Court Opinion

ID: 9586933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:16:38.285366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:56.740256
License: Public Domain

Judge Phillips
concurring.
Though I agree that the judgment appealed from was erroneous and must be reversed and that it would be inequitable and unconscionable to bar plaintiffs claim under the circumstances recorded, I do not agree that except for the equities involved the claim that plaintiff asserts in this suit meets the requirements for compulsory counterclaims laid down in Rule 13(a) of the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure. In my opinion Rule 13(a) has no application to plaintiffs claim for two reasons: First, it did not arise out of the transaction or occurrence that the bank’s prior suit was based on, as that rule requires. Second, the claim had not ripened into maturity when plaintiff filed answer to the bank’s suit, and it is inherent that the only claims that have to, or can, be asserted are those that are in existence.
The transaction or occurrence that the bank’s prior suit against plaintiff arose out of was plaintiffs endorsement of the 1977 note executed by Baker; on the other hand the transaction or occurrence that this suit by the plaintiff arose out of was the bank’s foundationless lawsuit against him to collect under the endorsement. Until the spuriousness of that suit was established, and it took a trial and appeal adverse to defendant to do it, the present suit had no basis whatever. The defendant’s deceitful and duplicitous practices, though plaintiff learned about them before the other suit was brought, were but some of the foundation *316stones of the present case. By themselves, however, they had no legal significance and blossomed into a valid claim only when they were joined by plaintiff being damaged by the prior lawsuit and, equally important, by the lawsuit being determined to be unjust and invalid. The minor damage that plaintiff sustained before answer was filed in that case, by having to employ counsel, did not complete the claim asserted in this case. Valid claims and counterclaims alike are based not on hopes, expectations, or future events; but on events that have already come to pass. If defendant had won that case, as it tried to do for three years and could have done up to the very end when its appeal was lost, plaintiff would have had no claim. Thus when answer was filed in that case, plaintiff had no claim to assert — he only had the prospect of a claim, about which Rule 13(a) is silent.