This lawsuit was filed in 2018 by C Investments 2 LLC, a real estate developer in Charlotte North Carolina. The Plaintiff sued all the lot owners in a neighborhood called Country Colony in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Country Colony was established in 1952, and consisted at that time of 17 residential lots. A copy of the plat map for Country Colony is attached to this Executive Summary as Exhibit A. The developers of Country Colony, Henry Newson and Miriam Newson, recorded Protective Covenants for Country Colony, and all lots were sold subject to the Protective Covenants. A copy of the Protective Covenants is attached to this Executive Summary as Exhibit B. Country Colony continues to be a single-family residential neighborhood developed in accordance with scheme of development set forth by the Newsons in the Protective Covenants. However, Plaintiff acquired several of the lots in Country Colony and seeks to subdivide them and to construct substantial multifamily projects on the lots it owns.
The main issue advanced by the Plaintiff at the trial level, and the primary issue on appeal, is whether or not the North Carolina Marketable Title Act, N.C.G.S. § 478-1, et seq., ha extinguished a// the Protective Covenants other than the residential use restriction. Specifically, the Plaintiff successfully argued to the trial court that the Marketable Title Act extinguished all of the restrictions other than the residential use restriction, because none of the exceptions in the Act applied. We, representing a group of the Defendants, argued that the exception contained in N.C.G.S. § 478-3(13) protected all the scheme of development restrictions set forth in the Protective Covenants filed by the Newsons. The trial court agreed with Plaintiff and entered an Order granting Summary Judgment extinguishing the Protective Covenants, other than the "residential use only" covenant. Upon receipt of the Court's ruling, the Defendants we represent timely filed Notice of Appeal to the North Carolina Court of Appeals. The Record on Appeal has been filed and the Appellants' brief is due 6 January 2020.
North Carolina Court of Appeals Opinion: Issued May 2021
Brief Author: H. Weldon Jones, III of Jordan Price
CAI Amicus Review Panel: Mr. Robert Diamond, Esq., Mr. Stephen Marcus, Esq., Ms. Hope Carmichael, Esq (NC), Mr. Clint Goodman, Esq. (AZ), Ms. Terry A. Kessler Esq. (NJ), Ms. Melissa Ward, Esq. (CA), and Mr. Scott Weiss, Esq. (TN)