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March 20, 2026 Get Citation Alerts Download PDF Add Note

Armistead v. County of Carteret

Supreme Court of North Carolina

• Citations: None known

• Docket Number: 66A25

• Opinion

• Authorities (7)

• Cited By (0)

• Summaries (0)

• Similar Cases (21.1K)

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Syllabus

Whether the proposed class members in a class action against a county are ascertainable and whether the proposed class satisfies the predominance and superiority criteria.

Combined Opinion

                        by Justice Richard Dietz

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA

No. 66A25

Filed 20 March 2026

GEORGE ROBERT ARMISTEAD, JR., MADISON ARMISTEAD, GREG
RHODES, and WILLIAM YATES, individually and on behalf of all others similarly
situated

v.
COUNTY OF CARTERET

Appeal pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-27(a)(4) from an order on plaintiffs’ motion

for class certification entered on 19 August 2024 by Judge R. Kent Harrell in Superior

Court, Carteret County. Heard in the Supreme Court on 10 September 2025.

Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, PLLC, by Martha A. Geer, Scott
C. Harris, James R. DeMay, and John Hunter Bryson; and Lewis & Roberts,
PLLC, by James A. Roberts III and Matthew D. Quinn, for plaintiffs-appellees.

Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP, by Sonny S. Haynes, for defendant-
appellant.

DIETZ, Justice.

Carteret County does not provide trash and recycling services to county

residents. Instead, it offers access to small waste collection sites spread across the

county. These sites have dumpsters or other waste receptacles. The county also

provides access to a landfill.

For years, Carteret County funded these disposal sites by charging fees to

county property owners. Plaintiffs brought this class action lawsuit alleging that the

county’s fees are unlawful because the fees cannot be charged to those who never used
ARMISTEAD V. COUNTY OF CARTERET

Opinion of the Court

the disposal sites and cannot be charged to those who hired a private waste collection

service to handle their trash and recycling. Plaintiffs also alleged that the revenue

collected from these fees exceeded the cost of operating the sites in violation of state

law.

After years of pretrial discovery, the trial court held a class certification

hearing and ultimately rejected one of plaintiffs’ four proposed classes but certified

the other three.

As explained below, we affirm the trial court’s certification order. The key issue

in this case is whether it is possible to ascertain the identity of class members who

hired private waste collection services. We hold that it is. There are only a handful of

firms offering these services, and the customer lists of those firms offer a feasible,

objective means of ascertaining class membership. In addition, on the record before

us, the challenged classes do not present predominance or superiority issues.

The county also contends that, as the facts and law develop in this case,

additional ascertainability, predominance, or superiority issues could emerge. That

does not bar class certification now. Should circumstances change as the case

progresses, the county can move to modify or decertify the class.

Facts and Procedural History

Plaintiffs are property owners in Carteret County. Like many counties,

Carteret County does not have county-wide trash and recycling services. Instead, the

county provides twelve waste disposal sites that the parties refer to as “Green Box

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ARMISTEAD V. COUNTY OF CARTERET

Opinion of the Court

sites,” apparently because of the color of the dumpsters or other receptacles at these

sites. The county also provides access to a landfill that is operated by a regional

authority serving Carteret County and other nearby coastal counties.

By statute, counties may charge several different types of fees for solid waste

services. N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b) (2025). First, a county “may impose a fee for the

collection of solid waste.” Id. As noted above, Carteret County does not offer its own

waste collection services and therefore does not charge this fee.

Second, a county may “impose a fee for the use of a disposal facility provided

by the county.” Id. The parties refer to this as a “use fee.” This fee “may be imposed

only on those who use the facility” and “may not exceed the cost of operating the

facility.” Id.

Third, a county may charge an “availability fee” to “all improved property in

the county that benefits from the availability” of a county waste disposal facility. Id.

The county cannot charge this fee to property owners “served by a private contractor

who disposes of solid waste collected from the property in a disposal facility provided

by a private contractor that provides the same services as those provided by the

county disposal facility.” Id. As with the use fee, the “fee for availability may not

exceed the cost of providing the facility.” Id.

