Title: Lipscomb v. Bessemer Board of Education

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

61 So. 2d 112 (1952)
LIPSCOMB et al.
v.
BESSEMER BOARD OF EDUCATION.
6 Div. 310.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
October 23, 1952.
*113 Geo. H. Bumgardner, H. P. Lipscomb, Jr., and L. Herbert Etheridge, all of Bessemer, for appellants.
Edw. L. Ball, Bessemer, for appellee.
GOODWYN, Justice.
This is a condemnation proceeding by the Bessemer Board of Education to acquire lots 1 through 8, inclusive, of Block 125, according to the present plan and survey of the City of Bessemer. The original application was filed in the Probate Court of Jefferson County, where the proceedings were conducted under the provisions of Code 1940, Tit. 19, Chapter 1. The Board of Education, the condemnor, appealed to the circuit court, where a jury awarded compensation to appellants, the landowners, and the court, pursuant to such award, entered its judgment. The contents of the judgment, and its amendment nunc pro tunc, are as we shall see, the predicate for several of the assignments of error. It is from that judgment that the landowners took this appeal. After the appeal was taken, but before submission to the Supreme Court, the appellee Board of Education filed its motion in the circuit court to amend the judgment nunc pro tunc. This motion was granted, and the amended judgment is now a part of the record on appeal.
The original application, as filed in the probate court, contained these averments: "that your petitioner has adopted a resolution declaring that the acquisition of the property hereinafter described is in the public interest and necessary for the public use, a copy of which resolution is attached hereto and made a part hereof the same as if it were herein fully set forth"; "and petitioner avers that said property is to be used for the site of a new school building or for a school playground, or for other public purpose of [or] public school purpose". The resolution, attached as an exhibit, and made a part of the application, provided that this property was "to be condemned for public use and public purposes, to wit, for use as a site for new school house or other public purpose".
On appeal to the circuit court the defendants refiled their motion to dismiss the application. This motion was overruled. They then refiled demurrers to the application, which were sustained. Thereupon the Board of Education amended its application by deleting therefrom any reference to the resolution, and by averring that acquisition of the property "is in the public school interest and is necessary for public school use, viz.: for the site of a school house and school yard and playground adjacent thereto," and that "it is necessary to acquire said property for the purpose of locating and conducting thereon an elementary-junior high school, an addition to the public school system facilities of the City of Bessemer, Alabama, together with the necessary school lots and school playgrounds necessary for the operation of the said elementary-junior high school, and for no other purpose".
The defendants then filed, seriatim, a motion to dismiss the amended application and demurrers and an answer to it.
The burden of all of the defendants' pleadings is concisely stated in their brief, as follows:
Section 168, Tit. 52, Code 1940, is as follows:
Before proceeding further, it might be well to note several procedural rules peculiarly applicable here. In the first place, the trial in the circuit court is de novo. Code 1940, Tit. 19, sect. 17; Alabama Power Co. v. Thompson, 250 Ala. 7, 12, 32 So. 2d 795, 9 A.L.R.2d 974; Housing Authority of Phenix City v. Stillwell, 241 Ala. 420, 423, 3 So. 2d 55; City of Birmingham v. Brown, 241 Ala. 203, 2 So. 2d 305. Section 17, supra, provides that, "on such appeal, the trial shall be de novo". Mr. Justice Bouldin, in the opinion in the Stillwell case, supra [241 Ala. 420, 3 So. 2d 58], wrote: "This means what it says." "A trial de novo means a new trial `as if no trial had ever been had, and just as if it had originated in the circuit court.'" Thompson v. City of Birmingham, 217 Ala. 491, 492, 117 So. 406, 407; Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co. v. Lancaster, 121 Ala. 471, 473, 25 So. 733. The case stands in the circuit court "on the process and pleadings, without judicial action upon them, precisely as it would have stood at that stage of the proceedings, if the case had been instituted in that court in the first instance." Lehman, Durr & Co. v. Hudmon Bros., 79 Ala. 532, 534. The trial is had in the circuit court "so far as regards the issues that can arise between the parties, just as a new trial would be had in the latter court when a previous verdict and judgment in a case originating in that court had been set aside by the court itself on motion for a new trial, or where such judgment had, on appeal, been reversed by a higher court and the case sent back for another trial to the court in which it originated." Slaughter v. Martin, 9 Ala.App. 285, 289, 63 So. 689, 690.
An application for condemnation, originally filed in the probate court, is subject to proper amendment on appeal in the circuit court. Ensign Yellow Pine Co. v. Hohenberg, 200 Ala. 149, 150, 75 So. 897; Lathrop Lumber Co. v. Pioneer Lumber Co., 212 Ala. 548, 549, 103 So. 567; Newton v. Alabama Midland Rwy. Co., 99 Ala. 468, 470, 13 So. 259.
