Court Opinion

ID: 9855229
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:21:20.211894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:25:13.945269
License: Public Domain

Justice MEYER
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in that part of the majority opinion which affirms the Court of Appeals’ remand of the case for findings as to a “reasonable” attorney’s fee. I dissent from that part of the majority opinion which affirms the allowance of recovery of attorneys’ fees in the Chapter 75 claim and punitive damages in the common law tortious interference claim.
Assuming arguendo that the majority is correct in its conclusion that this Court has not heretofore spoken to the issue presented regarding election of remedies, it is my view that it is contrary to the legislative intent in enacting Chapter 75 to allow the plaintiff to recover in both the common law action and the Chapter 75 action.
Heretofore, it has been the practice in this state to require the plaintiff to recover either the Chapter 75 statutory group of remedies (trebled compensatory damages and discretionary attorneys’ fees) or the group of remedies available in the common law claim (compensatory and punitive damages).
Jennings Glass Co. v. Brummer, 88 N.C. App. 44, 362 S.E.2d 578 (1987), disc. rev. denied, 321 N.C. 473, 364 S.E.2d 921 (1988), is a good example of the prior treatment. In Jennings, the Court of Appeals held that a plaintiff who sued for breach of contract and unfair practices but whose unfair practices claim was dismissed at trial had elected its remedy by appealing the dismissal of the unfair practices claim. This was true even though the plaintiff had been awarded compensatory and punitive damages at trial for its breach of contract claim. That court, in reversing the trial court’s judgment, struck the previous breach of contract claim and award and remanded the case with orders that treble compensatory damages and an attorneys’ fees determination be made and awarded under the statutory claim.
Implicit in the Court of Appeals’ holding was its proper determination that the plaintiff was allowed only one remedy for the *197defendant’s unlawful conduct — either recovery under the breach of contract claim or recovery under the unfair practices claim. The Court of Appeals in Jennings did not allow the plaintiff to retain the punitive damages awarded at trial for the breach of contract claim and untrebled damages and attorneys’ fees under the statutory unfair practices claim.
In the case sub judice, it is irrefutable that the common law tortious interference claim and the Chapter 75 unfair practices claims were based on the same underlying conduct. Each of the unfair practices found to exist at the trial court level was a type of interference with United’s contract with Kuykendall. All of the conduct found by the trial court to constitute unfair practices also fell within United’s interference claim.
I do not believe that United should be permitted to elect among individual components of the two remedies. United elected the following recovery:
Compensatory Punitive Attorney’s Damages Damages Fees
Interference Claim (not elected) $100,000 N/A
Unfair Practices Claim $15,000 N/A $250,000 (not trebled)
I believe that the majority errs by not requiring United to elect between the full remedy allowable under its tortious interference claim and the full remedy allowable under its unfair practices claim. In effect, the majority allows United to select individualized components of recovery under both of these claims as if it were selecting from a smorgasbord of remedies.
A proper election in the case at bar precludes recovery of common law damages (compensatory and punitive) and Chapter 75 statutory attorneys’ fees. I believe that it is only when the plaintiff chooses the Chapter 75 mandatorily trebled compensatory damages that attorneys’ fees may be awarded pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 75-16.1(1).
Given the complexity of modern commercial transactions, today’s majority opinion will encourage litigants to plead statutory *198and common law claims for the same conduct, yielding verdicts containing alternative compensatory damages, punitive damages, treble damages, and attorneys’ fee awards. It invites plaintiffs to plead such claims, await the jury’s verdict on all of them, and then pick and choose among the most beneficial components of each of them. This will result in artificially inflated recoveries based on the artful drafting of pleadings and jury verdict forms, transforming remedial statutes that authorize the recovery of attorneys’ fees, such as Chapter 75, into vehicles for excessive recoveries. Surely this was not the intent of the legislature in enacting Chapter 75.
Justice Webb joins in this concurring and dissenting opinion.