Case Title: Ex Parte Oden

Citation: 617 So. 2d 1020

Docket Number: 1910518

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1992-08-07T00:00:00Z

Document:
617 So. 2d 1020 (1992)
Ex parte Rolland ODEN.
(Re Rolland ODEN v. MORGAN COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION).
1910518.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
August 7, 1992.
Rehearing Denied December 4, 1992.
W. Clint Brown, Jr., Decatur, for petitioner.
Robert H. Harris of Harris, Caddell & Shanks, P.C., Decatur, for respondent.
J. Fairley McDonald III of Copeland, Franco, Screws & Gill, P.A. and J. Victor Price, Montgomery, for amicus curiae Alabama Educ. Ass'n.
PER CURIAM.
This Court granted the petition for a writ of certiorari in this case to determine whether the Court of Civil Appeals wrongly decided a material question of first impression. That question is stated as follows in the petition:
Rule 60(b), Ala.R.Civ.P., provides, in part, as follows:
In Ex parte Oden, 495 So. 2d 664 (Ala. 1986), this Court held that Dr. Oden did not lose his tenure as a teacher when he became supervisor of transportation for the Morgan County Board of Education, but that he held continuing service status as a "supervisor," pursuant to Ala.Code 1975, § 16-24-2(b). After this Court issued its opinion, the Morgan County Board of Education ("the Board") re-employed Dr. Oden as supervisor of transportation, but refused to give him back pay for the period during which his employment had been terminated.
Dr. Oden then filed an action against the Board for back pay and other relief. On September 19, 1988, Dr. Oden filed a motion for summary judgment, supported by his affidavit. On October 4, 1988, the court entered an order stating that Dr. Oden's motion for summary judgment was "deferred for compliance with Rule 8, Local Court Rules." On October 6, 1988, the Board filed its own motion for summary judgment or for partial summary judgment. The court entered the following order on November 1, 1988:
Dr. Oden's attorney received notice of this order, but apparently did not inform Dr. Oden. He sent a letter to the trial court stating that he had not received a copy of the Board's motion for summary judgment and asking the trial court to set aside its November 1 order on that basis. On January 3, 1989, the court entered an order denying Dr. Oden's motion for summary judgment. The court also entered an order granting the Board's motion for summary judgment. That order bears on its face the date December 2, 1988, but is marked by the circuit clerk as filed on March 31, 1989. The case action summary sheet recites that a final judgment was entered on March 31, 1989.
On April 16, 1990, Dr. Oden filed a motion for relief from judgment pursuant to Rule 60(b)(6), Ala.R.Civ.P. He attached the *1022 following affidavit in support of that motion:
In denying the motion, the court relied principally on Jenkins v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., 454 So. 2d 969 (Ala.1984). The court then stated the following:
At least to some extent, the assertion that a question of first impression is presented here is contradicted by the holding in Jenkins v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., supra. Jenkins brought an action against American Cast Iron Pipe Company ("ACIPCO") alleging defamation. This Court set forth the history and resolution of that action as follows:
454 So. 2d  at 970-71 (citations omitted).
In this case, the Court of Civil Appeals relied on Cassioppi v. Damico, 536 So. 2d 938 (Ala.1988), and Hill v. Townsend, 491 So. 2d 237 (Ala.1986), to hold that relief is not available to Dr. Oden under Rule 60(b)(6) because it could have been available, if timely requested, under Rule 60(b)(1). That court continued:
617 So. 2d 1017, 1019 (Ala.Civ.App.1991).
Dr. Oden takes issue with these holdings, and seeks to distinguish Jenkins, on the following grounds:
In addition to Jenkins, the parties cite several other cases pertinent to the issue. In Lee v. Tolleson, 502 So. 2d 354 (Ala. 1987), Lee's trial counsel failed to respond to a summary judgment motion and failed to appear at a hearing on the motion. The trial court entered a summary judgment for Tolleson. Lee's counsel filed a Rule 59(e) motion to alter, amend, or vacate the judgment, but the attorney again failed to support that motion with any evidence contradicting Tolleson's evidence in support of the summary judgment, and he failed to appear at a hearing on the Rule 59(e) motion. The court overruled the Rule 59(e) motion. Lee, through other counsel, later filed a Rule 60(b)(6) motion, but the trial court denied relief. This Court affirmed, stating:
502 So. 2d  at 356-57. As can be seen by comparing this quotation with that above from Jenkins, this Court left more room for the exercise of discretion in granting Rule 60(b)(6) relief in Lee than in Jenkins. Even so, the Court tightly constrained the circumstances in which relief can be granted. The circumstances in Dr. Oden's affidavit do not, so far as they go, exactly fit the examples cited in Lee, but Dr. Oden's diligent efforts in the face of the alleged persistent manipulation, inaction, and deception *1026 by his attorney at least arguably present the sort of extraordinary circumstances contemplated by Rule 60(b)(6) and discussed in Lee.
