Title: Alexander v. Burch

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

968 So. 2d 992 (2006)
Donna Jo Chapman ALEXANDER
v.
Chad A. BURCH[1] et al.
1041961.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
August 4, 2006.
Opinion on Return to Remand September 1, 2006.
*993 Roger M. Monroe and Jamie Alisa Tharp, Montgomery, for appellant.
Daid A. Lee and J. Alex Wyatt III of Parsons, Lee & Juliano, P.C., Birmingham, for appellee.
HARWOOD, Justice.[2]
This appeal involves the judicial enforcement of a settlement agreement. We remand the cause for clarification of the trial court's order.
In the underlying action, Donna Jo Chapman Alexander retained Gadsden attorney Gary Bone to represent her, on a contingent-fee basis, in recovering damages for personal injuries she received in an automobile accident. Bone filed an action on her behalf in the Etowah Circuit Court. He associated Birmingham attorney Ted Mann to handle certain aspects of the case. Under their agreed-upon division of labor, only Bone had direct communications with Alexander, and Mann handled all of the negotiations and other communications with Birmingham attorney David A. Lee, who had been engaged by the liability insurance carrier for defendant John Burton Farley, Jr., to represent him.
After extended negotiations between Lee and Mann and consultations between Mann and Bone, Lee tendered his "final" settlement offer of $60,000. Mann relayed that offer to Bone, who subsequently advised Mann that Alexander had agreed to accept it. Just what communications Bone had with Alexander about the settlement offer is at the heart of this appeal.
After Mann contacted Lee and told him that the $60,000 offer had been accepted, Lee procured a settlement check from the insurance carrier and tendered it to Mann along with a joint motion for dismissal of the action with prejudice and a general release to be executed by Alexander. Alexander, however, declined to proceed with the settlement, at some point insisting that she had not authorized it. Mann and Bone *994 withdrew from representing her and filed a notice of a claim of an attorney's lien for their fees and expenses.
On May 21, 2005, Lee, on behalf of the defendant, filed a motion seeking to enforce the settlement agreement, reciting the pertinent underlying facts as known to Lee. The circuit judge to whom the pending personal-injury action was assigned scheduled the motion for hearing on August 16, 2005; when that hearing convened, Alexander, Bone, Mann, and Lee were in attendance. Although no one was placed under oath, the judge developed each person's version of the pertinent facts by careful questioning and otherwise afforded each participant an opportunity to describe in detail everything he or she wanted the judge to know about the underlying case and the various communications concerning settlement. The factual recitations of Mann and Lee concerning their dealings with one another, and the factual recitations of Mann and Bone concerning their dealings with one another, were undisputed. Clearly Mann understood from Bone that Alexander had authorized the settlement and Mann and Lee, in turn, understood that they had entered into a binding settlement.
Bone told the judge at the hearing that he had communicated the $60,000 offer to Alexander and that she had initially rejected it, but then had told him that she would think about it for a couple of days. Bone stated that at the end of that time, Alexander telephoned him to ask if the offer was the best he could do, and, after he told her that it was, she said, "[I]f that's all you can do, then do it." Bone then telephoned Mann and told him Alexander had accepted the settlement offer. Bone explained that after Mann forwarded the settlement check and attendant paperwork to him, he notified Alexander to come to his office to conclude the matter, and she agreed to do so. She never came in, however, and Bone eventually elected to withdraw from representing her. He could not recall any conversation he had had with her before he decided to withdraw in which she might have explained to him the reason for her failure to follow through with the settlement.
Alexander gave the court an entirely different version of the communications, or lack of communications, between her and Bone during that time frame. She adamantly and repeatedly insisted to the trial judge that she had never heard of the $60,000 settlement offer before her attorneys accepted it, that she had never discussed any such settlement figure with Bone, that she would never have agreed to a settlement for that amount, that she never accepted it, and that she never authorized Bone to settle her personal-injury action for that amount. She stated further that she had had no idea that her case had supposedly been settled until she received some correspondence from Mann and telephoned him.
Thus, the trial judge was confronted with the diametrically opposed versions of the facts by Bone and Alexander as to whether Bone had contacted Alexander about the $60,000 settlement offer and what communications had ensued between them.
At the conclusion of the hearing the trial judge undertook to explain to Alexander, who was appearing pro se, the judge's understanding of the law that applied to the situation before him. Because the judge's lengthy statement in that regard, including exchanges between the judge and Alexander and the judge and Lee, is critical to our analysis of the proper disposition of this appeal, we set it out at length:
In Warner v. Pony Express Courier Corp., 675 So. 2d 1317, 1320 (Ala. Civ.App.1996), the Court of Civil Appeals accurately summarized the caselaw on point as to this issue:
See also Goodwyn, Mills & Cawood, Inc. v. Markel Ins. Co., 911 So. 2d 1044, 1049 (Ala.2004); and Roberson v. State ex rel. Smith, 842 So. 2d 709, 711-12 (Ala.Civ.App. 2002).
