Not responding to Requests for Admissions is dangerous. Rule 36 of the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure say that a request is admitted if not answered, and that “any matter admitted under [Rule 36] is conclusively established unless the court on motion permits withdrawal or amendment of the admission.”

Two different panels of the North Carolina Court of Appeals in unpublished decisions yesterday dealt with defendants who hadn’t responded to Requests for Admission.

In one case, the Court affirmed a grant of summary judgment against the Defendant based on the ignored Requests. In the other, the Court went in a different direction and didn’t hold the Defendant to an admission as to the amount of damages suffered by the Plaintiff.

Summary Judgment Based On Failure To Respond To Requests For Admission

In the first case, Kluttz v. Next Safety, Inc., the Plaintiff sued for breach of an employment contract. The Defendant denied the breach in its Answer, challenging the validity of the contract and whether it was supported by consideration. But the Defendant didn’t respond to later Requests for Admission which asked it to admit the validity of the contract and its breach.

The trial court entered summary judgment against the Defendant based upon the facts established by the admissions, and the Court of Appeals as affirmed. Judge Wynn said that “facts admitted under Rule 36(a) as a result of a party’s failure to respond timely to a request for admissions are sufficient to support a grant of summary judgment."

The Kluttz decision relied on an NC Supreme Court case, Goins v. Puleo, 350 N.C. 277, 512 S.E.2d 748 (1999), which holds that "an admitted matter, even if dispositive of the case, is conclusively established when admitted through failure to respond to a Rule 36 request for admissions."

Failure To Respond To Request For Admission Not Determinative Of Damages

The other case, Garner v. Cheek, noted the Goins decision, but relieved the Defendant from an admission as to the amount of damages. The Plaintiff had sent a series of Requests looking for admissions about Defendant’s fault in an auto accident and Plaintiff’s damages. One request asked the Defendant to admit that “[Plaintiff] has been damaged by the negligence of [Defendant] in the amount of thirty thousand dollars.”

Plaintiff sought and obtained a default judgment for $30,000. Defendant moved for a new trial on damages, arguing that he wasn’t bound by the admission as to damages. The trial court granted the motion and entered a new judgment for only $7,500. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

There was conflicting evidence in the Garner case – from the same set of unanswered Requests for Admission – that warranted a much lower damage award. The Court of Appeals observed that  “plaintiff’s own evidence contradicted the amount of damages requested,” and it held that “it was within the trial court’s discretion to determine the amount of damages based on the Plaintiff’s medical expenses and pain suffered as a result of the collision."

The Garner case makes a couple of points about the nature of a Rule 36 admission from an earlier Court of Appeals decision, Eury v. N.C. Employment Security Comm., 115 N.C. App. 590, 446 S.E.2d 383 (1994):

A rule 36 admission is comparable to an admission in pleadings or a stipulation drafted by counsel for use at trial, rather than to an evidentiary admission of a party.

A judicial admission . . . is not evidence, but it, instead, serves to remove the admitted fact from the trial by formally conceding its existence.

If you understand either of those statements, please let me know. Apart from the riddle of how "judicial" admissions are different than "evidentiary" admissions, it’s hard to square those statements from Eury with the explicit statement in the Supreme Court’s Goins decision that an admitted matter is "conclusively established" by a failure to respond.