Case Title: Ex Parte Indus. Technologies, Inc.

Citation: 707 So. 2d 234

Docket Number: 1961571

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1997-12-05T00:00:00Z

Document:
707 So. 2d 234 (1997)
Ex parte INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGIES, INC., and Richard Hill.
(In re Jacobs BANK v. AMERICAN DETENTION PRODUCTS, INC., et al.).
1961571.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
December 5, 1997.
John A. Taber of Taber, Rountree, Singleton & Lyons, P.C., Montgomery; Donald G. Madison, Montgomery; and Jon M. Folmar of Folmar & Folmar, P.C., Troy (The petitioners' reply brief listed Mr. Taber's firm as Taber & Associates, Fairhope.), for petitioner.
John F. Porter III of Livingston & Porter, Scottsboro, for respondents.
HOUSTON, Justice.
Industrial Technologies, Inc., and its owner, Richard Hill, defendants in an action pending in the Jackson Circuit Court, petition for a writ of mandamus directing Judge Randall L. Cole to set aside the following order and to enter a judgment in their favor:
A writ of mandamus is a drastic and extraordinary remedy, to be issued only where the movant has a clear and indisputable right to the order sought. Ex parte Preston Hood Chevrolet, Inc., 638 So. 2d 842 (Ala.1994). The issue presented is whether the petitioners have a clear and indisputable right to require the trial court to enter a judgment on the September 24, 1996, "Amended Mediation/Arbitration Order." Resolution of this issue ultimately depends upon whether the October 20, 1995, stipulation of agreement between the parties was an enforceable settlement agreement, under the rule stated in Brocato v. Brocato, 332 So. 2d 722, 724 (Ala.1976) ("agreements [made in settlement of litigation] are as binding on the parties as any other contract into which they may enter, and will not be set aside except for fraud, collusion, accident, surprise or some ground of this nature"), or whether the parties, in fact, failed to agree on material aspects of how the case was to be resolved by Judge Snodgrass, thereby rendering the stipulation of agreement unenforceable, under the rationale of Ingram v. Pollock, 557 So. 2d 1199 (Ala.1989) (holding that there was no "`meeting of the minds' with regard to the final terms and execution of a valid and binding settlement agreement").
After carefully reviewing the record, we cannot hold that Judge Cole's order is clearly erroneous. Without detailing here all of the evidence (which includes numerous items of correspondence between the attorneys and between the attorneys and Judge Snodgrass), suffice it to say that we agree with the trial court that the October 20, 1995, stipulation of agreement contemplated a process or framework by which this litigation would be resolved by Judge Snodgrass, but only after certain "ground rules" had been agreed upon by the parties. As the trial court noted:
The record indicates that the parties engaged in extensive negotiations following the October 20, 1995, stipulation of agreement in an attempt to further define the agreement and to resolve the various differences that arose concerning the list of the property to be evaluated, the appraisal process, etc., and at one point it appeared that the whole process would collapse. (In fact, in a letter to the defendants' attorneys dated June 2, 1996, Judge Snodgrass stated: "I plan to terminate the mediation on June 30, 1996, if all matters are not resolved by then.") Although it is apparent from the record and the briefs that the participants never fully agreed as to the exact nature of this process, i.e., whether it was mediation, arbitration, or a combination of the two, the bottom line is that the parties appear to have agreed that Judge Snodgrass's resolution of the controversy (his calculation of damages) was to be based, in part, upon a formula agreeable to the parties. The record supports the trial court's finding that the parties never reached an understanding as to the correct formula for Judge Snodgrass to use in calculating the damages. Indicative of the difficulty that the parties had in resolving their differences is the following portion of a communication from the respondent bank's attorney to Judge Snodgrass on September 12, 1996, only six days before Judge Snodgrass entered his September 18, 1996, order:
This communication was in response to another item of correspondence from the attorney for one of the petitioners to Judge Snodgrass in which the attorney objected to the formula set out by Judge Snodgrass in a proposed order that he had presented to the attorneys on or about September 11, 1996. That correspondence read as follows:
We also note that on September 17, 1996, the day before Judge Snodgrass entered his September 18, 1996, order, the attorney for Jacobs Bank was still objecting to the manner in which the appraisal of the property was being conducted.
The material disagreement as to how Judge Snodgrass was to resolve this dispute indicates that, although there was considerable effort put forth by the parties, the attorneys, and Judge Snodgrass in an attempt to settle the issues, the parties never had a meeting of the minds with regard to the final methodology by which Judge Snodgrass was to make his decision and, therefore, that Judge Snodgrass's order was unenforceable as a matter of law. Ingram v. Pollack, supra.
WRIT DENIED.
HOOPER, C.J., and MADDOX, KENNEDY, COOK, and SEE, JJ., concur.
[1]  Judge Snodgrass entered an order on September 18, 1996; he amended the order on September 24, 1996, to correct an error in the designation of the parties.