Treasurer, controller ask top NC court to block Richmond schools ruling

State Treasurer Brad Briner and Controller Nels Roseland are asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to block a lower court ruling favoring a local school system involved in a money dispute with state government.

A split state Appeals Court panel ruled in April that the Richmond County Board of Education could continue to pursue a $272,000 court judgment against the state. That judgment is a decade old. State lawmakers never have agreed to pay the bill.

The Richmond County school board returned to court in February 2024 to renew the judgment. A trial judge rejected state officials’ motion to dismiss the case in July 2024.

The Appeals Court’s 2-1 decision last month allowed the legal proceedings to move forward.

“The decision below is unprecedented,” wrote lawyers representing Briner and Roseland in a court filing Wednesday at the state’s highest court. “Never before has a North Carolina appellate court allowed an ‘action on a judgment’ to proceed against state officials acting in their official capacities.”

“By design, an action on a judgment is purely procedural: when a money judgment approaches its ten-year expiration, a creditor may bring a new suit on that judgment, obtain a ‘renewed’ judgment, and thus restart the execution period,” the court filing continued. “That mechanism makes sense in private litigation because the new judgment can be enforced by levy, garnishment, or attachment.”

“But where the judgment debtor is the state itself, execution is constitutionally impossible absent a legislative appropriation,” lawyers for Briner and Roseland argued. “Allowing this case to go forward therefore serves no legitimate end. It does not move the creditor one inch closer to collection — it only drags the Treasurer and Controller, who serve as the state’s financial stewards, into unnecessary litigation and thereby subverts sovereign immunity and separation of powers.”

An earlier state Appeals Court ruling blocked a trial judge from compelling the treasurer and controller from paying the Richmond schools without a legislative appropriation.

“For the next seven years the Board took no action,” the court filing added. “Then the Board filed this separate ‘action on a debt.’ The complaint alleges no waiver of sovereign immunity, and it admits that the amount allegedly owed appears only in the mandamus order that [the earlier Appeals Court decision] had annulled.”

“In short, the Board seeks to revive a vacated money command that never had legal force, extend its life for another decade, and subject the state’s chief fiscal officers to discovery, motion practice, and the threat of contempt—even though all parties agree that the judgment cannot be executed,” lawyers for Briner and Roseland argued.

“If the decision below stands, every disappointed litigant holding an uncollectible judgment against the state will have a roadmap for endless rejuvenation: let a decade lapse, file renewal suits, and burden public officials anew,” the court filing argued. “Such a regime would eviscerate this Court’s precedents, invert the General Assembly’s exclusive control of the purse, and saddle taxpayers with defense costs that sovereign immunity was designed to avoid.”

Briner and Roseland seek a temporary stay, along with an order called a writ of supersedeas that would block the Appeals Court’s decision from taking effect.

The dispute stems from a 2011 state law that required defendants convicted of driving with improper equipment in North Carolina to pay a new $50 fee. The fee was designated to cover prison maintenance costs.

The Richmond school board sued, arguing that the money should head instead to local schools. “Plaintiff based its contention on a provision in our state constitution which mandates that fines collected in a county court be used for the public schools in that county,” Chief Judge Chris Dillon wrote for the Appeals Court majority on April 2.

The state Appeals Court addressed the initial lawsuit three times. First, appellate judges agreed that sovereign immunity did not protect the state from the lawsuit. Second, appellate judges agreed with a trial judge that the money should head to local schools rather than prison maintenance.

After the second appeal, the trial judge ordered state officials to pay the schools $272,300 in fines connected to the 2011 law.

“In the third appeal, however, we reversed the trial court’s order, concluding that it is not in the power of the judiciary to order satisfaction of the judgment against the State; that is, the judgment could be satisfied only if our General Assembly appropriated the money to satisfy the judgment,” Dillon wrote.

In February 2024, the Richmond County school board returned to court, “seeking that a new judgment be entered” based on the earlier judgment of $272,300 against the state, Dillon explained. A trial judge rejected state officials’ motion to dismiss the case in July 2024.

“We agree with Defendants that any judgment that Plaintiff may obtain in this matter may not ever be collectible,” Dillon wrote.

“Plaintiff obtained a valid judgment in the prior action, though Plaintiff at present cannot collect, as our General Assembly has not appropriated the money to pay the judgment,” he added.

That’s not necessarily the end of the story.

“Our General Assembly has determined that a judgment creditor’s right to collect on a judgment is subject to a ten-year statute of limitations but that a judgment credit may bring a new action to enforce the prior judgment one time, thus effectively renewing a prior judgment for ten more years,” Dillon wrote.

“Here, Plaintiff seeks to renew the judgment it obtained in the first action,” the chief judge explained. “And based on the record before us, it appears that Plaintiff commenced this present action within ten years of that first judgment. Accordingly, we hold that the trial court did not err by denying Defendants’ motion to dismiss.”

“If Plaintiff is successful in this action in ‘renewing’ its prior judgment, Plaintiff still may never collect, depending on whether our General Assembly appropriates money to pay any said new judgment. Nonetheless, Plaintiff is entitled to renew its judgment and hope,” Dillon wrote.

Judge Allegra Collins joined Dillon’s opinion. Judge Julee Flood dissented.

“While the majority concludes that Plaintiff, in filing its complaint (the ‘Complaint’), ‘seeks to renew the judgment it obtained in the first action[,]’ the face of the Complaint reveals an absence of law and fact in support of Plaintiff’s claim, and such a conclusion requires that this Court make inferences impermissible under our standard of review,” Flood wrote.

“[T]he money judgment explicitly identified in Plaintiff’s prayer for relief was reversed by this Court, and therefore no longer exists,” Flood added.

Flood would have ordered the trial judge to grant state officials’ motion to dismiss the case.