Title: Nix v. McElrath
Citation: 952 So. 2d 1107
Docket Number: 1040259
State: Alabama
Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court
Date: August 18, 2006

952 So. 2d 1107 (2006)
Jack D. NIX, Jr.
v.
Robin McELRATH, as mother and next friend of Magen K. Nix, deceased.
1040259.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
August 18, 2006.
*1108 James B. Pittman, Jr., Daphne, for appellant.
Bryan N. Cigelski of Taylor Martino, P.C., Mobile, for appellee.
BOLIN, Justice.
This case concerns a wrongful-death action brought in the Baldwin Circuit Court by Robin McElrath ("the mother"), as mother and next friend of her deceased minor daughter, Magen K. Nix. The two issues presented for review are whether the mother, a divorced parent, had the exclusive right to commence the wrongful-death action, and whether she had the exclusive right to the proceeds from this action.
Magen was born on December 15, 1984, during the marriage of the mother and Thomas Wayne Dixon. The mother and Dixon subsequently divorced, and the mother later married Jack D. Nix, Jr. After the marriage, Nix petitioned the Probate Court of Mobile County to adopt his stepchild, Magen. That petition was granted on December 17, 1992, and a final judgment of adoption was rendered creating a parent-child relationship between Nix ("the father") and Magen and legally changing Magen's name to Magen Kristen Nix.[1] Approximately eight years later, the mother and the father divorced. The terms of the divorce judgment relevant to this action are set out and discussed below.
On September 4, 2003, shortly after enrolling as a freshman at Auburn University, Magen and her friend Robyn Kendall visited Fat Daddy's Fine Foods, a bar in Auburn. They were allegedly served alcoholic beverages even though both were minors. Magen and Robyn subsequently left Fat Daddy's in Robyn's car, which Robyn was driving, and were involved in an automobile accident in which both girls were killed.
On December 8, 2003, the mother filed the underlying action against Robyn Kendall, by and through her mother, Donna Kendall, and against AIU Insurance Company, the mother's uninsured/underinsured-motorist ("UM/UIM") insurance carrier. Later, the mother amended her complaint to add as defendants AL-LU Enterprises, Inc., d/b/a Fat Daddy's Fine Foods, under a dram-shop theory of liability.
On June 4, 2004, the defendant Donna Kendall, as mother of Robyn Kendall, deceased, by and through her automobile insurance carrier State Farm Insurance, filed a motion to interplead the available proceeds of her automobile liability insurance policy. The trial court granted Kendall and State Farm's motion to allow interpleader of the funds on June 9, 2004. *1109 On July 12, 2004, the mother filed a motion for disbursement of the interpleaded funds, requesting that attorney fees be paid to her counsel and that she receive the balance of the interpleaded funds.
Although the record is silent as to the particulars, at some point the father was appointed the administrator of Magen's estate, and he then entered an appearance in the Baldwin Circuit Court wrongful-death action, moving to intervene as an indispensable party pursuant to Rule 19, Ala. R. Civ. P. He also objected to the disbursement of interpleaded funds, and he filed a cross-motion for one-half of those funds. The mother objected to the father's intervention and to his cross-motion to divide the interpleaded funds.
The trial court set all pending motions for hearing on August 31, 2004, and after the hearing took all matters under submission. The mother and the father filed a joint stipulation of undisputed facts on October 6, 2004, and the trial court entered the following order on October 12, 2004:
The father filed a Rule 59(e), Ala. R. Civ. 0P., postjudgment motion to alter or amend its judgment, which the trial court denied. The UM/UIM claim and the claim based on dram-shop liability remain pending.[2] The trial court certified its judgment *1110 as final pursuant to Rule 54(b), Ala. R. Civ. P. The father appealed.
American Res. Ins. Co. v. H &amp; H Stephens Constr., Inc., 939 So. 2d 868, 872-73 (Ala.2006)(quoting Bean Dredging, L.L.C. v. Alabama Dep't of Revenue, 855 So. 2d 513, 516-17 (Ala.2003)).
A. Who has the right to commence a civil action based on the minor's death?
Both the father and the mother persuasively argued at the trial level as to which of them, as divorced parents given "joint custody," have the right to maintain a wrongful-death action, an action for UM/ UIM benefits, and a dram-shop claim on behalf of their deceased daughter, and, secondarily, whether that right is exclusive. However, the father's statement that "because both the [UM/UIM] claim as well as the dram shop claim have since similarly been settled [referring to the already settled claim against Robyn Kendall's insurance carrier], the issue of whether [the father] was entitled to act as a co-plaintiff in prosecuting those claims based on his joint legal custodial status as set forth in the first and second paragraph of the Trial Court's Order is now moot." (The father's brief, p. 16.) The father, therefore, although devoting a substantial portion of his brief to addressing this issue, has conceded that the issue is now moot.
