Court Opinion

ID: 9856173
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:39:45.040426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:26:15.384807
License: Public Domain

JACKSON, Judge,
concurring in result only by separate opinion.
Although I concur with the result reached by the majority opinion, I write separately to emphasize that, because we dismiss the appeal as interlocutory, we should not discuss in-depth the merits of the federal preemption issue.
Our case law suggests that the purpose of dismissing interlocutory appeals is to prevent premature discussions of different aspects of a case through repeated, effectively meaningless, appeals. See, e.g., Veazey v. Durham, 231 N.C. 357, 363, 57 S.E.2d 377, 382 (1950) (“There is no more effective way to procrastinate-the administration of justice than that of bringing cases to an appellate court piecemeal through the medium of successive appeals from intermediate orders.”). In fact, this Court recently emphasized that, having dismissed an appeal as interlocutory, we could not properly discuss the merits of the appeal:
Because we dismiss the State’s appeal as interlocutory, the issues presented by defendant’s motion and whether the trial court properly ruled upon defendant’s motion are matters not properly before us at this time. See Poore v. Poore, 201 N.C. 791, 792, 161 S.E. 532, 533 (1931) (“It is no part of the function of the courts, in the exercise of the judicial power vested in them by the Constitution, to give advisory opinions, or to answer moot questions, or to maintain a legal bureau for those who may chance to be interested, for the time being, in the pursuit of some academic matter.”) (citations omitted).
State v. Rackley, 200 N.C. App. 433, 434, 684 S.E.2d 475, 476 (2009). Both this Court and our Supreme Court have equated addressing the merits of an interlocutory appeal with issuing an advisory opinion: “At this stage of the proceeding the appeal is premature, and this
*17Court, if it now entertained the appeal, would be giving an advisory opinion on a matter that will not be in controversy if subsequently plaintiffs do recover on their primary claims.” Sportcycle Co. v. Schroader, 53 N.C. App. 354, 357, 280 S.E.2d 799, 801 (1981); see also Kirkman v. Wilson, 328 N.C. 309, 312, 401 S.E.2d 359, 361 (1991) (vacating the Court of Appeals decision because the case should have been dismissed as interlocutory and, as such, the Court of Appeals opinion amounted to an advisory opinion).
Here, the substance of both the City’s and Authority’s appeal is whether “the trial court committed] reversible error in denying the ... motions to dismiss because Asheville Jet’s claims for relief are preempted by federal law[.]” The Court holds that the appeal is interlocutory, and therefore, it should not reach the merits of the case. However, thirteen pages of the majority opinion discuss the issue of federal preemption in-depth.
The potential for inconsistent verdicts is an important discussion with respect to whether the appeal is interlocutory. See, e.g., Green, 305 N.C. at 608, 290 S.E.2d at 596 (“Ordinarily the possibility of undergoing a second trial affects a substantial right only when the same issues are present in both trials, creating the possibility that a party will be prejudiced by different juries in separate trials rendering inconsistent verdicts on the same factual issue.”). Simply noting that the claims are distinct and that the remedies are dissimilar, however, adequately emphasizes that inconsistent verdicts are not possible. A portion of the penultimate paragraph of section IV of the majority opinion seems sufficient to dispose of the case as interlocutory:
. . . Plaintiff’s state court contract claim involves different issues, and also raises claims and seeks relief that cannot be addressed in Plaintiff’s Part 16 proceeding. See Abdullah, 181 F.3d at 375-76. Plaintiff’s claims and the redress Plaintiff seeks in both the Part 16 proceeding and the state court action are so dissimilar that, in this instance, we cannot say that the two actions will result in multiple “trials” on the same issues. A determination that the Authority has not violated any terms of the grant authority simply would not amount to a determination that the Authority did not violate the terms of the contract between Plaintiff and the Authority.
Although I agree that this appeal is interlocutory and should be dismissed, I think that an extensive discussion of the merits of the case, as the majority has conducted, goes beyond our authority as an *18appellate court. Therefore, I would vote only to dismiss as interlocutory based upon the reasoning set forth in this concurrence.