“The primary purpose of the discovery rules is to facilitate the disclosure prior to trial of any unprivileged information that is relevant and material to the lawsuit so as to permit the narrowing and sharpening of the basic issues and facts that will require trial." (See Friday Invs., LLC v. Bally Total Fitness of the Mid-Atlantic, Inc. (2017) 370 N.C. 235, 237-38.)
“General provisions governing discovery are set forth in Rule 26 of the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure.” (See Sable v. Sable (2006) 177 N.C. App. 811.)
“Discovery methods include, inter alia, depositions, interrogatories, and production of or permission to inspect documents.” (See id.)
“Interrogatories may relate to any matters which can be inquired into under Rule 26 (b), and the answers may be used to the same extent as provided in Rule 26 (d) for the use of the deposition of a party.” (See Hammer v. Allison (1974) 20 N.C. App. 623, 626.)
“Interrogatories may be served after a deposition has been taken, and a deposition may be sought after interrogatories have been answered, but a judge of the court in which the action is pending, as defined by Rule 30 (h), on motion of the deponent or the party interrogated, may make such protective order as justice may require.” (See id.)
“The number of interrogatories or of sets of interrogatories to be served is not limited except as justice requires to protect the party from annoyance, expense, embarrassment, or oppression.” (See id.)
“The provisions of Rule 30 (b) are applicable for the protection of the party from whom answers to interrogatories are sought under this rule." (See id.)
"Any party may serve upon any adverse party written interrogatories to be answered by the party served or, if the party served is a public or private corporation or a partnership or association, by any officer or agent, who shall furnish such information as is available to the party.” (See Hammer v. Allison (1974) 20 N.C. App. 623, 624-26.)
“Interrogatories may be served after commencement of the action and without leave of court, except that, if service is made by the plaintiff within 30 days after such commencement, leave of court granted with or without notice must first be obtained.” (See id.)
“The interrogatories shall be answered separately and fully in writing under oath.” (See id.)
“The answers shall be signed by the person making them; and the party upon whom the interrogatories have been served shall serve a copy of the answers on the party submitting the interrogatories within 30 days after the service of the interrogatories, unless the court, on motion and notice and for good cause shown, enlarges or shortens the time.” (See id.)
“Within 10 days after service of interrogatories a party may serve written objections thereto together with a notice of hearing the objections at the earliest practicable time.” (See id.)
“Answers to interrogatories to which objections is made shall be deferred until the objections are determined, but the making of objections to certain interrogatories shall not delay the answering of interrogatories to which objection is not made.” (See id.)
“If the objections are overruled, the court shall fix the time for answering the interrogatories.” (See id.)
"It is a general rule that orders regarding matters of discovery are within the discretion of the trial court and will not be upset on appeal absent a showing of abuse of discretion." (See Sen LI v. Zhou (2017) 252 N.C. App. 22, 26.)
“An error of law is by definition an abuse of discretion.” (See id.)
"A district court would necessarily abuse its discretion if it based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence." (See id.)
It is well settled that “under North Carolina discovery rules, subject only to limitation by court order, any party to a civil action is entitled to all information relevant to the subject matter of that action unless such information is privileged.” (See Board of Drainage Comm. v. Dixon (2003) 158 N.C. App. 509, 511.)
It is also well settled that “Rule 37 grants the trial judge discretion to impose sanctions upon a party for failure to comply with discovery processes.” (See Gardner v. Harriss (1996) 122 N.C. App. 697, 699.)
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