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Goodwin v. Cashwell3/19/1991
In this appeal, defendants seek to overturn the order denying their motion for relief from a judgment approving a settlement made with plaintiff. For the reasons which follow, we affirm the decision of the trial judge.
I
Alan Bryant Goodwin was killed in an automobile accident in July of 1988. His widow, Diane Ellison Goodwin, was appointed administratrix of his estate and filed a wrongful death action against defendants, Thomas Edward Cashwell and George W. Kluger, Inc., the driver and owner of the tractor-trailer involved in the accident with Mr. Goodwin.
Prior to trial, a representative of the defendants' insurer, Continental Insurance Company ("Continental") and the plaintiff's attorney, Mr. William L. Thorpe, engaged in settlement negotiations. A preliminary understanding was reached between Continental and Mr. Thorpe that Continental would offer to settle the case for $800,000.00 payable in one of two ways: 1) a lump-sum payment of $800,000.00 or 2) a payment of $500,000.00 and a structured settlement providing payments to Mr. Goodwin's three-year-old daughter, Ellison.
In order to make the structured settlement offer, Continental obtained a proposal from an annuity company, Settlement Options, Inc. Based upon the prevailing interest rates in December of 1988 and Ellison's date of birth, the annuity company proposed an annuity that would pay Ellison $2,500.00 per year until her seventeenth birthday at which time her yearly payments would increase to $19,250.00 for the next six years. The annuity would make one-time payments of over $500,000.00 at age twenty-five, over $1,000,000.00 dollars at age thirty and a final payment of over $1,000,000.00 dollars at age thirty-five.
Continental communicated the structured settlement proposal to Mr. Thorpe in a letter. Based upon this information, plaintiff decided to settle the case and to accept the structured settlement option. The parties executed a settlement agreement and release which was subsequently approved by order of Superior Court Judge I. Beverly Lake, Jr.
After judgment was entered approving the agreement, defendants discovered that the annuity company, in making its calculations, erroneously used the date 30 March 1988 as Ellison's date of birth instead of her actual birthdate of 30 March 1983. As a result of this error, the actual cost of the annuity was $130,000.00 more than the amount projected by the defendants.
The settlement agreement stated the correct date of birth and apparently, Mrs. Goodwin was unaware that the incorrect birthdate had been used to calculate the structured settlement payments. Defendants tried unsuccessfully to resolve the matter with plaintiff. On 2 January 1990, nearly a year after the judgment was entered, the defendants filed a motion for relief from judgment pursuant to N.C. R. Civ. P. 60 seeking to have the order approving the settlement set aside. From the denial of that motion, defendants appeal.
II
Defendants' sole assignment of error on appeal is the trial court's denial of their motion to set aside the judgment approving the settlement agreement reached between the parties. They contend that the trial judge abused his discretion in denying the motion to set aside the judgment because the present value of the settlement was much greater than the amount agreed to by the parties due to an error by the annuity company, "unbeknownst to the parties." As such, they further argue that the error resulted from a mutual mistake of fact and therefore the trial judge should have allowed parol evidence of the parties' negotiations in this case to determine the "parties true intentions." For the followi
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