Court Opinion

ID: 9781468
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:39:14.087382+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:26.803965
License: Public Domain

STROUD, Judge,
concurring in result only.
I concur with the result reached by the majority opinion. I write separately to note that I continue to disagree with the analysis of *440Garrison and Hudson as stated in the majority opinion. Defendant-wife argues that
[o]ur Courts have uniformly held that when a party files an action listed in Section 7A-244 in District Court and another action relating to the subject matter of the prior action is then filed in Superior Court, the District Court’s jurisdiction over the subject has already been invoked by the parties to the first action .... In actions similar to this one, our Courts have been unvarying in ruling that the trial court should dismiss the action.
Until Burgess v. Burgess, — N.C. App. —, 698 S.E.2d 666 (2010) defendant-wife was correct. As I stated in my opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part in Burgess,
I differ somewhat from the majority opinion as to the interpretation of Garrison v. Garrison, 90 N.C. App. 670, 369 S.E.2d 628 (1988) and Hudson Int'l, Inc. v. Hudson, 145 N.C. App. 631, 550 S.E.2Ó 571 (2001). The majority opinion notes that “[a]t the core of Garrison and Hudson were two principles: (1) the same property was the subject of both the superior and district court actions, and (2) the relief sought and available was similar in each suit.” However, I differ with the majority opinion as to its assertion that identity of the property and similarity of relief are the controlling principles of Garrison and Hudson. The controlling principle of Garrison and Hudson is the invocation of the jurisdiction of the District Court. See Hudson Int’l, Inc. v. Hudson, 145 N.C. App. 631, 550 S.E.2d 571 (2001); Garrison v. Garrison, 90 N.C. App. 670, 369 S.E.2d 628 (1988).
Id. at —, 698 S.E.2d at 673.
I concur in the result in part because I am bound to follow Burgess as precedent, despite my disagreement with certain parts of the opinion. See In re Civil Penalty, 324 N.C. 373, 384, 379 S.E.2d 30, 37 (1989) (“[A] panel of the Court of Appeals is bound by a prior decision of another panel of the same court addressing the same question, but in a different case, unless overturned by an intervening decision from a higher court.”). In addition, it appears from the record before us that the trial court did not have the benefit of all of the orders entered in the Alamance County equitable distribution case when it ruled upon defendant-wife’s motion to dismiss. Plaintiff-husband filed a counterclaim for equitable distribution in Alamance County, as noted by the majority. But it appears that the Superior Court, Forsyth *441County may not have been informed that the District Court, Alamance County had also entered several orders addressing some of the very same issues raised in the Forsyth County action. For example, on 3 September 2008, the parties entered a consent order in which they agreed that their date of separation was 9 May 2008, a date upon which the parties inexplicably still seem to disagree in their briefs before this court, and plaintiff-husband was ordered to provide documentation regarding some of the credit card debts he alleges that defendant-wife incurred after the date of separation. On 19 March 2009, District Court, Alamance County entered an order which granted plaintiff-husband’s request for an injunction against defendant-wife’s “transfer, sale, conveyance, disappearance, waste or conversion” of marital property, specifically including the marital home, which is also a subject of this action. Plaintiff-husband filed the Forsyth County action after entry of both of these Alamance County orders. However, I concur in the result, as the Forsyth County action will be stayed until completion of the Alamance County action, so that any overt conflict between the orders of the two courts addressing the same parties, property, and issues will be avoided.
I therefore concur in result only.