Court Opinion

ID: 9578574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:46:31.006565+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:42.712418
License: Public Domain

Higgins, J.
dissenting: I agree with so much of the Court’s opinion as holds a nonresident motor vehicle driver by using the public highways of North Carolina thereby constitutes the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles a process agent for himself and his personal representative. The statute relates solely to service of process. It does not create or en*630large any cause of action. It does not modify or remove any defense. Neither a cause of action nor a defense is determined by the method by which the parties come into court. It is immaterial whether they come by personal service, service by publication, or by service on a process agent. The legal rights of all parties in either instance are determined by the showing they make, or fail to make, in court. I do not agree, therefore, that the Legislature intended to authorize an executor or administrator appointed by a foreign probate court to sue or be sued in his representative capacity here merely because his testator or intestate in his lifetime drove a motor vehicle over North Carolina highways, thereby appointing the Motor Vehicles Commissioner his process agent. “It is provided in G.S. 28-176: That ‘All actions and proceedings brought by or against executors, administrators or collectors, upon any cause of action or right to which the estate is the real party in interest, must be brought by or against them in their representative capacity.’ But we have no statutory authority which authorizes a foreign executor or administrator to come into our courts and prosecute or defend an action in his representative capacity. Bank v. Pancake, 172 N.C. 513, 90 S.E. 515; Glascock v. Gray, 148 N.C. 346, 62 S.E. 433; Scott v. Lumber Co,, 144 N.C. 44, 56 S.E. 548 .. . And in the absence of statutory authority, an administrator or executor cannot maintain an action in his representative capacity in the courts of any State other than the one from which he derived his appointment. 108 A.L.R., Anno. 1282; 34 C.J.S. 1259; 21 Am. Jur., 857; McIntosh, N.C. Practice and Procedure, 234; Restatement of the Conflict of Laws, Ch. 11, § 507; Woerner on American Law of Administration, Vol. 1, 558; Schouler on Wills, Executors and Administrators, Vol. IV, § 3501." Cannon v. Cannon, 228 N.C. 211, 45 S.E. 2d 34.
A foreign representative brought in to defend must necessarily have the right to counterclaim. Thus the vicarious method of service on the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles permits the parties to litigate in a manner not open to them otherwise. Surely such can not be sound law.