Notwithstanding the father's concession of the mootness of the issue of who had the exclusive right to bring the action, the mother, who initiated the action, must have standing to prosecute this action. "Standing, like jurisdiction, is necessary for any valid legal action. To say that a person has standing is to say that that person is a proper party to bring the action. To be a proper party, the person must have a real, tangible legal interest in the subject matter of the lawsuit." Doremus v. Business Council of Alabama Workers' Compensation Self-Insurers Fund, 686 So. 2d 252, 253 (Ala.1996). The judgment divorcing the parties provides the following regarding custody:
(Emphasis added.)
Alabama's statute pertaining to the wrongful death of a minor child, Ala.Code 1975, § 6-5-391, provides, in part:
(Emphasis added.) Section 6-5-390 provides:
(Emphasis added.)
The divorce judgment awarded the mother and father "joint custody" of their minor children, including Magen. The mother was awarded "primary custody"; the father was awarded "secondary custody." The father was also awarded certain specified visitation rights with the children.
The parties' divorce was granted April 19, 2001, well after the legislature enacted Alabama's Joint Custody Act, § 30-3-150 et seq., Ala.Code 1975.[3] Although the terms "primary custody" and "secondary custody" are not defined in the act, the definitional section, § 30-3-151(1), defines "joint custody" as "joint legal custody and joint physical custody." This terminology does not fit squarely with that portion of § 6-5-390 that provides that "the party having legal custody of such minor child shall have the exclusive right to commence such action." Given the father's concession as to the mootness of the issue of who has the exclusive right to bring suit, however, that issue is no longer before the Court, and we pretermit any further discussion except to say that the mother, under the facts before us, had standing to bring this action.
B. Who is entitled to the interpleaded funds?
The mother first argues that based on this Court's ruling in Carter v. Beaver, 577 So. 2d 448 (Ala.1991), she "should be vested with . . . the exclusive right to recovery of all proceeds from the action.. (The mother's brief, pp. 6 and 10)(emphasis added).
The facts in Carter are similar to those found here. Clayton Carter, Jr., and *1112 Mary Beaver were divorced. Rather than having joint custody, however, Mary was awarded sole custody of their minor children, including their minor son, Christopher Carter, who was killed in an automobile accident. Mary filed a wrongful-death action and received an amount in settlement of the action. Carter filed a declaratory-judgment action asking that the trial court order the settlement proceeds distributed according to the laws of descent and distribution. The trial court ruled that Mary was entitled to all the proceeds, and Carter appealed.
Carter argued that even though Mary, having sole custody, had the exclusive right to bring the action, the settlement proceeds should be distributed pursuant to § 6-5-410, which states in subsection (c) that "[t]he damages recovered [from a wrongful-death action] are not subject to the payment of the debts or liabilities of the testator or intestate, but must be distributed according to the statute of distributions." After reciting the history of wrongful-death actions in Alabama, this Court rejected Carter's argument, stating:
Carter, 577 So. 2d  at 451.
However, this Court's decision in Carter concerning which divorced parent is entitled to the proceeds from a wrongful-death action was abrogated by a 1995 amendment to Ala.Code 1975, § 6-5-391, which added subsection (c):
(Emphasis added.) Over four years after Carter was decided, the legislature removed any doubt about the distribution of proceeds obtained for the wrongful death of a minor child. Therefore, the distribution of those proceeds in this case is governed by Ala.Code 1975, § 43-8-42, which provides:
Therefore, the wrongful-death statute requires that the damages be disbursed in the manner directed by the statute governing intestate succession. Based on the facts of this case, because the deceased child had no surviving spouse (sending us to § 43-8-42), and had no surviving issue, according to § 43-8-42(2), the damages should be awarded to the parent or parents equally. Therefore, because there are two living parents of the deceased, the damages from the wrongful-death action based on the mother's claim against Kendall's liability insurance carrier, which have been interpleaded into court, should be divided equally between them.
