4U Homes & Sales, Inc. v. McCoy

NO. COA13-1450
NORTH CAROLINA COURT OF APPEALS
Filed: 5 August 2014
4U HOMES & SALES, INC.,
Plaintiff
Mecklenburg County
v.
No. 13 CVD 8008
HELEN EVETTE MCCOY,
Defendant
Appeal by plaintiff and defendant from order entered 13
August 2013 by Judge Ty Hands in Mecklenburg County District
Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 23 April 2014.
Leslie C. Rawls for Plaintiff.
Legal Aid of North Carolina, Inc., by Chadwick H. Crockford
& Isaac W. Sturgill, and Legal Services of Southern
Piedmont, by Edward P. Byron, for Defendant.
ERVIN, Judge.
Plaintiff 4U Homes & Sales, Inc., and Defendant Helen
Evette McCoy appeal from a judgment entered by the trial court
rejecting Plaintiff’s request that Defendant be summarily
ejected from a rental house owned by Plaintiff, awarding
Defendant $3,705.00 in compensatory damages for breach of the
implied warranty of habitability, and finding in Plaintiff’s
favor with respect to the unfair and deceptive trade practice
and unfair debt collection practice claims that Defendant had
asserted against Plaintiff. On appeal, Plaintiff contends that
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(1) the trial court’s determination that Plaintiff had breached
the implied warranty of habitability lacked adequate evidentiary
support, (2) the trial court erred by determining that the fair
rental value of the home as warranted was $495.00 per month, and
(3) the trial court erred by failing to account for outstanding
rent in calculating the amount of damages to be awarded to
Plaintiff. Defendant, on the other hand, contends that the
trial court erred by determining that Defendant had not
established that she was entitled to relief on the grounds that
Plaintiff had engaged in unfair and deceptive trade and unfair
debt collection practices. After careful consideration of the
parties’ challenges to the trial court’s order in light of the
record and the applicable law, we conclude that the trial court
lacked jurisdiction to hear Defendant’s appeal from the
magistrate’s judgment, that the trial court’s order must be
vacated for lack of jurisdiction, and that this case must be
remanded to the Mecklenburg County District Court for further
remand to the magistrate for reinstatement of the magistrate’s
original judgment.
I. Factual Background
A. Substantive Facts
1. Plaintiff’s Evidence
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Cynthia Exum and her husband, Larry Exum, created Plaintiff
in 1994 for the purpose of selling and leasing real property.
At any given point in time, Plaintiff held from ten to twelve
tracts of rental property.
Defendant lived across the street from a property located
on Reliance Street, which Plaintiff had acquired in 2010.
Although Defendant made inquiry of the Exums about renting the
property, they initially declined to enter into such an
arrangement with Defendant because they were not ready to rent
the property. More specifically, the Exums wanted to have
certain cosmetic work done prior to renting the property in
order to get a higher monthly rent.
After asking about the property for a year, Defendant told
the Exums that she needed to rent the property given that she
was about to become homeless due to a pending eviction. As a
favor to Defendant, the Exums agreed to rent the property. Once
Defendant indicated that she could only afford to pay $350.00
per month in rent, the Exums accepted Defendant’s offer given
that, in their opinion, the property was in good condition and
the amount of rent that Defendant proposed appropriately
reflected the property’s value. For that reason, the Exums told
Defendant that she could rent the property in its current
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condition for $350.00 or rent it for $650.00 after all repairs
had been completed.1
After considering Plaintiff’s offer, Defendant entered into
a lease agreement with Plaintiff under which she agreed to rent
the property for $350.00 per month from 6 July 2011 until 31
July 2012. In addition, consistently with Plaintiff’s routine
practice, the lease agreement between Plaintiff and Defendant
provided for the payment of a $25.00 late fee. A comparison of
the property in question with five other nearby properties on a
per square foot basis indicated that the amount of rent that
Plaintiff charged Defendant was comparable to that charged for
other properties in the area.
The Exums conducted a walkthrough with Defendant prior to
allowing her to occupy the property. During that process,
Defendant failed to find anything that would tend to render the
property unfit for human habitation. A ruptured pipe found on
the premises was repaired before Defendant moved in. Although
one of the windows was cracked, a replacement window was ordered
and installed after Defendant occupied the property. Although
1
Although the Exums believed that the $350.00 amount
reflected the current value of the property, Ms. Exum asserted
that, if the home had simply been repainted and the carpet
replaced, the home’s rental value would have been $50.00 per
month higher.