In Cassioppi v. Damico, 536 So. 2d 938 (Ala.1988), and Hill v. Townsend, 491 So. 2d 237 (Ala.1986), the Court affirmed the denial of relief under Rule 60(b)(6) where the actions had been dismissed for failure of the plaintiff's attorney to appear or to prosecute the action. The Court said in both cases that relief might have been available under Rule 60(b)(1) if the motion had been made within four months. Cf. Coretti v. Pete Wilson Roofing Co., 507 So. 2d 408 (Ala.1986), in which the Court said that lack of notice from the circuit clerk of the entry of a judgment is not available as a ground for relief under Rule 60(b) because a limited form of relief is available under Rule 77(d) on that ground.
This Court has held that the grant or denial of relief under Rule 60(b)(1) or (6) is within the sound discretion of the court and will not be reversed absent an abuse of that discretion. Baker v. Ball, 473 So. 2d 1031 (Ala.1985); Smith v. Clark, 468 So. 2d 138 (Ala.1985); Montgomery v. Burchell, 456 So. 2d 60 (Ala.1984); Pierson v. Pierson, 347 So. 2d 985 (Ala.1977).
However, the court indicated in this case that an independent action might be available even as it denied relief under Rule 60(b)(6). The committee comments to Rule 60 indicate, however, that there is ordinarily no significant difference between the filing of a Rule 60(b) motion and the filing of an independent action:
(Citations omitted.) Thus, the trial court's indication that relief might be available through an independent action although not through Rule 60(b)(6) is not an appropriate reading of Rule 60(b) in the absence of a particularized reason why one mode of relief should be available but not the other. Moreover, the court's reservation of opinion on the availability of relief through an independent action is at least some indication that the court denied relief under Rule 60(b)(6) only because of the apparent binding effect of Jenkins and even though the court may have, in the unfettered exercise of discretion, granted Dr. Oden relief on the merits of his Rule 60(b)(6) motion.
A similar situation was presented to this Court in Giles v. Giles, 404 So. 2d 649 (Ala. 1981). Mrs. Giles brought an action to recover land in the possession of her son J.C. Giles, Jr. After a summary judgment for Mrs. Giles and the denial of a Rule 59(e) motion filed by the son, a new attorney entered an appearance and filed a Rule 60(b)(6) motion on behalf of the son. The "sworn motion" alleged that the son had a deed to the property from his parents, but that he had not offered it in defense against his mother's action because his original attorney and others had told him the deed was not valid because it had only one witness. This Court reversed the denial of the Rule 60(b)(6) motion because of the trial court's erroneous conclusion regarding the applicability of relief under that Rule:
404 So. 2d  at 651. See also Blackwell v. Adams, 467 So. 2d 680 (Ala.1985), in which the trial court denied relief under Rule 60(b) because an earlier motion for new trial had been made and denied. This Court held that the trial court erred in construing the Rule 60(b) motion as an impermissible second collateral attack on the judgment.
In discussing the applicability of Rule 60(b), the Court in Giles quoted the following from Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure: Civil § 2864:
404 So. 2d  at 651.
Dr. Oden and the amicus curiae have also cited cases from other jurisdictions, including the cases quoted and discussed in Lee v. Tolleson, supra. Because of the similarity of our Rule 60(b) to Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the two rules "should be similarly interpreted." Haskew v. Bradford, 370 So. 2d 259, 261 (Ala.1979). See, e.g., In re Virginia Information Systems Corp., 932 F.2d 338, 342 (4th Cir.1991); Boughner v. Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare, 572 F.2d 976 (3d Cir.1978); and L.P. Steuart, Inc. v. Matthews, 329 F.2d 234 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 824, 85 S. Ct. 50, 13 L. Ed. 2d 35 (1964).
