UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 23-1367

HANK BLAND; KENDELL JACKSON; LUETTA INNISS,

 Plaintiffs – Appellants,

v.

CAROLINA LEASE MANAGEMENT GROUP, LLC; CTH RENTALS, LLC; OLD 

HICKORY BUILDINGS, LLC,

 Defendants – Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at

Greenville. Terrence W. Boyle, District Judge. (4:22-cv-00033-BO)

Argued: March 21, 2024 Decided: May 7, 2024

Before WILKINSON, KING, and AGEE, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.

ARGUED: Charles Marshall Delbaum, NATIONAL CONSUMER LAW CENTER, 

Boston, Massachusetts, for Appellants. Jonathan Earl Williams, CEDAR GROVE LAW, 

Hillsborough, North Carolina, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Adrian M. Lapas, LAPAS 

LAW OFFICES, PLLC, Goldsboro, North Carolina, for Appellants.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:

Plaintiffs Hank Bland, Kendell Jackson, and Luetta Innis sued Defendants Carolina 

Lease Management Group, LLC, CTH Rentals, LLC, and Old Hickory Buildings, LLC, 

for violations of North Carolina law related to Plaintiffs’ rent-to-own purchases of storage 

sheds. The district court dismissed the complaint on statute-of-limitations grounds and later 

denied Plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration and for relief from the final judgment. On 

appeal, Plaintiffs argue that the district court erroneously applied the three-year statute of 

limitations applicable to one of their claims to their other claims. We agree with Plaintiffs 

that all but one claim should not have been dismissed as time-barred and therefore affirm 

in part, vacate in part, and remand for further proceedings.

I.

In 2018, Plaintiffs entered into agreements to purchase sheds from Defendants in 

rent-to-own transactions. The transactions involved finance charges that were more than 

twice the maximum rate allowed under North Carolina law for Bland and Jackson, and well 

over the maximum rate for Innis. Plaintiffs made the requisite monthly payments for a few 

years, but then stopped because they learned that the agreements violated North Carolina 

law. 

In March 2022, Plaintiffs sued Defendants for violations of the North Carolina

Retail Installment Sales Act (“RISA”), North Carolina Unfair and Deceptive Trade 

Practices Act (“UDTPA”), and North Carolina Debt Collection Act (“DCA”), among other 

causes of action. Relevant here, Plaintiffs’ UDTPA claim alleges that Defendants engaged 

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in unfair and deceptive trade practices by willfully and knowingly violating RISA via

excessive finance charges. See N.C. Gen. Stat. § 25A-44(4) (indicating that a “knowing 

and willful” RISA violation “shall constitute an unfair trade practice” under UDTPA). 

Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint on statute-of-limitations grounds. They 

argued that Plaintiffs’ claims were rooted in RISA such that the three-year RISA statute of 

limitations barred all of the claims. In response, Plaintiffs argued that, aside from their 

RISA claim, their other claims were timely based on the four-year statute of limitations 

applicable to UDTPA and DCA claims. The district court agreed with Defendants and 

granted the motion to dismiss. The court then denied Plaintiffs’ subsequent motion for 

reconsideration under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 59(e) and 60(b).

Plaintiffs filed a timely notice of appeal. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 

U.S.C. § 1291. 

We review the district court’s grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion de novo, Ray v. 

Roane, 948 F.3d 222, 226 (4th Cir. 2020), and its denial of a Rule 59(e) and 60(b) motion 

for abuse of discretion, United States v. Taylor, 54 F.4th 795, 802 (4th Cir. 2022); Morgan 

v. Tincher, 90 F.4th 172, 177 (4th Cir. 2024).

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II.

We conclude that the district court erred in determining that the three-year RISA 

statute of limitations applies to Plaintiffs’ UDTPA and DCA claims.

1

We first address the UDTPA claim. UDTPA is clearly governed by a four-year 

statute of limitations. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 75-16.2. In spite of that, Defendants assert that 

because Plaintiffs’ UDTPA claim is premised on a RISA violation, the three-year RISA 

statute of limitations applies to the UDTPA claim. But North Carolina case law indicates 

that the UDTPA statute of limitations applies to a UDTPA claim regardless of whether that 

claim is predicated on a different substantive claim governed by a different statute of 

limitations. See Shepard v. Ocwen Fed. Bank, FSB, 638 S.E.2d 197, 200 (N.C. 2006) 

(applying four-year statute of limitations to UDTPA claim that was “derived from [the 

plaintiffs’] usury claim,” even though the usury claim itself was governed by a two-year 

statute of limitations); Skinner v. Preferred Credit, 616 S.E.2d 676, 680–81 (N.C. Ct. App. 

2005) (same); Jennings v. Lindsey, 318 S.E.2d 318, 322 (N.C. Ct. App. 1984) (“The 

[UDTPA] claims are based on the same facts that plaintiffs alleged in support of their fraud 

claims. Even if the fraud claims were barred by the three year limitation of G.S. 1-52, the 

unfair trade practice claims, being controlled by a four year statute, would not necessarily 

be barred.”); Page v. Lexington Ins. Co., 628 S.E.2d 427, 430 (N.C. Ct. App. 2006) (“[O]ur 

Court has consistently treated UDTP[A] claims as separate and distinct from other claims 

1 On appeal, Plaintiffs do not contend that the district court erred in dismissing their 

RISA claim on statute-of-limitations grounds. We thus affirm the dismissal of that claim. 