At the times relevant to this lawsuit, Carteret County enacted ordinances

authorizing two separate waste disposal fees that the county believed were

authorized by these statutes. Carteret County, N.C., Code of Ordinances, § 14-56

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Opinion of the Court

(2007) (amended 2024). First, the county charged a “Green Box Fee” to “each

residential household in the county which does not have household waste collection

service.” Id. This fee was “intended to recover the costs of disposing of solid waste

from households utilizing the county provided solid waste and recycling collection

sites.” Carteret County Code of Ordinances, § 14-57 (repealed 2024). Since 2017, the

Green Box Fee has ranged from $157 to $165 per year.

The county also charged a “Landfill Fee” that was “based upon optional use

privileges at county solid waste convenience sites.” Carteret County Code of

Ordinances, § 14-56 (2007) (amended 2024). This fee was $15 per year.

In 2020, plaintiffs brought this putative class action lawsuit alleging that the

Green Box Fees and Landfill Fees charged to certain county property owners are

unlawful and must be refunded. Specifically, plaintiffs alleged that the county

unlawfully charged the Green Box Fee to people who never used a Green Box site and

unlawfully charged both the Green Box Fee and Landfill Fee to people who had

private waste collection services. Plaintiffs also alleged that the fees the county

charged exceeded the cost of operating these county waste disposal sites.

More than three years after filing the complaint, and after extensive discovery,

plaintiffs moved to certify four proposed classes. The trial court declined to certify the

first proposed class, labeled the “Green Box Fee/Failure-to-Use Class.” This class

concerned plaintiffs’ allegation that the county charged the Green Box Fee to people

who never used a Green Box disposal site in violation of N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b). The

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Opinion of the Court

trial court concluded that determining whether each proposed class member “did or

did not use a county-provided waste disposal unit” would “predominate over the

common issue” for the class.

The trial court certified the other three classes, which involved plaintiffs’

allegations that the county illegally charged the Green Box Fee and Landfill Fee to

people with private waste collection services, in violation of both N.C.G.S. § 153A-

292(b) and its own ordinance, and that all the fees exceeded the cost to operate the

waste disposal sites in violation of N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b).

The county appealed the trial court’s class certification order directly to this

Court as provided by N.C.G.S. § 7A-27(a)(4). Plaintiffs did not cross-appeal the trial

court’s decision not to certify the first proposed class, and that issue is not before us.

Analysis

I. Class certification criteria

The county challenges the trial court’s certification order on multiple separate

grounds. We therefore begin our analysis by briefly summarizing the legal standard

for class certification. “As a threshold matter, the party seeking class certification

bears the burden to show that a proper class exists, meaning the named and unnamed

members each have an interest in either the same issue of law or of fact, and that

issue predominates over issues affecting only individual class members.” Jackson v.

Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 388 N.C. 109, 113 (2025) (cleaned up). “Beyond this

threshold requirement, the party seeking class certification also must satisfy a

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Opinion of the Court

number of other certification criteria” designed to protect the interests of the absent

class members, such as notice and adequacy of representation. Id. These legal criteria

for class certification are questions of law that we review de novo. Empire

Contractors, Inc. v. Town of Apex, 388 N.C. 552, 556–57 (2025).

“Once these legal prerequisites are met, the trial court may, in its discretion,

certify a class.” Jackson, 388 N.C. at 113. “In evaluating whether class certification

is appropriate, the trial court should consider whether a class action is superior to

other available methods to adjudicate the controversy and whether the class action

is likely to serve useful purposes such as preventing a multiplicity of suits or

inconsistent results.” Id. The court also considers whether the class mechanism is

“efficient and economically reasonable” given the administrative costs and the likely

recovery for individual claimants. Surgeon v. TKO Shelby, LLC, 385 N.C. 772, 781

(2024). Because these final factors for class certification are more subjective than the

legal prerequisites, trial courts have broad discretion when assessing them. Empire

Contractors, 388 N.C. at 557. On appeal, we review these factors solely for abuse of

discretion. Id. With this standard of review in mind, we turn to the county’s

arguments against class certification.

II. Ascertainability

The county first argues that two of the classes certified by the trial court—the

“Green Box Fee/Waste Collection Class” and the “Landfill Fee/Waste Collection

Class”—cannot be certified because the class members are not ascertainable. The

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ARMISTEAD V. COUNTY OF CARTERET

Opinion of the Court

class definitions for these two classes apply only to people who paid either the Green

Box Fee or the Landfill Fee but who used private waste collection services. According

to the county, the parties “do not know how many taxpayers had waste collection

services during the proposed class period.” Thus, the county argues, no one can

identify the members of these two classes.

