Title: Walker v. City of Montgomery
Citation: 833 So. 2d 40
Docket Number: 1010009
State: Alabama
Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court
Date: April 19, 2002

833 So. 2d 40 (2002)
G. Hal WALKER, Jr.
v.
CITY OF MONTGOMERY.
1010009.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
April 19, 2002.
J. Doyle Fuller, Montgomery, for appellant.
Robert A. Huffaker and Ben C. Wilson of Rushton, Stakely, Johnston &amp; Garrett, P.A., Montgomery, for appellee.
HARWOOD, Justice.
G. Hal Walker, Jr., appeals the trial court's summary judgment in favor of the City of Montgomery (hereinafter referred to as "the City") and its denial of Walker's motion for a partial summary judgment. We affirm.
The trial court aptly set out the underlying facts and procedural history of this case in its August 7, 2001, order entering a summary judgment for the City and denying Walker and another plaintiff's[1] motion *41 for a partial summary judgment, as follows:
"Defendant City filed on June 27[, 2001,] its Motion for Summary Judgment along with a memorandum brief, documentary exhibits and affidavits, and appeared to argue the Motion at the previously scheduled hearing on July 6[, 2001]. Plaintiffs did not appear, but in a pleading filed on July 9, [2001,] Counsel offered cause for his absence, and the Court granted Plaintiffs' requested leave to respond. Plaintiffs filed on July 13[, 2001,] their Motion for Partial Summary Judgment supported by Plaintiffs' Response to Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment.
"After duly considering all of the pleadings, evidentiary submissions, legal authorities and arguments, the Court concludes that this record clearly shows, and the parties agree, that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact. In their motion for partial summary judgment, Plaintiffs declare:
(Emphasis omitted.)
The trial court granted the City's motion for a summary judgment and denied Walker and McLain's motion for a partial summary judgment on August 7, 2001. Walker filed a notice of appeal to this Court on September 8, 2001. In his brief to this Court, Walker states the issue presented in this appeal as:
(Emphasis supplied by Walker.)
Our review of a summary judgment is de novo.
Hobson v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., 690 So. 2d 341, 344 (Ala.1997). Walker confirms what the trial court stated in its order, stating in his brief that "there were... no material facts in dispute." Therefore, our review is more appropriately limited to whether the trial court correctly determined that the City was entitled to a summary judgment as a matter of law.
The gist of Walker's argument is that the City was "locked into" the population bracket set out in Act No. 457, 1957 Ala. Acts (hereinafter referred to as "the Act"), at the time of its passage in 1957. The materials submitted to the trial court show that in 1957, the records available from the 1950 federal decennial census reported that the City had a population of 106,525. Walker's argument concentrates on the language in the Act stating that it applies to cities having populations between 100,000 and 125,000 "according to the last or any subsequent federal decennial census." (Emphasis added.) He argues that the disjunctive "or" used in the statute, given the normal statutory construction, means that because the Act applied to the City at the time of its passage in 1957, it continues to apply today; Walker contends that while other cities could be brought within the purview of the Act by their reported populations in a subsequent federal decennial census, the City could not grow out of the population bracket set out in the Act.
The trial court's August 7, 2001, order provided a thoughtful discussion of this issue. That order stated, in pertinent part:
"The rule is explained, as follows, in 2 Norman J. Singer, Sutherland Statutes &amp; Statutory Construction, § 40.09, at 236-237 (5th ed.1992):
"See also Herbrand and Shapiro, Validity of Statutory Classifications Based on PopulationGovernmental Employee Salary or Pension Statutes, 96 A.L.R.3d 538, 543 (1979), and Sumter County v. Allen, [193 Ga. 171, 17 S.E.2d 567 (1941) ].
"The Court also finds persuasive the undisputed evidence of the Alabama Legislature's acknowledgment that population bracket bills must permit entry and exit of cities or counties as their population increases. Numerous examples reflect a consistent pattern of legislative action and intent. When the Legislature intended to keep a city or county within the scope of a bracket bill after it had outgrown the population bracket, the Legislature enacted *45 another bill which expanded the bracket; significantly, the new bill expressly referenced the previous legislation, the subsequent increase in population for the entity previously covered, and the legislative intent to continue that entity within the scope of coverage.
"1 In Peddycoart v. City of Birmingham, 354 So. 2d 808 (1978), the Alabama Supreme Court brought to a halt the Alabama Legislature's decades-long resort to such acts by mandating that population classifications no longer be used to avoid the definition of a local act. As stated in § 110 of the Alabama Constitution, a local act is one `which applies to any political subdivision or subdivisions of the state less than the whole.'
"2 The undisputed evidence is that the City of Montgomery's population, according to the federal decennial census, was 106,525 in 1950, 134,393 in 1960, and 133,386 in 1970.
"3 See, e.g., Belcher v. McKinney, 333 So. 2d 136 (Ala.1976), and Brittain v. Weatherly, 281 Ala. 683, 207 So. 2d 667 (1968)."
(Some emphasis omitted.)
In Montgomery County Commission v. Hobbie, 368 So. 2d 264 (Ala.1979), this Court observed:
368 So. 2d  at 269 (emphasis added). While Belcher v. McKinney, 333 So. 2d 136 (Ala. 1976), considered legislative acts applicable to counties, the same requirements apply in considering acts applicable to cities. See City of Birmingham v. Samford, 274 Ala. 367, 149 So. 2d 271 (1963). Further, this Court stated in Phalen v. Birmingham Racing Commission, 481 So. 2d 1108, 1114 (Ala.1985), that "[t]he concept was that population classifications, when established in an act, were permitted if the possibility existed for other subdivisions to grow into the classification." (Emphasis added.)
While this Court has never expressly so stated, it has implied that a city or county could grow out of a population classification. The two cases relied on by the trial court provide good examples of this Court's touching on this subject. In Smith v. Lancaster, 269 Ala. 579, 114 So. 2d 568 (1959), this Court considered whether an act that established and applied a population classification to counties having a population between 80,000 and 94,000 was valid. Etowah County was the only county to which the act applied. In the course of determining that the act was invalid because it was a "local law" that had been passed without compliance with the appropriate publication requirements, the Court stated:
269 Ala. at 583, 114 So. 2d  at 570 (emphasis added.) Further, in Robinson v. City of *46 Montgomery, 485 So. 2d 695 (Ala.1986), this Court observed:
485 So. 2d  at 698 (emphasis added).
Based on the foregoing, we conclude that an act based on a population classification must have application to a "shifting" class in order to be a general law. See Hobbie, supra. While this Court has previously failed to explicitly so hold, we today determine and hold that if a class within a population classification is to be considered as "shifting," a city or county within that class must be able to outgrow the classification just as a city or county can grow into such a classification. See Phalen, supra. Accordingly, the trial court's summary judgment for the City is due to be affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
MOORE, C.J., and SEE, BROWN, and STUART, JJ., concur.
[1]  John McLain, an engineer employed in the City of Montgomery by Jeffcoat Engineers &amp; Surveyors, was also a plaintiff in this case. However, he has not appealed the summary judgment.