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Clash over Orange Co.school impact fees returns to Appeals Court.- A nine-year legal battle over school impact fees in Orange County returned Tuesday to the North Carolina Court of Appeals.- Plaintiffs Elizabeth Zander and Evan Galloway urged the court to reverse a trial judge's decisions that led to a jury verdict against them last year.- The state Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that Zander and Galloway could pursue their class-action suit.They seek refunds for fees collected from 2009 to 2016.A nine-year legal battle over Orange County school impact fees returned Tuesday to North Carolina’s second-highest court.Critics urged that court to reverse a trial judge’s decisions that led to a 2025 jury verdict favoring the county and Chapel Hill.The state Supreme Court ruled in December 2024 that plaintiffs Elizabeth Zander and Evan Galloway could move forward with the class-action suit filed in 2017.That decision reversed rulings from a trial judge and the state Appeals Court.But Zander and Galloway lost their case in a jury trial last year.Now the case is back before the North Carolina Court of Appeals.“The county commissioners took millions of dollars from families and businesses with no plan or demonstrated need to use that money for the schools,” lawyer Robert King argued Tuesday at the Appeals Court on behalf of Zander and Galloway.The state law permitting impact fees called for the county to use a “plan first, tax second approach,” King argued.County commissioners needed to demonstrate a need for new schools before charging impact fees, he said.“It appeared from what we could see that the county simply ignored what the General Assembly had said and what the county said [was], ‘You know what?We’re going to tax first.We’ll figure out what we’re going to do with the money later,’” King added.The original impact fee was $750.“Fifteen years later, it had gone up 1,200%,” King argued.Galloway paid $11,423 for one home.“That money is gone,” he said.“It wasn’t used on the schools.The county can’t tell us where it went.” Orange County followed the law, using a 10-year planning period to calculate the need for impact fee money, countered lawyer Sonny Haynes.“There was simply no evidence at all that contradicted the county’s position,” Haynes said.Haynes defended Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour’s decision that the plaintiffs had failed to provide enough evidence to submit one of its chief claims to a jury.“Not even a scintilla?” asked Appeals Court Judge Jeff Carpenter.“Not even a scintilla, your honor, there was nothing,” Haynes responded.Carpenter and fellow Judges Chris Freeman and Michael Stading will decide the case.Stading wrote a 2023 dissent that the state Supreme Court adopted as its opinion favoring Zander and Galloway.“The law means whatever the Supreme Court says it means,” Carpenter reminded Haynes.The plaintiffs argued in a February brief that Baddour mishandled the case.“Between 2009 and 2016, Defendants Orange County and Chapel Hill extracted millions of dollars in unlawful ‘school impact fees’ from homebuilders and residents of Orange County,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.Zander and Galloway represent a feepayer class, which seeks the “recovery” of illegal fees, and a refund class that seeks refunds mandated by county ordinances, according to the brief.The state Supreme Court’s 2024 decision called for a trial addressing two issues, the plaintiffs argued.“First, did the County estimate the costs of improvements ‘to be made’ ‘within a specific period of time’ when calculating the impact fees collected from the Feepayer Class?” according to the brief.“Second, did the County decide to reduce impact fees in 2016 ‘due to reasons other than an update impact school fee study’?” “Despite the straightforward appellate mandate,” Baddour did not allow a jury to address the second issue, the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.That action contradicted the Supreme Court’s ruling, according to the brief.The first issue “was also mishandled,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued.“In fact, the undisputed evidence shows that judgment should have been entered for Plaintiffs and, as a result, this Court should reverse the trial court and enter judgment for Plaintiffs.” “In the alternative, a new trial is necessary because the trial court erred by repeatedly refusing to apply the law of the case regarding the Feepayer Class issue, erroneously instructing the jury regarding the Supreme Court’s mandate, admitting legal opinion testimony over Plaintiffs’ objection, and ultimately denying Plaintiffs a fair trial,” according to the brief.Lawyers representing Orange County and Chapel Hill responded in March.“This appeal asks this Court to set aside a unanimous jury verdict returned after a full and fair trial, and second-guess a trial court’s directed verdict ruling grounded in the insufficiency of Plaintiffs-Appellants’ own evidence,” the local governments’ lawyers wrote.“Neither request is warranted.” “A unanimous jury found Zander had not met the burden of proving the County failed to comply with the Enabling Act’s requirements to estimate the total cost of school capital improvements that would be needed during a reasonable planning period not to exceed twenty years,” the brief added.“That verdict reflected the ‘commonsense judgment of the community.’ and was consistent with the ‘fundamental right to trial by jury in civil cases which is guaranteed by our Constitution.’” “Zander now asks this Court to do what North Carolina law does not permit: reweigh the evidence a jury already considered, override the trial court’s sound discretion on evidentiary and instructional matters, and convert a remand for trial into a remand for entry of judgment in Zander’s favor,” local government lawyers continued.“The mandate rule does not compel such an extraordinary result.” “The Supreme Court remanded this case for ‘further proceedings,’ i.e., a trial, not for entry of judgment for Zander,” the brief explained.“The trial court faithfully discharged that mandate.It submitted the Feepayer Class issue to the jury, and the jury resolved it against Zander.It evaluated the Refund Class evidence under the directed verdict standard and correctly concluded that Zander’s proof was legally insufficient to support a jury verdict.These rulings were well within the trial court’s authority and discretion and should be affirmed.” The state Supreme Court’s December 2024 decision had reversed a split Court of Appeals.The Appeals Court’s 2023 decision delivered a less clear-cut result in 2023 for plaintiffs challenging the impact fees.In an unsigned two-page opinion, the state Supreme Court voted 5-1 to support Appeals Court Judge Michael Stading’s 2023 dissent.Stading would have allowed impact fee opponents to pursue their claim that the fees are unlawful.Stading and the five-justice Supreme Court majority are Republicans.Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat, took no part in the Supreme Court’s decision.She had written the majority opinion when the Appeals Court issued its ruling in July 2023.Justice Anita Earls, also a Democrat, wrote a two-sentence Supreme Court dissent endorsing Riggs’ Appeals Court decision.Critics challenging Orange County’s school impact fees offered their written arguments to North Carolina’s highest court in May 2024.It was the latest step in a class-action legal dispute that started in 2017.“Between 2009 and 2016, Orange County (the ‘County’) illegally extracted millions of dollars in unlawful ‘school impact fees’ from homebuilders and residents of Orange County,” wrote lawyers representing the plaintiffs.“In doing so, the County did not simply act illegally but did the opposite of what the General Assembly intended.” “Such fees were putatively for the benefit of the County’s two school systems, but even the County does not know how the money was spent,” the plaintiffs’ brief continued.“The County also refused to comply with its own ordinance: The County committed that it would return certain