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with respect to statutes of limitations. . . . [P]laintiffs’ UDTP[A] claim was separate and 

distinct from plaintiffs’ claims on the underlying insurance policy, and the UDTP[A] claim 

is therefore governed by the four-year statute of limitations applicable to such claims.”).

And none of these cases limit their holdings to cases in which the UDTPA claim involves 

separate facts from the underlying claim, as Defendants contend. See, e.g., Jennings, 318 

S.E.2d at 322 (applying a four-year statute of limitations to UDTPA claims even though 

the claims were “based on the same facts that plaintiffs alleged in support of their fraud 

claims,” which were governed by a three-year statute of limitations). Therefore, the fouryear UDTPA statute of limitations applies to Plaintiffs’ UDTPA claim, regardless of its 

interplay with RISA.

To support its contrary conclusion, the district court relied on an unpublished district 

court decision, Register v. North Sun Housing & Development, Inc., No. 7:04-CV-68-FL, 

2005 WL 8159532 (E.D.N.C. Sept. 2, 2005). But Register is unpersuasive and inapposite.

In Register, the plaintiffs brought claims pursuant to RISA, the federal Truth in 

Lending Act (“TILA”), and UDTPA based on their purchase and financing of a 

manufactured home. Id. at *1. The district court dismissed the UDTPA claim as “meritless”

because it was “based solely upon violations addressed in plaintiffs’ other claims, which 

the court ha[d] rejected on their merits [(a RISA claim and a TILA claim)] or on the basis 

of statute of limitations [(TILA claims)].” Id. at *10. The court elaborated:

In particular, two cases in North Carolina have held that unfair trade practices 

claim[s] could not be based upon violations of other federal statutes 

providing pervasive regulation of a particular area of law. The court finds 

these cases persuasive in the present context, which involves application of 

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specific statutory disclosure requirements under TILA and North Carolina 

statutes.

Id. (citing Skinner v. E.F. Hutton & Co., 333 S.E.2d 236 (N.C. 1985); Brinkman v. Barrett 

Kays & Assocs., P.A., 575 S.E.2d 40 (N.C. Ct. App. 2003)). 

Register is not useful to resolving the issue presented in this case. First, the RISA 

claim in Register was dismissed on the merits, meaning that there was no RISA violation 

and thus no UDTPA claim that could be predicated on such a violation. See N.C. Gen. Stat. 

§ 25A-44(4) (“The knowing and willful violation of [RISA] shall constitute an unfair trade 

practice[.]” (emphasis added)). In contrast, here, Defendants don’t dispute that Plaintiffs 

have a meritorious (albeit time-barred) RISA claim on which a UDTPA claim can be based.

Second, the Register court’s decision appears to have primarily depended on the 

district court’s conclusion that the plaintiffs couldn’t base a UDTPA claim on a TILA

violation. See 2005 WL 8159532, at *10 (“In particular, two cases in North Carolina have 

held that unfair trade practices claim[s] could not be based upon violations of other federal 

statutes providing pervasive regulation of a particular area of law.” (emphasis added)). 

Obviously, in this case, Plaintiffs are basing their UDTPA claim not on a violation of 

federal law but on a violation of state law, specifically RISA. And RISA expressly provides 

that a “knowing and willful” violation can form the basis for a UDTPA claim. 

Third, the state cases on which the Register court relied are irrelevant to this case 

because they have nothing to do with RISA, UDTPA statute-of-limitations issues, or using 

UDTPA to bring a claim for a violation of another statute as specifically provided for in 

that statute. See Brinkman, 575 S.E.2d at 45 (affirming grant of summary judgment to the 

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defendants on UDTPA claim that was based on a violation of the North Carolina Clean 

Water Act because that Act specifically “omitted a private right of action” and the plaintiffs 

were “seek[ing] to create a private right of action . . . by importing [UDTPA] and asserting 

a [UDTPA] claim to enforce the [Clean Water Act]”); Skinner, 333 S.E.2d at 237, 241 

(concluding that securities transactions were “beyond the scope” of UDTPA because the 

court did “not believe that the North Carolina legislature would have intended [UDTPA] 

. . . to apply to securities transactions which were already subject to pervasive and intricate 

regulation” (citation omitted)).

Therefore, Register does not justify the district court’s conclusion here that the 

RISA statute of limitations applies to Plaintiffs’ UDTPA claim. Instead, the district court 

should have applied the four-year statute of limitations to the UDTPA claim, under which 

the UDTPA claim would not be time-barred.

And the same reasoning applies to the DCA claim. DCA’s statute of limitations 

comes from the same statutory provision as UDTPA’s limitations period. See N.C. Gen. 

Stat. § 75-16.2. Further, the North Carolina “General Assembly intended for [DCA] 

claims—brought under Article 2, Chapter 75—to be subject to the same general 

requirements that apply to unfair and deceptive trade practices (UDTP[A]) claims brought 

under Article 1, Chapter 75.” Simmons v. Kross Lieberman & Stone, Inc., 746 S.E.2d 311, 

315 (N.C. Ct. App. 2013). Because of this relationship between UDTPA and DCA, we see 

no reason why the above-described rules regarding the UDTPA statute of limitations 

should not apply to DCA.

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Therefore, a four-year statute of limitations governs Plaintiffs’ UDTPA and DCA 

claims, and the district court improperly dismissed those claims on statute-of-limitations 

grounds. The district court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ other non-RISA claims on the same 

basis was also erroneous.

III.

In sum, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ RISA claim but vacate 

the dismissal of their other claims and remand for further proceedings.

AFFIRMED IN PART, VACATED IN PART, AND REMANDED

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