This argument concerns a prerequisite for class certification known as

“ascertainability.” This class prerequisite, like the other legal criteria for class

certification described above, is “designed to protect the absent class members.”

Empire Contractors, 388 N.C. at 556. In particular, the ascertainability requirement

protects the absent class members’ right to notice. Cf. Surgeon, 385 N.C. at 777. All

class members are bound by the judgment obtained by the named plaintiffs. See

Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Epstein, 516 U.S. 367, 379 (1996). Thus, the trial court

cannot certify a class unless it is “possible to provide sufficient notice to all putative

class members.” Empire Contractors, 388 N.C. at 557. Without that notice, due

process does not permit a judgment that binds the absent parties. Phillips Petroleum

Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797, 811–12 (1985); Crow v. Citicorp Acceptance Co., 319 N.C.

274, 283 (1987). This is the source of our state’s ascertainability requirement: To

ensure that class members receive the required notice, the trial court must confirm

that there is a feasible, objective way to identify who those class members are.

Importantly, ascertaining the members of the class cannot be done in a manner

that defeats other legal criteria for class certification. For example, if class members

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Opinion of the Court

cannot be identified without “separate evidence for each class member and then

separate resolution by a factfinder,” the ascertainability requirement would not be

satisfied because the identification process would devolve into “a series of mini-trials

that would dwarf the adjudication of the common issues.” Empire Contractors, 388

N.C. at 558, 560 (cleaned up). This, in turn, would defeat the predominance prong of

class certification because the common issues among class members would no longer

predominate the proceeding. Instead, the predominant part of the litigation would be

figuring out who is a member of the class. Id.

The trial court’s reasoning concerning the first proposed class in this case is an

example of a proper ascertainability analysis. That proposed class applied to people

who “paid a Green Box Fee” to the county but “did not use a Green Box site.” In other

words, this class covers anyone who was charged the fee to use the county’s “Green

Box” disposal sites but never actually visited one of those disposal sites to throw out

any trash or recycling. Plaintiffs argued that this class could be ascertained by

sending notice to every person who paid the Green Box Fee and then permitting

prospective class members to self-identify by filing “affidavits asserting that they paid

the fee but never used the Green Box.”

The trial court concluded that this self-identification process would cause the

case to “devolve into individualized mini trials, including the need for discovery, to

determine if the claimant in fact did or did not use a county-provided waste disposal

unit despite having no private waste collection service.” This, the court explained,

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ARMISTEAD V. COUNTY OF CARTERET

Opinion of the Court

would mean the common issues in the class would no longer predominate, defeating

the legal criteria for class certification.

This analysis is correct and no party challenges it on appeal. But the county

argues that the trial court erred by failing to apply the same analysis to the next two

proposed classes, which involve people who hired private waste collection services.

The county argues that plaintiffs “do not know how many taxpayers had waste

collection services during the proposed class period” and “waste collection services

can change on an annual basis and can change when properties are transferred from

one owner to another in any given year.” Thus, the county argues, identifying the

members of these two classes will require the same sort of fact-intensive investigation

that prevented certification of the first proposed class.

This argument fails because of how the fact issues for these two classes can be

resolved. Unlike the first proposed class, which required individualized

determinations to identify each class member, the latter two classes can be identified

efficiently and objectively on a class-wide basis. Specifically, after the opportunity for

extensive discovery on this issue, the parties have only identified a handful of private

waste collection services operating in Carteret County. At oral argument, plaintiffs

acknowledged that they obtained the business records of these private firms during

discovery and asserted that the lists can be used to identify the class members.

The parties did not include those customer lists in the record on appeal, leaving

us with no way to evaluate them. We must therefore presume that these customer

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Opinion of the Court

lists support the trial court’s ascertainability determination. See Nicholson v. Thom,

236 N.C. App. 308, 325 (2014). If, as this case moves to the notice phase of class

certification, the customer lists prove insufficient to identify and notify the class

members, the county can move to decertify the class. See, e.g., Jacobs v. Physicians

Weight Loss Ctr. of Am., Inc., 173 N.C. App. 663, 677–78 (2005).

Moreover, we emphasize that the county is not required to accept the accuracy

of these business records, just as it is not required to take class members at their

word in affidavits. See Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 269 (1970). The county can

investigate these businesses and make any appropriate challenges to the truthfulness

of their records. But even if fact disputes arise over the accuracy of the customer lists,

those issues would not predominate the case in the same way that the class member

affidavits would. Instead, because of how few firms offer private waste collection

services in the county, those fact disputes could be resolved without overshadowing

the core, common issues for all class members.

