Court Opinion

ID: 9781620
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:55:33.132205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:28.984079
License: Public Domain

BEASLEY, Judge,
concurring in separate opinion.
I agree with the majority’s reliance on Liebes v. Guilford Cnty. Dep’t of Pub. Health, _ N.C. App. _ 713 S.E.2d 546 (2011) to resolve this issue, but I believe that the majority’s interpretation of the country club exemption unduly narrows the force and effect of the statute.
“Where a statute contains two clauses which prescribe its applicability, and the clauses are connected by a disjunctive (e.g. “or”), the *461application of the statute is not limited to cases falling within both clauses, but will apply to cases falling within either of them.” Spruill v. Lake Phelps Vol. Fire Dep’t, Inc., 351 N.C. 318, 323, 523 S.E.2d 672, 676 (2000) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Moreover, “we follow the maxims of statutory construction that words of a statute are not to be deemed useless or redundant[.]" Town of Pine Knoll Shores v. Evans, 331 N.C. 361, 366, 416 S.E.2d 4, 7 (1992).
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 130A-492(11) (2011) states,
A country club or an organization that maintains selective members, is operated by the membership, does not provide food or lodging for pay to anyone who is not a member or a member’s guest, and is either incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in accordance with Chapter 55A of the General Statutes or is exempt from federal income tax under the Internal Revenue Code as defined in G.S. 105-130.2(1). For the purposes of this Article, private club includes country club, (emphasis added).
The majority opines that the “country club” exemption only applies to “nonprofit country clubs and does not. . . exempt for-profit country clubs.” Under the majority’s interpretation, the “country club” and “an organization” are nearly identical. I do not believe that the legislature intended to limit the “country club” exception to non-profit country clubs, especially where juxtaposed to the term “country club”, the legislature made another exception for non-profit organizations. Here, the legislature could not have intended to use this disjunctive if both categories had the same characteristics. The majority’s approach to applying the “country club” exception creates a redundancy and unnecessarily limits the reach of the statute.