Title: Gilliland v. USCO Power Equipment Corp.
Citation: 631 So. 2d 938
Docket Number: 1920635
State: Alabama
Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court
Date: January 14, 1994

631 So. 2d 938 (1994)
William H. GILLILAND and Elsie B. Gilliland
v.
USCO POWER EQUIPMENT CORPORATION and Ted Lankford.
1920635.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
January 14, 1994.
Andrew P. Campbell, Eddie Leitman, S. Lynne Stephens and K. Phillip Luke of Leitman, Siegal, Payne &amp; Campbell, P.C., Birmingham, for appellants.
*939 Frank M. Bainbridge of Bainbridge, Mims &amp; Rogers, Birmingham, for appellees.
PER CURIAM.
The plaintiffs appeal from a dismissal of their complaint pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), Ala.R.Civ.P. "Motions to dismiss should be granted sparingly, and a dismissal is proper only when it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of the claim which would entitle the plaintiff to relief." Hill v. Kraft, Inc., 496 So. 2d 768, 769 (Ala.1986); Fraternal Order of Police, Strawberry Lodge # 40 v. Entrekin, 294 Ala. 201, 314 So. 2d 663 (1975).
After a careful review of the record, the briefs, the oral arguments, and the law, we conclude that the complaint states a claim on which relief can be granted. See, e.g., Ex parte Brown, 562 So. 2d 485 (Ala.1990).
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
HORNSBY, C.J., and MADDOX, ALMON, SHORES, KENNEDY, INGRAM and COOK, JJ., concur.
HOUSTON, J., concurs in the result.
HOUSTON, Justice (concurring in the result).
After studying the complaint in this case and the majority opinion in Ex parte Brown, 562 So. 2d 485 (Ala.1990), I am persuaded that, under our standard for reviewing Rule 12(b)(6), A.R.Civ.P., dismissals, we must reverse and remand; however, I wish that we would clarify the nature of the cause of action for oppression or squeeze-out of minority stockholders and the rules regarding standing to bring such an action.
I do not know how broad our cause of action for oppression or squeeze-out of minority stockholders is (Ex parte Brown, supra (Houston, J., dissenting)) or whether it sounds in tort or in contract (Fulton v. Callahan, 621 So. 2d 1235, 1254-55 (Ala.1993) (Houston, J., concurring specially)); however, in Ex parte Brown, 562 So. 2d  at 492, the majority of this Court wrote the following:
If the squeeze techniques illustrated by O'Neal and Thompson provide a cause of action in Alabama, then the Gillilands have standing and have stated a cause of action. However, as noted in the bracketed comments I have provided in the quote from *940 O'Neal, it appears to me that some of O'Neal's illustrations encompass injury to the corporation as a whole and should be the basis for a derivative action only.
I think this Court should return to the bedrock of Galbreath v. Scott, 433 So. 2d 454 (Ala.1983), and leave the shifting sands of the quote from O'Neal's Oppression of Minority Shareholders. Andrew Campbell stated the difference between derivative and individual shareholder claims better than I ever could, in "Litigating Minority Shareholder Rights and the New Tort[?] of Oppression," 53 Ala. Law. 108, 114 (1992):
It appears to me that this would be an appropriate case in which to decide what minimum wrong must allegedly have been done to an individual minority shareholder to allow the shareholder standing to sue individually for oppression or squeeze-out, but that must wait for another day and another case.