Justice Houston in his dissent in Killiner v. Wilson, 683 So. 2d 947 (Ala.1996), recognized the same necessary result. In *1114 that case, Justice Houston stated that even though Mr. Wilson, as the deceased's custodial parent, had the exclusive right to initiate the action based on his son's wrongful death, he did not have the right to all of the damages awarded in the action. In the dissent, Justice Houston stated:
Killiner, 683 So. 2d  at 947.
This result is also consistent with the statute and caselaw addressing the wrongful death of an adult. Section 6-5-410(c), Ala.Code 1975, concerning damages for wrongful death, states: "The damages recovered are not subject to the payment of the debts or liabilities of the testator or intestate, but must be distributed according to the statute of distributions."
This Court had the occasion to interpret § 6-5-410 in Crosby v. Corley, 528 So. 2d 1141 (Ala.1988). In that case, we stated:
528 So. 2d  at 1142-43. Based on both wrongful-death statutes, § 6-5-391 and § 6-5-410, the result is the same; damages from a wrongful-death action are distributed based on the rules of intestate succession. In the circumstances of this case, that means that the mother and the father split the damages equally.
The mother next argues that the father is not entitled to one-half of the net proceeds received under the UM/UIM provision of the policy purchased by the mother, citing Sprouse v. Hawk, 574 So. 2d 754 (Ala.1990). However, the trial court's order was a final adjudication only as to the claim against Kendall's liability insurance carrier involving the disbursement of the interpleaded funds. Therefore, the disbursement of funds arising out the UM/UIM claim or the dram-shop-liability claim has not been addressed by the trial court.
The mother argues that Sprouse, supra, supports her petition. In Sprouse, Charles Hawk was the named insured in several State Farm automobile policies. The "insured" under the policies included Charles Hawk and his spouse at the time of the accident, Mary Hawk. Mary was killed as a result of an automobile accident caused by an uninsured motorist. Mary was survived by Charles and her two sons from a previous marriage. State Farm paid the combined limits of uninsured-motorist benefits to Charles, and the sons claimed that the moneys paid to Charles under the policies should be distributed in accordance with the Alabama wrongful-death statute. The trial court upheld the payment to Charles, ruling that the insurance benefits were devisable as a chose in action under Mary's will and that, therefore, the proceeds passed to her sole beneficiary, Charles. In reversing the judgment of the trial court, this Court stated:
Sprouse, 574 So. 2d  at 756-57. Therefore, although Sprouse is cited by the mother, this Court's holding in Sprouse actually supports the father's argument.
Finally, the mother argues that allowing the father to collect benefits under a policy of insurance purchased by his ex-wife would constitute unjust enrichment, citing Avis Rent A Car Systems, Inc. v. Heilman, 876 So. 2d 1111 (Ala.2003). Avis Rent A Car was an appeal in a class action in which one class claim certified by the trial court was based on a theory of unjust enrichment. In holding that trial court was in error in certifying the unjust enrichment claims as a class action, the Court quoted Battles v. Atchison, 545 So. 2d 814 (Ala.Civ.App.1989), in stating that "`the doctrine of unjust enrichment is an old equitable remedy permitting the court in equity and good conscience to disallow one to be unjustly enriched at the expense of another.'" 876 So. 2d  at 1123 (quoting Battles, 545 So.2d at 815). Nothing in Avis Rent A Car disputes the holding in Sprouse that UM/UIM benefits recovered in a wrongful-death action represent damages recoverable under the Alabama wrongful-death statute. Hence, there can be no argument that the father would be unjustly enriched by receiving one-half of the UM/UIM benefits.
The judgment of trial court denying the father's claim for one-half of the interpleaded funds is reversed, and this cause is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
NABERS, C.J., and SEE, HARWOOD, and STUART, JJ., concur.
[1]  This adoption proceeding made Magen the legal daughter of Jack D. Nix., Jr., and the mother. However, for purposes of intestate succession there is no distinction between an adoptive father and a biological mother. See Ala.Code 1975, § 43-8-48, which provides in pertinent part:

"If, for purposes of intestate succession, a relationship of parent and child must be established to determine succession by, through, or from a person:
"(1) An adopted person is the child of an adopting parent and not of the natural parents. . . . "
Of course, the adoption did not affect the mother's status for purposes of intestate succession; she consented only to the adoption of Magen by her husband, relinquishing no parental rights of her own.
[2]  According to the father's brief, the UM/UIM claim and the claim based on dram-shop liability have been settled.
[3]  Act No. 96-520, Ala. Acts 1996, effective January 1, 1997.
[4]  Act No. 95-774, Ala. Acts 1995, effective August 8, 1995.