A North Carolina judge stepped over the line last year when he harshly criticized the settlement of a national class-action lawsuit against Sears, the state Court of Appeals ruled today.

In May 2007 Superior Court Judge Ben Tennille denounced the settlement in which a Wilmington lawyer and his colleagues received $950,000 in fees while consumers overcharged by Sears across the country were reimbursed a total of $2,402. Tennille, the Chief Special Superior Court Judge for Complex Business Cases, ruled that the class action lawyers had made an inadequate effort to reach customers overcharged for wheel alignments at Sears automotive centers; the lawsuit produced 317 valid claims nationwide out of an estimated 1.5 million claims.

N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Linda McGee wrote that she and her colleagues shared Tennille’s concerns about the final accounting in the national class actions case. However, McGee wrote, Tennille had no business conducting a broad review of a settlement that had already been fully and fairly litigated in another state.

In 2002, lawyer Gary Shipman filed one lawsuit in Wilmington and another lawsuit in Chicago, where Sears has its headquarters. The lawsuits alleged that Sears charged clients for pricier four-wheel alignments on cars which can only be serviced with less expensive two-wheel alignments. Although the inflated charge is a few dollars for each customer, Sears stood to make millions of dollars from the alleged scheme, given the retail giant's nationwide presence.

Shipman said his lawsuit was inspired by one filed in New Jersey. In that case, the New Jersey attorney general combed through Sears records and identified 12,544 New Jersey residents who had paid too much for alignments. Sears agreed to give $10 cash to each person and to give $500,000 to the Attorney General's Office for consumer protection and expenses.

Shipman and Sears settled the Illinois lawsuit in 2005 following a lengthy mediation and several court hearings before a judge in Chicago.

On Tuesday, the Court of Appeals said Tennille erred by undertaking a broad review of the Illinois case, a job that belonged to the appellate courts of Illinois. The U.S. Constitution requires judges to give “full faith and credit” to court decisions from other states, McGee wrote.

The ruling leaves the Illinois settlement unchanged.