## Facts

- Terry Compton Sides delivered a child at Cabarrus Memorial Hospital and suffered postpartum hemorrhaging requiring a blood transfusion.
- Hospital personnel allegedly failed to properly type and cross-match blood and transfused incompatible blood.
- Terry Sides died following the transfusion.
- The estate’s administrator sued the hospital for wrongful death, alleging negligence by the hospital’s doctors, nurses, agents, and employees in blood-typing, cross-matching, and administering blood.
- The hospital sought dismissal, asserting it was a governmental entity covered by the North Carolina Tort Claims Act, making the Industrial Commission the exclusive forum and conferring immunity from suit in superior court.

## Issues

1. Whether the hospital was a “state agency” (or comparable governmental entity) covered by the North Carolina Tort Claims Act such that exclusive original jurisdiction lay in the North Carolina Industrial Commission.
2. Whether operating the hospital constituted a governmental function (supporting immunity) or a proprietary function (supporting tort liability).

## Decision

- The North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed denial of the hospital’s motion to dismiss.
- The hospital, a nonprofit corporation, was not a separate governmental agency of the State covered by the Tort Claims Act.
- The Tort Claims Act did not channel the claim exclusively to the Industrial Commission; superior court jurisdiction was proper.
- Operating the hospital was treated as a proprietary activity, defeating the immunity theory advanced by the hospital at the pleading stage.

## Legal Principles

- The North Carolina Tort Claims Act provides an exclusive administrative remedy only for negligence claims against covered state departments, institutions, and agencies (and entities expressly brought within the Act).
- A nonprofit corporation operating a publicly financed county hospital is not, without more, converted into a state agency subject to the Tort Claims Act.
- For immunity purposes, operation of a hospital is treated as a proprietary function, permitting ordinary tort claims to proceed in the trial courts.

## Conclusion

The court held that a nonprofit corporation operating a county hospital was not a state agency under the Tort Claims Act and could not obtain dismissal on the ground that the Industrial Commission had exclusive jurisdiction; the wrongful-death negligence action was properly brought in superior court.


Sides v. Cabarrus Mem'l Hosp., Inc., 213 S.E.2d 297 (N.C. 1975)