HAMLET — The Richmond County Board of Education is still trying to collect more than $200,000 from the state — though it may be a lost cause.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals last month ruled 2-1 that the school board could continue its attempt, but admitted it “may never collect.”
According to court documents, the General Assembly passed a law in 2011 that would allocate $50 fees collected from improper equipment cases for the maintenance of state prisons.
However, school board attorney George Crump filed suit, arguing that the law was unconstitutional.
Article IX, Section 7 of the North Carolina state constitution reads in part that “...the clear proceeds of all penalties and forfeitures and of all fines collected in the several counties for any breach of the penal laws of the State, shall belong to and remain in the several counties, and shall be faithfully appropriated and used exclusively for maintaining free public schools.”
The case has come before the appellate court three times within the past decade.
In 2013, the court agreed that the claim was not barred by sovereign immunity — which shields the government from lawsuits — and entered a judgement against the state.
When the case came back two years later, the appellate court agreed that, according to the constitution, the fee should go to schools and not prisons and ordered the state to pay “‘all sums collected in Richmond County’ from defendants convicted of an improper equipment violation.”
On remand, the trial court ordered the state to pay out $272,300.
However, in 2017, the Court of Appeals concluded that the courts had no power to “order satisfaction of the judgment” and that the funds would have to be appropriated by the General Assembly.
Former state representative Ken Goodman and state Sen. Tom McInnis (when he represented Richmond County) both filed bills in 2016 to allocate the money for the judgement, but neither was passed.
In February 2024, the school board filed a complaint seeking a new judgement based on the previous one.
The following May, the state filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that it had not waived sovereign immunity for the new action and that the school board “lacked an executable judgment that it could enforce and renew through a new action.”
That motion was dismissed in July 2024 and the state appealed.
The Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court did no err in denying the state’s motion to dismiss the case, saying the 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.”
Writing the majority opinion, Judge Chris Dillon — with Judge Allegra Collins concurring — wrote: “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.”
Judge Judee Flood dissented, writing: “A review of the face of the Complaint reveals Plaintiff has failed to present a cause of action from which Plaintiff may make a claim for relief, as the money judgment explicitly identified in Plaintiff’s prayer for relief was reversed by this Court, and therefore no longer exists.”
Flood also opined that the trial court did make an error in denying the state’s motion to dismiss.