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Defendant acknowledged that the home was “fit,” she also
indicated that it needed to be “fixed.”
Any repair requests that Defendant made during the time
that she occupied the property were honored. For example, when
Defendant made Mr. Exum aware in September 2011 that the hot
water heater needed repair, he ordered another one on the same
day. In the course of fixing the water heater, Mr. Exum noticed
that someone had removed the fuse box cover and he made the
necessary repairs. In March 2012, Defendant reported a loose
toilet to Mr. Exum. After he removed the toilet, Mr. Exum
noticed that the subfloor did not suffice to support the toilet,
so he replaced and reattached the subfloor and related vinyl
tile. In addition, the Exums repaired a broken storm door on
the same date. All of these repairs were completed within a few
days of notification.
Defendant was behind on her rent payments during the entire
lease period. Although the Exums allowed her to make partial
payments, Defendant never paid her rent on time. Plaintiff
collected a $25.00 late fee from Defendant in February 2012.
The Exums declined to renew Defendant’s lease at the end of the
initial rental period and informed Plaintiff “from time to time”
that she would eventually need to move out.
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In September 2012, Plaintiff initiated a summary ejectment
action against Defendant based upon her failure to make required
rental payments. Although Plaintiff obtained a judgment against
Defendant, the Exums, instead of taking possession of the
property, informed Defendant that she would be evicted if she
failed to keep her rent payments current. Subsequently,
Plaintiff forgave four late fees that they were entitled to
assess against Defendant under the terms of the lease agreement.
However, Defendant failed to pay her rent for the following
month in a timely manner.
In January of 2013, Defendant asked Mr. Exum to repair the
heater. Two weeks later, the heater broke again. Although the
Exums informed Defendant that they could come that Saturday to
make the needed repairs, Defendant never returned their phone
call. As a result, Mr. Exum went by the home on the following
Monday to speak with Defendant and identify a time when he could
repair the heater. However, Defendant replied that she would
not be home until Thursday and refused to allow Mr. Exum to
enter the premises in her absence.
On Thursday, 7 February 2013, the building code inspector
inspected the home. After the inspection had been completed,
Defendant gave Mr. Exum permission to fix the heater, a process
which Mr. Exum completed in thirty minutes. The Exums also
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spoke with the inspector after the inspection had been
completed. On the same date, Plaintiff notified Defendant that
her month-to-month tenancy would be terminated and she would
have to vacate the property within 45 days. The Exums sent the
termination notice because of their belief that Defendant had
purposely blocked the making of the needed heater repair and
their conviction, in light of their experiences with Defendant,
that a continuing landlord-tenant relationship with her would
not be successful. According to the Exums, Defendant owes
$1,196.93 in past due rent.
A week later, the Exums received an inspection report that
contained a list of code violations, with the unrepaired heater
being listed as the most critical violation. Although the
report asserted that there were no smoke detectors in the home,
such devices had been installed before Defendant occupied the
residence. Even so, Mr. Exum installed new smoke detectors at
the time that he repaired the heater. After receiving the
inspection report, the Exums called Defendant to schedule the
making of the necessary repairs. However, Defendant did not
answer their calls. In spite of the fact that the parties’
lease agreement allowed the Exums to enter the premises in order
to make repairs, Defendant refused to allow Mr. Exum to enter
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the home or to take photographs of it. Instead, Defendant
slammed the door on Mr. Exum’s foot and called her attorney.
In April and May, Plaintiff communicated with Defendant’s
attorney in an attempt to obtain permission to enter the
residence in order to make needed repairs. After Defendant
obtained a new attorney in June, the Exums received
authorization to enter the residence and replaced the ceiling,
which was sagging, and the windowsills, which were decaying.
2. Defendant’s Evidence
Defendant moved into the rental property in July 2011 and
made her last rent payment in March 2013. At the time of the
initial walkthrough, the home was dirty and smelled of animal
urine and feces. In addition, the shower was dripping, the
toilet was loose and unstable, and there appeared to be a hole
in the floor in the vicinity of the toilet. Defendant requested
that all of these conditions be repaired. Finally, Defendant
informed the Exums that the ceiling appeared to be about to cave
in; however, the ceiling was not repaired until after the
February 2013 inspection. Although Defendant informed the Exums
that there were no smoke or carbon monoxide detectors in the
home immediately after occupying the premises, this deficiency
was not rectified until after the February 2013 inspection as
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well. In spite of these problems, Defendant agreed to rent the
property for a monthly amount of $350.00.
