Court Opinion

ID: 9847733
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:06:42.609603+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:29.820603
License: Public Domain

Justice MITCHELL
dissenting.
Both the majority and dissenting opinions in the Court of Appeals agree that the only part of any construction at issue in the present case consists exclusively and entirely of a section of boards laid flat on wooden stringers on the ground. It does not appear from the record on appeal that the plaintiff contends or has ever contended that any construction on the defendants’ property, other than this flat and unobstructive construction, was at issue in the present case.
The timbers which the majority opinion in this Court describes as “forming a low wall separating the deck from the yard” are not mentioned in the transcript of the proceedings in the trial court. This Court knows of the existence of the low wall described by the majority only by resorting to a photograph which was introduced at trial. I believe that even a cursory review of that *368photograph by anyone familiar with the various types of constructions used to stabilize sandy lots on our barrier islands reveals that the low wall described by the majority is a “bulkhead” or “seawall” put in place to prevent erosion of the defendants’ sandy lot into the adjacent canal. Seawalls and bulkheads simply are not parts of a “deck,” as that descriptive term is used in our coastal region. The plaintiff’s witness, Chief Building Inspector Fred Fulcher, clearly understood this when he described the “deck” at issue in the present case simply as “somewhere around 50 to 60 feet across the front, and by the depth of it deepest point may be 15, 16 feet deep.” Chief Building Inspector Fulcher seems to have known that the bulkhead and stairs behind the deck were not parts of the construction which the plaintiff-town contended was in violation of law and which was at issue in this case.
As only a flat and unobstructive construction is properly at issue in the present case, I dissent from the decision of the majority of this Court for the reasons fully stated and explained by Judge Lewis in his dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals. Town of Pine Knoll Shores v. Evans, 104 N.C. App. 79, 86-87, 407 S.E.2d 895, 899-900 (1991) (Lewis, J., dissenting).
Justice LAKE joins in this dissenting opinion.