In her brief to this Court, Alexander cites Blackwell v. Adams, 467 So. 2d 680 (Ala.1985), Warner v. Pony Express Courier Corp., supra, and Crawford v. Tucker, 258 Ala. 658, 64 So. 2d 411 (1953), in arguing that an attorney may not consent to final disposition of a client's case without the client's express authority and that a judgment entered on the basis of a settlement agreement entered into by an attorney may be set aside on affirmative proof that the attorney had no authorization to consent to the agreement.[3] In the brief Lee has filed with this Court on behalf of the defendant, Lee argues that because "both Mr. Mann and Mr. Bone testified that they had authority from [Alexander] to settle the case for $60,000," the ore tenus rule comes into play; under that rule "a trial court's ruling based upon ore tenus evidence must be affirmed `if, under any reasonable aspect of the testimony there is credible evidence to support the judgment.' Pforr v. Intercorp., Inc., 577 So. 2d 1291, 1293 (Ala.1991)." The argument is then advanced, "Clearly, the trial court heard testimony from both of [Alexander's] former attorneys substantiating the trial court's conclusion that they had authority to settle the present action and enter into the settlement agreement in question." (Lee's brief, p. 11.) In that regard, Lee points out that the formal order entered by the trial court confirming its bench ruling that the $60,000 settlement was due to be enforced (which order was drafted by Lee and submitted to the court at the court's request) notes the dispute between Bone and Alexander about settlement authority and then states "[b]ased upon the representations made at the hearing on the Motion to Enforce Settlement Agreement and based upon the applicable law of the State of Alabama the Court finds that the defendant's Motion to Enforce Settlement Agreement is due to be GRANTED." In essence, Lee argues that the trial judge resolved the conflict in the "ore tenus testimony" of Bone and Alexander and concluded that Alexander had in fact given her attorneys authority to settle her personal-injury case for $60,000. The trial judge did not expressly make any such finding, however, and although "where the trial court fails to make a specific finding of fact as to whether a party's attorney is authorized to enter into a stipulation or compromise, such a finding is implicit in the trial court's order" (Roberson, 842 So.2d at 712), the trial judge's explanations to Alexander at the conclusion of the hearing appear affirmatively to state that he was forgoing making any finding concerning whether Bone had authority from Alexander to accept the offer as unnecessary to his holding.
If the judge had actually made a finding accepting Bone's version of the disputed *998 facts, or if the state of the record was such that a finding to that effect could be deemed implicit in the trial court's order, we would affirm. The judge was entrusted with making the credibility choice as between Bone and Alexander, and there were collateral circumstances brought to the judge's attention, which we need not discuss in this opinion, that would tend to support Bone's explanation of what had transpired.
Given the way the record stands, however, we elect to remand the case to afford the trial judge an opportunity to clarify his statements at the hearing concerning the controlling law and perhaps to reconcile them with the text of his written order. If the trial judge advises this Court on return to remand that he in fact made no finding in the final analysis concerning whether Bone had authorization from Alexander to accept a $60,000 settlement, then we will reverse his order and again remand with instructions that that necessary determination be made. On the other hand, if on return to remand the trial judge explains that he had meant to convey in his formal order that he had ultimately found that Bone had indeed received authorization from Alexander to accept the $60,000 settlement, the order now appealed from will be affirmed.
Accordingly, we remand with instructions for the trial court to explain on return to remand the intent and meaning of his final order with regard to a finding of fact of whether Bone was authorized by Alexander to accept the $60,000 settlement. The trial court shall provide that clarification to this Court within 28 days after the date this opinion is released.
REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS.
NABERS, C.J., and SEE, LYONS, WOODALL, STUART, SMITH, BOLIN, and PARKER, JJ., concur.
HARWOOD, Justice.[2]
On August 4, 2006, we remanded this case to the Etowah Circuit Court for that court to clarify whether it had made a factual finding as to whether Gary Bone, an attorney representing Donna Jo Chapman Alexander, the plaintiff in a personal-injury action, was authorized to accept a settlement on behalf of Alexander. On August 14, 2006, the circuit judge who had conducted the August 16, 2005, hearing referenced in our August 4, 2006, opinion, and who had entered the order referenced in that opinion, filed with this Court the following order on return to remand:
Given that the trial judge advises us that he made no finding as to whether Bone had authorization from Alexander to accept the $60,000 settlement, and consistent with our explanation on original deliverance of the options available to us, depending upon the trial judge's response on return to remand, we hereby reverse the trial court's order and remand the case with instructions that the trial judge make the necessary determination as to whether Bone had authorization from Alexander to accept the $60,000 settlement. The trial judge may conduct such further hearings as he might deem appropriate, solely within his discretion. In that regard, we noted on original deliverance that none of the participants in the August 16, 2005, hearing had been placed under oath, but that that procedural omission was not raised by any of the parties either before the trial court or on appeal to this Court.
REVERSED AND REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS.
NABERS, C.J., and SEE, LYONS, WOODALL, STUART, SMITH, BOLIN, and PARKER, JJ., concur.
[1]  Chad A. Burch died while this case was pending in the trial court, leaving John Burton Farley, Jr., as the only named defendant.
[2]  This case was originally assigned to another Justice on this Court; it was reassigned to Justice Harwood on July 13, 2006.
[3]  Alexander also argues in her brief that § 34-3-21, Ala.Code 1975, set out in the excerpt from Warner v. Pony Express Courier Corp. quoted above, would serve to preclude enforcement of the settlement because "[i]t is clear from the record that the oral agreement at issue here was not made in open court or during a pretrial conference and was not entered into in the minutes of open court." Because that argument was never presented to the trial court, we do not consider it to have been preserved for the purposes of this appeal. Alexander is represented by new counsel in this appeal.
[2]  This case was originally assigned to another Justice on this Court; it was reassigned to Justice Harwood on July 13, 2006.