Defendant called the inspector in February of 2013. The
only violation identified by the inspector of which Defendant
had not been previously aware was the fact that the breaker box
did not comply with the applicable building code. On the
evening following the inspection, Mr. Exum called Defendant to
ask what violations had been identified. Although Mr. Exum
stated that he had already known what the inspector’s findings
would be, he indicated that the owner2 would not pay for the
needed repairs given that the monthly rent was only $350.00.
According to Defendant, a monthly rental payment of $350.00
did not reflect the fair market value of the home given the
number of code violations that existed at the beginning of her
tenancy. Had Defendant been aware of all of the code violations
identified by the inspector, she would have only agreed to a
$300.00 monthly rental payment. Although Defendant was charged
a $25.00 late fee on multiple occasions and although the Exums
claimed to have only collected one late fee, Plaintiff’s ledger
indicated that a late fee of $17.50 had been collected on six
occasions. The first portion of any payment that Defendant made
was applied to rent, with the remainder being attributed to any
2
According to Defendant, the Exums consistently maintained
that they did not own the property.
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outstanding late fee amounts. In view of the fact that
Defendant consistently failed to pay her rent on time, the late
fee amounts that she was assessed were never actually collected.
B. Procedural History
On 18 March 2013, Plaintiff filed a complaint seeking to
have Defendant summarily ejected from the property on the
grounds that she had held over after the expiration of her
tenancy and the recovery of $750.00 in past due rent. On 1
April 2013, Defendant filed an answer in which she denied the
material allegations of the complaint and asserted counterclaims
for breach of the implied warranty of habitability, charging
illegal rent, charging illegal fees, and engaging in unfair debt
collection and unfair and deceptive trade practices. On 26
April 2013, the magistrate entered a judgment finding that
Plaintiff’s summary ejectment claim should be dismissed with
prejudice, that Defendant had proven all of the counterclaims
alleged in her responsive pleading, and that Defendant was
entitled to recover a rent abatement in the amount of $5,000.00,
which was the maximum that the magistrate could allow by law,
and attorney’s fees from Plaintiff.
On 1 May 2013, Defendant noted an appeal to the District
Court from the magistrate’s judgment. On 14 June 2013,
Plaintiff filed a reply to the Defendant’s counterclaims. The
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case came on for hearing before the trial court, sitting without
a jury, at the 15 July 2013 civil session of the Mecklenburg
County District Court. On 13 August 2013, the trial court
entered a judgment dismissing Plaintiff’s claim for summary
ejectment, finding in Plaintiff’s favor with respect to
Defendant’s counterclaims for unfair debt collection and unfair
and deceptive trade practices, and awarding Defendant $3,705.00
in compensatory damages for Plaintiff’s breach of the implied
warranty of habitability. Both parties noted appeals to this
Court from the trial court’s judgment.
II. Legal Analysis
In its briefs, Plaintiff argues that the trial court erred
by finding that Plaintiff breached the implied warranty of
habitability, overruling Plaintiff’s objection to Defendant’s
testimony concerning the value of the leased premises as of the
date upon which her occupancy began, improperly calculating the
amount of damages that should be awarded to Defendant, and
failing to find that Plaintiff’s summary ejectment claim had
been rendered moot by Defendant’s surrender of the premises
while Defendant contends that the trial court erred by refusing
to determine that Plaintiff had engaged in unfair and deceptive
trade and unfair debt collection practices. As an initial
matter, however, we must determine whether the trial court had
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the authority to enter the order from which both parties have
appealed.
