Title: McMurray v. Johnson

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

481 So. 2d 887 (1985)
James G. McMURRAY, et al.
v.
Lavoid D. JOHNSON and Pauline Johnson.
84-676.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
December 20, 1985.
*888 Harold F. Herring and H. Harold Stephens of Lanier, Shaver & Herring, Huntsville, for appellants James G. McMurray and James G. McMurray, P.C.
John S. Key of Eyster, Key, Tubb, Weaver & Roth, Decatur, for appellants Thomas H. Griffith and Thomas H. Griffith, P.C.
Robert H. Ford and Daniel F. Aldridge for Brinkley & Ford, and Joseph M. Cloud for Cloud & Cloud, Huntsville, for appellees.
PER CURIAM.
The following language from Appellants' brief, with minor modifications, is an accurate and succinct "Statement of the Case":
Pursuant to Alabama Rules of Appellate Procedure 5(a), this Court granted the petition of Drs. McMurray and Griffith for an interlocutory appeal to review the issue whether the trial court erred in ordering a retrial of the claims of negligence, wantonness, assault and battery, and conspiracy to commit assault and battery where this Court's reversal of the judgment in favor of the Defendants was based solely on the trial court's failure to submit the fraud counts to the jury.
The parties are in general agreement that the confusion arises from the following language from our opinion in the first appeal:
461 So. 2d  at 779.
We acknowledge that our language is susceptible of the interpretation obviously accorded it by the trial judge and argued here by Appellees' counsel. We can see by hindsight that perhaps our directions upon remand of this cause for a new trial would have been clearer if the first sentence under that part of the opinion subtitled "Other Issues" had read:
We find the following language from the Appellants' brief on this present appeal to be a clear and accurate expression of what the Court intended in its earlier opinion in this cause:
We hold, therefore, that the trial court erred in not limiting the retrial of this cause to the Johnsons' claims of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. Indeed, it is significant to note that we chose the two issues addressed under "Other Issues" precisely because of their potential to recur upon retrial of the fraud claims. Our selection of these issues was to the conscious exclusion of other issues raised by Appellants that were not apt to recur because the retrial would not include the tort claims that had been adjudicated in favor of Defendants after a full jury trial.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
TORBERT, C.J., and FAULKNER, JONES, SHORES, ADAMS and HOUSTON, JJ., concur.
MADDOX, ALMON and BEATTY, JJ., concur in the result.
ALMON, Judge (concurring in the result).
I concur in the result only, because of the views expressed in the dissent in Johnson v. McMurray, 461 So. 2d 775 (Ala.1984).
MADDOX, J., concurs.