The published majority agreed the townhome was technically a mixed asset because the husband acquired ownership before marriage, but affirmed the distribution. The evidence attributed zero percent of the separation-date value to a proven separate component and 100 percent to the marital component. A partial dissent would have vacated for further classification and valuation.
The published panel affirmed summary judgment against dissolution. The record showed the LLC could continue operating consistently with its agreement, and liquidation was not necessary to protect the member’s rights under G.S. 57D-6-02. A trial judge’s oral reference to nonexistent motions did not displace the signed written orders.
The Court of Appeals dismissed the defendants’ appeal as interlocutory. The attachment did not essentially shut down the defendants’ business, applied to a single North Carolina asset, allowed a sale so long as proceeds remained secured, and could be discharged by bond. Because the defendants did not identify an irreparable injury that would be lost before final judgment, the order did not affect a substantial right supporting immediate review.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of Rule 60 relief. The trial court investigated the circumstances, assessed credibility, considered the available Rule 60 grounds, and could find that the record did not establish a void judgment or extraordinary circumstances. The appellate court emphasized its deferential abuse-of-discretion review and declined to substitute its credibility judgment for the trial court’s.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal in a railroad trespass and quiet-title action, holding that Mach 2 Investments and adjoining property owners lacked standing under the jus tertii doctrine to challenge Great Smoky Mountains Railroad’s 1996 deed from NCDOT. Even if the conveyance did not strictly follow state-lands procedures, only the State can mount that challenge—and any defect would render the deed merely voidable, not void. On remand, the trial court must address necessary parties and examine the scope of a historic “farm crossing” easement whose claimed use Mach 2 may have overburdened through subdivision.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals vacated a trebled-damages award in a Mecklenburg County building-code enforcement suit, holding that a county lacks standing under Dillon’s Rule to recover monetary damages on behalf of private homeowners and that intervenors who never pleaded their own claims cannot collect from the county’s judgment, while remanding the underlying duplex-vs.-townhouse liability issue for re-evaluation under the 2012 and 2018 code editions that governed at the time of construction.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed a prescriptive easement over a rural pathway that had been used for ingress and egress since the 1950s, holding that the required twenty-year period need not immediately precede the dispute and that an easement already vested by adverse use cannot be destroyed by a later permission grant to a third party.