If I asked you if you were familiar with Rule 13(f) of the NC Rules of Civil Procedure, I’m betting that you would respond with a glassy stare and a slack jaw. That Rule deals with a counterclaim that you should have made in your Answer, but which you left out. It says that “[w]hen a pleader fails to set up a counterclaim through oversight, inadvertence, or excusable neglect, or when justice requires, he may by leave of court set up the counterclaim by amendment.”
Leave of Court? Asking permission? Well, how does that square up with NCRCP 15, which deals with “amended pleadings?” That Rule says that you can amend your Complaint “as a matter of course” (i.e. without “leave of the Court”) at any time before a “responsive pleading is served.” But Rule 13(f) seems to contemplate that the permission of the Court is needed before amending an Answer to raise an overlooked counterclaim.
Judge Robinson dealt with these apparently conflicting Rules last week in Recurrent Energy Development Holdings, LLC v. Sunenergy1, LLC, 2017 NCBC 18. Defendant Sunenergy1 had amended its Answer to add a counterclaim. It did so within thirty days of filing its original, counterclaim-less Answer, but without asking for the permission of the Business Court.
The Plaintiff moved to strike the Answer, contending that NCRCP 13(f) required leave of Court to add the counterclaim.
Judge Robinson, finding no North Carolina appellate authority on the point, looked to federal court decisions, though he found the federal case law to be “scant.” The majority of federal courts looking at the federal version of the Rule had decided that:
a party may amend its answer to add a counterclaim as a matter of course under Federal Rule 15(a), and that leave of court under Federal Rule 13(f) was only required after the period for amendment under Federal Rule 15(a) had expired.
Op. ¶87.
Judge Robinson observed that “a few other courts” had found otherwise. Op. ¶88.
There really wasn’t any need to decide which line of federal cases to follow because the Federal Rules were amended in 2009 to delete Rule 13(f). The reason for the deletion was that the Rule was “largely redundant and potentially misleading.” Op. ¶93 (quoting Notes of Advisory Committee on 2009 amendments). The Notes to Rule 15 state that the deletion of Rule 13(f) “establishes Rule 15 as the sole rule governing amendment of a pleading to add a counterclaim.”
Judge Robinson interpreted the deletion of FRCP 13(f) to confirm that FRCP 15(a) “was always intended to apply to amendments to add counterclaims.”
So, you do not need to file a Motion asking the Court to permit you to add a counterclaim to your Answer if you add that counterclaim within 30 days of your original Answer. You can do that as “a matter of course.”