“A universal principle as old as the law is that the
proceedings of a court without jurisdiction of the subject
matter are a nullity.” Burgess v. Gibbs, 262 N.C. 462, 465, 137
S.E.2d 806, 808 (1964). Put another way, “[s]ubject matter
jurisdiction is the indispensable foundation upon which valid
judicial decisions rest, and in its absence a court has no power
to act.” In re T.R.P., 360 N.C. 588, 590, 636 S.E.2d 787, 790
(2006). In addition, “subject matter jurisdiction may not be
waived, and this Court has not only the power, but the duty to
address the trial court’s subject matter jurisdiction on its own
motion or ex mero motu.” Rinna v. Steven B., 201 N.C. App. 532,
537, 687 S.E.2d 496, 500 (2009). Although filing an action in
the District Court Division that should be brought in the
Superior Court Division or vice versa does not ordinarily
deprive the court in which the action is filed of subject matter
jurisdiction in the absence of the existence of a statutory
provision giving one or the other of these two components of the
General Court of Justice exclusive jurisdiction over a
particular type of claim, see N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-257 (stating
that the “[f]ailure of a party to move for transfer within the
time prescribed is a waiver of any objection to the division”;
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Peoples v. Peoples, 8 N.C. App. 136, 143, 174 S.E.2d 2, 7 (1970)
(stating that “no order of the district court may be overturned
merely because it was not the proper division to enter the
order”), the same is not true of actions filed in the small
claims court.
At the time that this case was pending in the trial courts,
a small claim action was defined as a civil action where:
(1) The amount in controversy, computed in
accordance with [N.C. Gen. Stat. §] 7A-
243, does not exceed five thousand
dollars ($5,000); and
(2) The only principal relief prayed is
monetary, or the recovery of specific
personal property, or summary
ejectment, or any combination of the
foregoing in properly joined claims;
and
(3) The plaintiff has requested assignment
to a magistrate in the manner provided
in this Article.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-210 (2011).3 However, N.C. Gen. Stat. §7A-
219 provides that:
[n]o counterclaim, cross claim or third-
party claim which would make the amount in
controversy exceed the jurisdictional amount
established by [N.C. Gen. Stat. §] 7A-210(1)
is permissible in a small claim action
assigned to a magistrate. No determination
of fact or law in an assigned small claim
3
The General Assembly increased the jurisdictional
limitation applicable to small claims actions to $10,000 for all
actions filed on or after 1 August 2013. 2013 N.C. Sess. L. c.
159 s. 1 & 6.
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action estops a party thereto in any
subsequent action which, except for this
section, might have been asserted under the
Code of Civil Procedure as a counterclaim in
the small claim action. Notwithstanding
[N.C. Gen. Stat. §] 1A-1, Rule 13, failure
by a defendant to file a counterclaim in a
small claims action assigned to a
magistrate, or failure by a defendant to
appeal a judgment in a small claims action
to district court, shall not bar such claims
in a separate action.
Unlike N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-243, which establishes the amount in
controversy necessary to make an action “proper” in either the
District or Superior Court divisions, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-219
absolutely bars the consideration of claims that exceed the
“jurisdictional amount” in small claims court, rendering the
amount in controversy applicable to actions assigned to the
magistrate jurisdictional in nature. See also Fickley v.
Greystone Enters., 140 N.C. App. 258, 261, 536 S.E.2d 331, 333
(2000) (noting that the “plaintiffs [sought] damages in excess
of $10,000, which exceeds the $3,000 jurisdictional amount in
small claim actions pursuant to the provisions of N.C. Gen.
Stat. § 7A-210(1)” in effect at that time).
The proper treatment of cases filed in the small claims
court in which counterclaims, some of which may be compulsory,
seeking damages in excess of the jurisdictional amount are
asserted, has been a source of legislative concern as well. In
order to address this issue, the General Assembly gave litigants
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two options. First, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-220 provides that “the
judge shall allow appropriate counterclaims” “[o]n appeal from
the judgment of the magistrate for trial de novo before a
district judge.”4 Secondly, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-219 provides
that, “[n]othwithstanding [N.C. Gen. Stat. §] 1A-1, Rule 13,
failure by a defendant to file a counterclaim in a small claims
action assigned to a magistrate, or failure by a defendant to
appeal a judgment in a small claims action to district court,
4
We suggested this approach in Fickley, in which the
defendant had filed two successful summary ejectment proceedings
against the plaintiffs. Fickley, 140 N.C. App. at 259, 536
S.E.2d at 332. Instead of appealing the magistrate’s decision
in the summary ejectment actions, the plaintiffs instituted a
separate action seeking damages for retaliatory eviction and
unfair trade practices in the Superior Court. Id. In the
Superior Court action, the defendant successfully asserted that
the plaintiffs’ claims constituted compulsory counterclaims that
were barred because they had not been asserted before the
magistrate. Id. at 259-60, 536 S.E.2d at 333. After agreeing
that the plaintiffs’ claims constituted compulsory
counterclaims, id. at 260-61, 536 S.E.2d at 333, we noted that
they could not have been properly asserted before the magistrate
because the amount in controversy exceeded the jurisdictional
limit applicable in small claims court actions. Id. at 261, 536
S.E.2d at 333-34. As a result of the compulsory nature of the
plaintiffs’ claims and the fact that they could have been
litigated in an appeal from the magistrate’s decision, we
determined that the plaintiffs’ claims were barred and affirmed
the trial court’s order. Id. at 261-62, 536 S.E.2d at 333-34;
see also Cloer v. Smith, 132 N.C. App. 569, 575, 512 S.E.2d 779,
782 (1999) (holding that the correct course of action for a
defendant who wishes to assert a counterclaim that exceeds the
jurisdictional limit applicable to matters heard in the small
claims court was to “file [the] action, if at all, with her
appeal from the magistrate’s decision to the district court”).