The court in Jackson v. Washington Monthly Co., 569 F.2d 119, 122 (D.C.Cir. 1977), addressed the following situation:
(Footnotes omitted.) This description could be applied without any change to Dr. Oden's affidavit. The Jackson court said, "We in this circuit have held that so serious a dereliction by an attorney, when unaccompanied by a similar default by the client, may furnish a basis for relief under Rule 60(b)(6)." Id. In one of the footnotes to this sentence, the court said, "When a client does not knowingly and freely acquiesce in his attorney's neglectful conduct, but instead is misled into believing that the attorney is industrious, dismissal is not only a harsh step but one for which the circumstances provide little support for an agency theory as a rationale." Id., n. 18 (citations omitted).
Finally, the court in Jackson concluded:
569 F.2d  at 123-24.
Based on the foregoing, we hold that Jenkins should be limited to its facts and should be read as holding that those facts do not show such extraordinary circumstances or such diligence by Jenkins as to support a holding that the trial court abused its discretion in denying relief. Here, the trial court's ambivalence over the availability of an independent action instead of Rule 60(b)(6) relief, combined with the extraordinary diligence shown by Dr. Oden in spite of his lawyer's alleged misrepresentations, which were sufficiently plausible on their face to excuse Dr. Oden from going beyond his attorney to inquire further as to the status of his action, constitute such extraordinary circumstances as to support a reversal of the judgment for a hearing and reconsideration by the trial court.
We note that, in addition to there being appropriate grounds for relief alleged in Dr. Oden's motion and affidavit, the record could support a finding that there are unresolved issues as to the merits of Dr. Oden's claims and the Board's defenses. The Board's motion was based on the statute of limitations, and there is no basis in the record for concluding that a statutory period of limitations began to run on Dr. Oden's claim for back pay at the time he was terminated instead of at the time his reinstatement was ordered and the Board denied the request for back pay. Furthermore, his action also requested relief regarding the amount of his salary upon reinstatement, and the limitations period on this claim could not have started to run until his reinstatement.
It also appears that, in entering the summary judgment for the Board, the court may have erroneously relied on a local rule that was not properly in effect[1] and that contradicted the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure: the trial court referred to Dr. Oden as being "in default" because of that local rule when he did not respond within 14 days to the Board's motion for summary judgment. While the failure to appear at a summary judgment hearing might be a default, a failure to file a response to a summary judgment motion is not likely to justify the entry of a summary judgment based on a supposed default. In the latter case, the moving party can be entitled to a summary judgment only if the materials submitted in support of the motion affirmatively establish that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. Rule 56(c), Ala. R.Civ.P. If the nonmoving party does not respond, he ordinarily takes only the risk that the motion will be granted against him on the merits, not the risk that a default will be entered against him.
Furthermore, Dr. Oden had submitted an affidavit in support of his own motion for summary judgment. Although that affidavit did not relate directly to the statute of limitations, it did respond indirectly to the Board's motion to the extent that he showed the dates of his termination, the reversal of the judgment affirming his termination, and his reinstatement. The Board's motion does not show on its face that the action is barred; indeed, Dr. Oden's cause of action was at least arguably not ripe until he had been reinstated and back pay had been denied. We make no judgment on these issues, because they are not directly presented on this appeal; we recite them only to show that the Board was not clearly entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment is reversed and the cause is remanded.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
*1029 HORNSBY, C.J., and MADDOX, ALMON, SHORES, ADAMS, STEAGALL, KENNEDY and INGRAM, JJ., concur.
[1]  This Court's records indicate that, although the circuit court submitted the proposed rule for approval, there were objections registered and this Court did not approve the proposed rule. We note that the trial court referred to it as a "temporary local rule," apparently treating it as being in effect without this Court's approval. Under Rule 83, Ala.R.Civ.P., as it existed at the time of these events, "A local rule so proposed shall take effect only upon approval by the Supreme Court of Alabama." Effective April 14, 1992, this Court amended Rule 83 so as to abolish all local rules. See Ala.Rptr., 592-594 So.2d XLIX.