a grocery store, a retail strip building, and a retail drug store in the vicinity of the Jackson Farms Subdivision. The City Council discussed the new construction project at its 5 April 2007 meeting. At that meeting, the City Manager stated that defendant’s construction project presented an opportunity to implement the Southside Transportation Study, and that the City desired to work [812]*812with defendant to build the connector street between Old Spartanburg Highway and Spartanburg Highway/U.S. 176. The City Council agreed by consensus to proceed with the project.
At its 3 May 2007 meeting, the City Council again discussed defendant’s construction project in connection with defendant’s application for rezoning. At the conclusion of the hearing on the proposed rezoning of defendant’s property, the City Council unanimously adopted an ordinance amending the official zoning map of the City of Hendersonville. The new zoning ordinance incorporated a map depicting defendant’s property, including the forty-foot road in Jackson Farms Subdivision as the connector street between Old Spartanburg Highway and Spartanburg Highway/U.S. 176.
At its 8 November 2007 meeting, the City Council considered and approved a contractual agreement with defendant for the construction of the roadway between Old Spartanburg Highway and Spartanburg Highway/U.S. 176 where the forty-foot road through Jackson Farms Subdivision existed. The contract required defendant to undertake and complete construction of the roadway pursuant to North Carolina Department of Transportation (“NCDOT”) standards. The contract also established a cost-sharing plan under which the City would fund approximately sixty-six percent of the cost of the construction of the new road. The contract became effective as of 6 March 2008 upon signature by both the City and defendant.
Defendant obtained a permit from NCDOT for the road construction. The NCDOT permit contained explicit drawings specifying the grade of the road to be built. In June 2008, defendant began to make the improvements to the road pursuant to NCDOT permit specifications. As part of this construction, defendant re-graded the existing road to a higher elevation and erected a four-foot wall along the boundary of plaintiffs’ property in Jackson Farms Subdivision.
As a result of the improvements made by defendant to the forty-foot road in Jackson Farms Subdivision, plain[813]*813tiffs are unable to access their property from that roadway and cannot drive onto the existing driveway leading to the garage on their property. Plaintiffs filed a complaint on 26 May 2009 requesting injunctive relief and compensation for damages to plaintiffs’ property caused by defendant’s construction activities. Defendant filed an answer on 22 July 2009 raising the defense of governmental immunity and asserted a counterclaim for breach of contract against plaintiff Mark White as to rent owed for leased and occupied retail space.

Id. at *1-2.1

After remand to the trial court, defendant voluntarily dismissed its counterclaims on 17 May 2012 without prejudice. Plaintiffs filed another notice of appeal to this Court on 14 June 2012.

II. Interlocutory Order

A grant of partial summary judgment, because it does not completely dispose of the case, is an interlocutory order from which there is ordinarily no right of appeal. . . . Ordinarily, an appeal from an order granting summary judgment to fewer than all. . . claim[s] is premature and subject to dismissal. However, since the [defendant] here voluntarily dismissed the claim which survived summary judgment, any rationale for dismissing the appeal fails. [Defendant’s] voluntary dismissal of this remaining claim does not make the appeal premature but rather has the effect of making the trial court’s grant of partial summary judgment a final order.

Curl v. American Multimedia, Inc., 187 N.C. App. 649, 652-53, 654 S.E.2d 76, 78-79 (2007) (citations and quotation marks omitted). Moreover, there are no apparent violations of our Rules of Appellate Procedure, nor is there reason to think that the parties are attempting to misuse the Rules of Civil Procedure. Cf. Hill ex rel. Hill v. West, 177 N.C. App. 132, 135-36, 627 S.E.2d 662, 664 (2006) (dismissing an appeal from partial summary judgment as interlocutory despite [814]*814voluntary dismissal of other pending claims where counsel violated N.C.R. App. P. 28(b)(4) and it was apparent that counsel were “manipulating the Rules of Civil Procedure.”). Therefore, the order granting defendant’s motion for partial summary judgment is final and properly before us.

III. Summary Judgment

Plaintiffs argue that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment because defendant was not permitted to invoke governmental immunity as a contractor.

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739 S.E.2d 572, 225 N.C. App. 810, 2013 WL 791524, 2013 N.C. App. LEXIS 219, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/white-v-northwest-property-group-hendersonville-1-llc-ncctapp-2013.