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shall not bar such claims in a separate action.”5 As a result, a
defendant in a summary ejection action who wishes to assert
counterclaims that have a value greater than the jurisdictional
amount applicable in small claims court6 may either assert their
5
Although we need not address the validity of this approach
given that it was not used in this instance, another possible
resolution of the problem discussed in the text of this opinion
might be a request that the entire case be transferred from the
small claims court to the District Court. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-
257 (stating that “[a]ny party may move for transfer between the
trial divisions”); see also Stanback v. Stanback, 287 N.C. 448,
457, 215 S.E.2d 30, 37 (1975) (providing that, “[a]lthough the
case allocations of Chapter 7A are [mostly] administrative
directives, a party may move, as a matter of right, for transfer
of a case in accordance with the proper statutory allocation”).
6
According to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-210(1), the amount in
controversy in small claims actions is computed in accordance
with N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-243. According to N.C. Gen. Stat. §
7A-243(2), “[w]here monetary relief is prayed, the amount prayed
for is in controversy unless the pleading in question shows to a
legal certainty that the amount claimed cannot be recovered
under the applicable measure of damages.” As a result of the
fact that Defendant alleged in her counterclaims that she was
entitled to receive a $4,000.00 penalty for each of Plaintiff’s
violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act pursuant to
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 75-55 and claims that “numerous” such
violations occurred, it is clear from that portion of
Defendant’s counterclaims, without considering her additional
claims for breach of the implied warranty of habitability,
retaliatory eviction, the charging of illegal rents and fees,
and unfair and deceptive trade practices, that the value of
Defendant’s counterclaims exceeded the applicable jurisdictional
amount. Blitz v. Agean, Inc., 197 N.C. App. 296, 310, 677
S.E.2d 1, 10 (2009) (using a similar process to calculate the
value of certain claims that a plaintiff attempted to assert in
small claims court), disc. review denied, 363 N.C. 800, 690
S.E.2d 530, (2010). The validity of this conclusion is
reinforced by the fact that the magistrate found that he or she
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claims on appeal to the District Court from an adverse decision
by the magistrate or assert those claims in an entirely separate
action.7 However, neither of these options was applicable in
this case since Plaintiff did not appeal from the magistrate’s
adverse decision against it, and Defendant, instead, elected to
assert counterclaims that the magistrate found exceeded
applicable jurisdictional limits in the small claims court and
then attempted to appeal the magistrate’s judgment to the
District Court despite the fact that the magistrate found in her
favor and awarded her everything that he could have possibly
awarded her.
could not award Defendant the full value of the claims that she
presented at the summary ejectment hearing.
7
In Holloway v. Holloway, __, N.C. App. __, __, 726 S.E.2d
198, 200 (2012), the defendant filed an unsuccessful summary
ejectment action against the plaintiff. Although the defendant
appealed from the judgment in the small claims court to the
District Court, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the
plaintiff on appeal as well. Id. In a subsequent damage action
that the plaintiff filed against the defendant, the defendant
claimed that the claims the plaintiff sought to assert should
have been brought before the District Court on the theory that
they were compulsory counterclaims. Id. at __, 726 S.E.2d at
200-01. After noting the tension between the relevant statutory
provisions in cases that involved compulsory counterclaims that
were actually appealed from the small claims court to the
District Court, id. at __, 726 S.E.2d at 201-02, we held that,
since the claims that the plaintiff sought to assert in the
separate action had not been ripe at the time that the
magistrate’s judgment was appealed to the District Court, they
were not required to be asserted before the District Court at
that time. Id. at __, 726 S.E.2d at 202.
