Title: Strickland v. MOBILE TOWING AND WRECKING CO., INC.

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

303 So. 2d 98 (1974)
Borden STRICKLAND, as Adms., etc.
v.
MOBILE TOWING AND WRECKING CO., INC., a corporation, etc.
SC 879.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
November 14, 1974.
Wilters & Brantley, Bay Minette, for appellant.
A. Clay Rankin, III, Mobile, for appellee.
MERRILL, Justice.
This appeal is from a judgment of nonsuit dated January 24, 1974, requested by *99 the plaintiff after the trial court had sustained defendant's plea in abatement after a hearing.
Borden Strickland, as administrator, filed suit against Mobile Towing and Wrecking Company, Inc., seeking damages for fatal injuries to one of its employees, William Woodruff Jackson, who died on March 12, 1965. The suit was filed under the provisions of the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. A. § 688, which provides in pertinent part:
In Syville v. Waterman S. S. Corp., 84 F. Supp. 718 (S.D.N.Y.1949), affirmed 217 F.2d 94 (2nd Cir. 1954), the court said:
Railway employees noted in the Jones Act are governed by 45 U.S.C.A., §§ 51-60. Section 56 provides in part:
In Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe R. Co. v. McClelland, 355 F.2d 196 (5th Cir. 1966), the court said:
Thus, the three-year statutory time limit for filing these suits is not a statute of limitations in the usual sense, acting only as a bar to the remedy, but constitutes a condition precedent to any right to bring the action. This is consistent with our construction of the time limit under the Alabama wrongful death statute, Tit. 7, § 123, Code 1940. See Nicholson v. Lockwood Greene Engineers, Inc., 278 Ala. 497, 179 So. 2d 76.
The instant suit was filed by Borden Strickland, as administrator of the estate of W. W. Jackson, on Monday, March 11, 1968, after Jackson's death on March 12, 1965. The first sentence of the complaint reads as follows:
The summons and complaint were served on March 26, 1968 and on April 25, 1968, defendant filed a verified plea in abatement containing two grounds, the first being that the defendant had merged with another company and became "Mobile Towing Company" between the time of plaintiff's injuries and the filing of the suit. We do not discuss this ground in the opinion.
The second ground stated:
An exhibit to the plea in abatement was the order granting letters of administration, *100 dated March 13, 1968. The order began as follows:
The order showed that the widow of decedent Jackson had petitioned the court to appoint Strickland as administrator and that he had given a surety bond, and recited further: "* * * which bond with said security has been taken and approved by the Judge of this Court, it is ordered, adjudged and decreed that letters of administration upon the estate of William Woodruff Jackson deceased, do forthwith issue to W. Borden Strickland as is in said application prayed."
This order is in direct conflict with the quoted first sentence of the complaint, and states that Strickland was appointed administrator only on March 13, 1968, a date which would have been too late to file this suit.
The record shows no further action from April 25, 1968 to October 1, 1970, when a demurrer was filed to the plea in abatement. The demurrer was overruled on December 11, 1970. On March 5, 1971, plaintiff filed an answer to the plea in abatement, the pertinent part of which reads:
A hearing on the plea in abatement was set for January 28, 1972, and after a hearing, the plea was sustained. On December 8, 1972, plaintiff's demurrer to the plea in abatement was argued and overruled.
On January 4, 1973, plaintiff amended his complaint by adding the following:
The plea in abatement was refiled on December 13, 1973, and sustained again on January 24, 1974, at which time, the plaintiff's motion for a nonsuit was granted.
At the hearing, administrator Strickland testified that he was a practicing attorney in Mobile County and had been since 1955, and that he filed papers in the Probate Court of Mobile County to be appointed administrator of the estate of W. W. Jackson. Objections were sustained to the following questions:
"All right; and when were those papers filed, please, sir?"
*101 "And when was it (the petition for letters of administration) filed?"
Judicial records import absolute verity. They cannot be contradicted in collateral proceedings by other evidence. Laird v. Columbia Loan Investment Co., 216 Ala. 619, 114 So. 208, and cases there cited. In Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co. v. Perkins, 152 Ala. 133, 44 So. 602, the defendant tried to prove by parole evidence that the plaintiff had not been appointed administrator of the estate of the decedent under its plea 7. This court said, "* * * after the introduction of the certified copy of the records of the Washington county court, it is clear that the purpose of the plea and the only effect of the proffered testimony directed against the plaintiff's authority was to collaterally assail the order of the appointing court. This cannot, under these circumstances, be done. * * * But it is insisted that the effort is, not to question the validity of the appointment, but to ascertain the true date thereof. A perfect answer to this contention is that, from the face of the record, it appears that the appointment was made at the special February term. It is no more permissible to collaterally impeach orders or judgments in respect of the assured time of their rendition, as shown by them, than any other part of them. Any other rule would render records of courts extremely uncertain and unreliable. * * *"
The cases of Gardner v. Gantt, 19 Ala. 666, and Wood v. Cosby, 76 Ala. 557, held that the distributees, next of kin or the executor could not maintain a suit for distribution until letters of administration had been issued; and in discussing the common law power of an executor, this court, in Pruett v. Pruett, 131 Ala. 578, 32 So. 638, stated that before probate, the executor could do nearly all the acts he could rightfully do after probate "except the institution and prosecution of suits," and for that, letters testamentary were necessary.
In Pearson v. Anthony, 218 Iowa 697, 254 N.W. 10, the court said;
Further in the opinion, after discussing previous Iowa cases, the court stated:
In Glenn v. E. I. DuPont De Nemours & Co., 254 S.C. 128, 174 S.E.2d 155 (1970), the decedent died of injuries in 1961. His widow was not administratrix in January, 1967, when she filed suit for the wrongful death of her husband, but she was appointed in December, 1967. The court said, in part:
At the hearing in the instant case, there was no attempt to show that the letters of administration issued to Strickland were dated any day other than March 13, 1968. When the trial court sustained the objections to the questions propounded to the witness Strickland, quoted supra, counsel for Strickland stated:
The trial court told counsel that this was a collateral attack, and if a mistake had been made in the probate court, it should be corrected there and not by parole evidence in the circuit court. His statement concluded:
We also note that the record shows that copies of the plea in abatement, which raised the point that Strickland was appointed administrator on March 13 and not on March 11, as alleged in the complaint, were mailed to plaintiff's attorney in Mobile, in Bay Minette, and Savannah, Georgia. Had there actually been a mistake, it could have been corrected in a direct proceeding in probate court while the event was fresh on the minds of the probate court employees and of the administrator. The plaintiff, being an attorney, would probably have noticed a mistake when letters of administration were issued to him, but certainly, he would have been anxious to take steps to correct a mistake, if any, when the point was raised six weeks later. But as already noted, the record shows nothing happening in this case from the date of the filing of the plea in abatement, *103 April 24, 1968, and the demurrer to the plea on October 1, 1970.
No reversible error has been presented.
Summarizing, we hold: (1) that official court records cannot be attacked collaterally by parole evidence; (2) that the only admissible evidence of the appointment of the administrator was the probate court record showing it to be on March 13, 1968; (3) that any action purported to have been filed by the administrator prior to March 13, 1968 was a nullity; (4) that being a nullity, there was nothing that any amendment could relate back to; (5) that any suit filed on or after March 13, 1968 for damages for the death of the deceased seaman was barred by the statute of limitations of three years, and (6) that the trial court correctly sustained the plea in abatement to the complaint and to the complaint, as amended.
Affirmed.
HEFLIN, C. J., and HARWOOD, MADDOX and FAULKNER, JJ., concur.