Simply put, the customer lists provide an objective means of ascertaining class

membership, and any fact disputes concerning those lists can be resolved efficiently

on a class-wide basis. Accordingly, the trial court did not err by determining that

these two proposed classes were ascertainable.

In a few stray sentences in its brief, the county also points to two other

potential ascertainability issues. First, the county argues that the text of the

applicable ordinances requires anyone who uses a Green Box site to pay the Green

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ARMISTEAD V. COUNTY OF CARTERET

Opinion of the Court

Box Fee, even if they also use a private waste collection service. This means that

people who typically rely on their private waste collectors but occasionally use the

Green Box site—for example, during a holiday when they accumulated too much

trash to wait for collection day—would not be entitled to a refund of the Green Box

Fee. The county contends that separating these people from the rest of the class

creates individualized ascertainability issues as well as other class certification

problems.

Second, the county contends that its ordinance permits it to collect the

challenged Green Box Fee upfront so long as the county provides a refund to anyone

who submits proof of private waste collection services later. The county argues that

assessing whether class members submitted the necessary refund information

likewise creates ascertainability issues as well as issues with other certification

requirements.

The flaw in these arguments is that they concern the merits of plaintiffs’

claims. Plaintiffs do not agree with the county’s interpretation of its ordinances. In

plaintiffs’ view, the ordinances prohibit the county from collecting a Green Box Fee

from anyone who uses private waste collection services, regardless of whether those

people ever use a Green Box site. Likewise, plaintiffs contend that the ordinances do

not permit the county to collect these fees upfront and put the burden on the fee payer

to submit documentation and obtain a refund later. As a result, the county’s

arguments on these class certification issues cut to the heart of some of the key legal

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Opinion of the Court

issues in this case.

Ordinarily, merits questions in class certification proceedings “may be

considered to the extent—but only to the extent—that they are relevant to

determining whether the Rule 23 prerequisites for class certification are satisfied.”

Amgen Inc. v. Conn. Ret. Plans and Tr. Funds, 568 U.S. 455, 466 (2013); see also

Surgeon, 385 N.C. at 781–82. Thus, it might be appropriate to examine these merits

issues at the class certification stage solely to assess the certification criteria. But

when doing so, these merits issues are subject to the same appellate preservation

requirements as everything else. N.C. R. App. P. 10(a)(1). Here, we are not confident

that these merits issues were presented to the trial court and ruled upon below as

required to preserve them for appellate review.

The hearing transcript indicates that both parties expressed their intent to

pursue cross-motions for summary judgment on the merits after the court ruled on

the class certification question. Moreover, at various points during the hearing, the

trial court emphasized that it was reluctant to get “more into the substance of the

claims as opposed to the identification of the class.” Then, when addressing whether

the law permitted the county to collect the fees upfront but refund them upon proof

of private waste services, the trial court directly responded, “That’s another one of

those kind of arguments for another day in the sense that I would expect I’ll probably

hear from you again on that issue when we get to summary judgment.” The county

did not assert that the trial court must make a ruling on these issues as part of the

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Opinion of the Court

certification analysis and did not object when the court declined to do so.

Ultimately, the trial court’s class certification order did not address these

questions about the meaning of the county’s ordinances and their interplay with the

enabling statutes. Because these questions go to the heart of the merits of plaintiffs’

claims, we are reluctant to rule on them now—particularly where the county did not

“obtain a ruling” from the trial court on the issue as required by the Rules of Appellate

Procedure and neither party devoted much attention to these issues in their briefing

to us. Id. Accordingly, we leave these issues for further proceedings in the trial court.

III. Predominance

The county next argues that the third proposed class does not meet the

certification criteria because individualized issues predominate over the common

ones.

This third proposed class, called the “Landfill Fee/Waste Collection” class,

alleges that the county’s Landfill Fee violated N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b). This statutory

provision permits a county to charge an “availability fee” to property owners to fund

a “disposal facility provided by the county.” Id. But the statute prohibits counties

from charging this fee to property owners who hire private waste collection using a

private facility that offers “the same services as those provided by the county disposal

facility.” Id. (emphasis added).