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“After final disposition before the magistrate, the sole
remedy for an aggrieved party [to a small claims action] is
appeal for trial de novo before a district court judge or a
jury.” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-228(a). As a result, the only
party entitled to invoke the District Court’s jurisdiction
following a decision by the magistrate in small claims court is
an “aggrieved party.” Although neither this Court nor the
Supreme Court has addressed the issue of what constitutes an
“aggrieved party” for purposes of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-228(a),
the Supreme Court has defined a “person aggrieved” in the
appellate context as a person “‘adversely affected in respect of
legal rights, or suffering from an infringement or denial of
legal rights.’” In re Halifax Paper Co., 259 N.C. 589, 595, 131
S.E.2d 441, 446 (1963) (quoting 3 C.J.S. Aggrieved § 333
(1936)). As a result of the fact that Defendant submitted her
counterclaims for the magistrate’s consideration in small claims
court and received the maximum amount of relief available in
that forum, we are unable to see how any of her legal rights
were adversely affected. Admittedly, as Defendant notes, “a
party who prevails at trial may appeal from a judgment that is
only partly in its favor or is less favorable than the party
thinks it should be.” Casado v. Melas Corp., 69 N.C. App. 630,
635, 318 S.E.2d 247, 250 (1984) (citing New Hanover Cnty. v.
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Burton, 65 N.C. App. 544, 547, 310 S.E.2d 72 74 (1983), and
McCullock v. N.C. R.R. Co., 146 N.C. 316, 320, 59 S.E. 882, 884
(1907)). However, this principal applies in situations in which
the court had the authority to grant the additional relief that
the plaintiff sought to obtain rather than in situations in
which the plaintiff requested the court to grant more relief
than the court had power to award. In addition, Defendant
argues that Plaintiff’s challenge to the trial court’s
jurisdiction over this case ignores the fact that a tenant is
required to assert the breach of the implied warranty of
habitability as a defense in the summary ejectment action.
Patrick K. Hetrick & James B. McLaughlin, Webster’s Real Estate
Law in North Carolina § 6.04[3] (6th ed. 2012) (stating that a
“tenant who is in default in making rent payments can raise the
landlords’ breach of the statutory warranty of habitability by
way of recoupment, counterclaim, defense, or setoff”). However,
Defendant’s argument overlooks the fact that the use of a breach
of the warranty of habitability as a defense in a summary
ejectment action does not preclude the assertion of that breach
as a counterclaim on appeal to the District Court for a trial de
novo in the event that the landlord prevails before the
magistrate or in a separate action. As a result, neither of
Defendant’s attempts to explain why a party who pleads damages
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in excess of the amount available in a small claims action and
then obtains all of the relief that he or she is able to obtain
in the small claims court is an “aggrieved party” with standing
to seek additional relief on appeal to the District Court.
As a result, the record clearly reflects that Defendant had
no standing to appeal the magistrate’s judgment in small claims
court. In view of that fact, we have no choice except to
conclude that the District Court had no authority to hear and
decide this case, a determination that renders the District
Court’s judgment void, requires us to vacate the District
Court’s judgment, e.g., Hart v. Thomasville Motors, Inc., 244
N.C. 84, 90, 92 S.E.2d 673, 678 (1956) (holding that “[a]
judgment is void, when there is a want of jurisdiction by the
court over the subject matter of the action”), and necessitates
a conclusion that the judgment entered by the magistrate was
never properly challenged. As a result, the trial court’s
judgment must be vacated and this case remanded to the District
Court for further remand to the small claims court for the
reinstatement of the magistrate’s judgment.
III. Conclusion
Thus, for the reasons set forth above, we conclude that the
trial court lacked jurisdiction over this case. As a result,
the trial court’s order should be, and hereby is, vacated and
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this case should be, and hereby is, remanded to the Mecklenburg
County District Court for further remand to the magistrate with
instructions that the original magistrate’s judgment be
reinstated.
VACATED and REMANDED.
Judges GEER and STEPHENS concur.