Sections 238 and 239, Tit. 7, Code 1940, in pertinent part, are as follows:
In the Newton case, supra, this court said:
The reason for and extent of the right of amendment is stated in Birmingham Gas Co. v. Sanford, 226 Ala. 129, 134, 145 So. 485, 488, to be as follows:
To the same effect are the later cases of Spurling v. Fillingim, 244 Ala. 172, 175, 12 So. 2d 740, and Van Landingham v. Alabama Great Southern R. Co., 243 Ala. 31, 8 So. 2d 266.
In view of the foregoing, it seems sufficiently clear that the action of the circuit court in overruling the defendants' objections to allowance of the amendment to the application was without error. In this connection, we observe that defendants do not contend that the amendment wrought any change in the parties or the land sought to be condemned. Their insistence is that a change was made in the proposed use of the land; that, while the application, before amendment, sought condemnation of the land "for use as a site for new school house or other public purpose", the amended application sought it "for public school use"; that this was, in effect, an abandonment of the case first made by the application, thereby resulting in an unlawful departure. This contention is without merit. The statute, Code 1940, Tit. 52, sect. 168, set out above, authorizes a board of education to condemn lands "for the site of a schoolhouse or for enlarging a schoolhouse lot, or for playgrounds or other public school purposes". It is obvious that the application, both before and after its amendment, sought the property for a use authorized by the statute. The amendment did nothing more than conform the application to the requirements of the statute. No new cause of action was added. The only change was to delete that part which called for a use not within the statute. The defendants' demurrer, pointing out this defect, was sustained. The amendment simply cured that defect.
So long as the amendment refers "to the same transaction, property and title and parties as the original," "such amendment shall relate back to the commencement of the suit". Code 1940, Tit. 7, sect. 239; Lovett v. Funderburk, 224 Ala. 634, 636, 141 So. 557. The effect is to substitute the amended complaint for the complaint as originally filed, the same as though the original complaint had never been filed in the suit. The original complaint is superseded by the amended complaint. This means, then, that we have for consideration here the sufficiency of the amended application only. It is as if the original application, with the resolution of the Board of Education attached, had never been a part of the pleading.
The amended application contains all of the averments required by the statute, Code 1940, Tit. 19, sect. 3, and we think it is sufficient. The defendants' motion to dismiss, and demurrers to, the amended application were properly overruled. As stated by this court in the case of Rountree Farm Co. v. Morgan County, 249 Ala. 472, 474, 31 So. 2d 346, 348:
The only other point for decision relates to the propriety of the nunc pro tunc amendment of the final judgment. This question is embraced in assignments of error 4 through 10, inclusive.
*116 We have before us an incomplete record, and we cannot speculate as to any proceedings not included therein. Our decision necessarily must be based on this incomplete record showing, as it presumably does, all of the matters considered by the litigants to be needed for a proper decision here. The judgment of the trial court, in granting the motion to amend the final judgment nunc pro tunc, contains the following:
This recital is then followed by the amended judgment.
It is to be noted that the trial judge based his decision on what appeared "from the record and from the evidence of quasi record." While it is true that the record before us fails to show any minute entry or other matter of record that an order of condemnation was in fact made, we are not prepared to say, and cannot say, contrary to the finding by the trial court, that there is not some other record or quasi record, not included in the record before us, showing that such order of condemnation was made. Without the benefit of a complete record of the proceedings, we must presume that the trial court, in ordering the amendment nunc pro tunc, did so on the basis of some record or quasi record which was before him and not now before us. For instance, we know that the record before us contains no part of the proceedings incident to submission to the jury of the question of compensation, nor any part of the hearing on the motion to amend nunc pro tunc. In these circumstances we must presume that the trial court had before him evidence "from the record and from the evidence of quasi record" authorizing the nunc pro tunc amendment of the judgment. Commissioners Court of Henry County v. Holland, 177 Ala. 60, 63, 58 So. 270; Leinkauff & Strauss v. Tuskalocsa Sale & Advancing Co., 105 Ala. 328, 335, 16 So. 891; Bryan v. Streeter & Smithers, 57 Ala. 104; Whitten v. Graves, 40 Ala. 578, 582, 583; Price & Simpson v. Gillespie, 28 Ala. 279, 281.
As stated in the Holland case, supra [177 Ala. 60, 58 So. 271]:
The following is from the Whitten case, supra:
And from the Gillespie case, supra, we quote the following:
The judgment is due to be affirmed, and it is so ordered.
Affirmed.
All the Justices concur.