The county argues that “the determination of whether the services provided by

any of these companies are the ‘same services’ as those provided by the County

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Opinion of the Court

disposal facility requires individualized inquiries into the provisions of the service

contracts and potentially multiple contract analyses per property, particularly in

cases where the waste collector or the service contract has changed over time.” These

individualized issues, the county argues, would predominate over the common issues

in the case.

This argument fails because it mischaracterizes common issues as

individualized ones. To be sure, this “same services” issue is likely to be a key fact

issue in this case. But it is not an issue that is individualized to each class member.

There could be many thousands of class members; the parties have identified only a

handful of private waste collection firms.

Because there are only a few private firms, there will be—at most—only a few

private disposal facilities to examine. Indeed, in its brief, plaintiffs point to deposition

testimony from a county employee indicating that all county waste services, both

private and public, are taken to facilities operated by a regional waste management

authority that jointly serves Carteret County and several of its neighboring coastal

counties. In other words, plaintiffs believe these private services are not just offering

comparable services at their facilities, they are literally offering the same services.

Now, to be fair to the county, this is a fact question that will need to be resolved

either at summary judgment or at trial. But the trial court correctly concluded that,

on the current record, this fact question will not involve numerous individualized

inquiries.

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ARMISTEAD V. COUNTY OF CARTERET

Opinion of the Court

In sum, the county has not established that there are individualized fact issues

that will predominate over common issues for the third proposed class. Instead, the

county has simply highlighted a shared factual issue among class members that is

amenable to resolution through a class action. Accordingly, the trial court did not err

by concluding that plaintiffs’ third proposed class satisfied the predominance prong

of class certification.

IV. Superiority of the class action mechanism

Finally, the county argues that a class action is not the superior method of

adjudicating the claims in the fourth proposed class. That class, which the parties

label the “Cost-to-Operate” class, alleges that the county collected more in fees than

it cost to operate its waste facilities. Plaintiffs allege that this overcollection violates

N.C.G.S. § 153A-292(b), which prohibits counties from charging fees that exceed the

“cost of operating” the facilities. Id.

As noted above, once the legal prerequisites to class certification are met, the

trial court should evaluate whether the class action mechanism is superior to other

available methods of adjudication. Surgeon, 385 N.C. at 777. Importantly, this

superiority analysis is not a legal question. It involves a more subjective component

and is therefore “left to the trial court’s discretion.” Empire Contractors, 388 N.C. at

557.

Here, the county argues that the trial court abused its discretion by failing to

recognize that, if any single plaintiff prevails on a cost-to-operate claim, the county

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Opinion of the Court

would be obligated to issue a refund to everyone who paid the illegal fees, not just to

that plaintiff. Thus, the county argues, a class action cannot be superior to an

individual action by the named plaintiffs because the result will be the same either

way.

To support this argument, the county relies on an unpublished Court of

Appeals opinion. See Manning v. Halifax County, No. COA03-1118 (N.C. Ct. App.

Sept. 7, 2004) (unpublished). That opinion, of course, is not precedential. Moreover,

the holding that the county identifies in Manning is, at best, an implied one.

But even assuming the county’s position is correct, that would not compel the

trial court to deny class certification in this case. Class actions are designed as “a

means for potential litigants with valid legal claims to have those claims aggregated

in an efficient and economically reasonable manner.” Surgeon, 385 N.C. at 781

(cleaned up). “The entire notion of class actions is grounded in this concept of

efficiency.” Id.

Here, it was well within the trial court’s sound discretion to conclude that

joining all fee payers together in a class action is superior to the alternative because

of efficiency. Nothing in that initial, individual lawsuit proposed by the county would

prevent others from filing similar suits. Thus, there could be “a multiplicity of suits

or inconsistent results”—important concerns that underpin the existence of class

action litigation. Crow, 319 N.C. at 284. Moreover, it is arguably more efficient to

identify and bring all fee payers together now, rather than relying on the county to

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Opinion of the Court

locate them later. If the county were, shall we say, less than vigorous in tracking

down those entitled to a refund, it could lead to a stream of future lawsuits that the

class mechanism could have avoided. Simply put, the trial court’s superiority analysis

reflects a consideration of important efficiency issues that are at the core of the class

action process. The court’s analysis is a reasoned one and not an abuse of discretion.

Conclusion

For the reasons explained above, we affirm the trial court’s class certification

order.

AFFIRMED.

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