Opinion ID: 1894771
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Issues and Discussion

Text: We begin by addressing the Board's argument that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to enter the attorney-fee award. The Board points out that the trial court's February 6, 2001, order was styled as a Final Order and stated that it was issued after a final hearing on all pending matters. Although Waldrop's request for attorney fees was pending when the trial court issued the order, the order neither addressed Waldrop's request for attorney fees [2] nor reserved that issue for later consideration. The Board asserts that the trial court's final order, through its silence, implicitly denied Waldrop's request for attorney fees and thus disposed of all claims. The Board further asserts that, in order to place that issue before the trial court again, Waldrop should have requested, pursuant to Rule 59, Ala. R. Civ. P., that the trial court alter, amend, or vacate the February 6, 2001, order as to the issue of attorney fees. Although Waldrop filed a Rule 59 motion, he did not raise the attorney-fee issue in that motion. Thus, the Board asserts, 30 days after the entry of the February 6, 2001, order, the trial court lost jurisdiction to reconsider its denial of attorney fees. Waldrop responds by arguing that the February 6, 2001, order was not a final order because, he says, the order did not dispose of all claims (i.e., the trial court did not address his pending request for attorney fees) and the trial court did not specifically direct that a final judgment be entered on less than all claims, pursuant to Rule 54(b), Ala. R. Civ. P. Waldrop asserts that the trial court's September 6, 2001, order is the final, and therefore appealable, order. The trial court agreed with Waldrop. At the August 13, 2001, hearing on Waldrop's request for attorney fees, the trial judge insisted that his February 6, 2001, order was not a final order, and, when confronted with the fact that that order was captioned Final Order, he emphatically denied that he intended it to be a final order at that time. The trial judge stated: My final order was going to be after we cleared up this issue of attorneys' fees. I can tell you that right now. And if I did that [called the February 6, 2001, order a final order], that was inadvertently done; if I said final order. Why would I say final order and leave the attorneys' fees out there hanging? ... I didn't intend to do it. That was not my intent. We begin our analysis of the jurisdictional issue by recognizing that a decision on the merits disposing of all claims is a final decision from which an appeal must be timely taken, whether a request for attorney fees remains for adjudication. Budinich v. Becton Dickinson & Co., 486 U.S. 196, 199-200, 108 S.Ct. 1717, 100 L.Ed.2d 178 (1988). Indeed, this Court has already concluded that the February 6, 2001, order entered in this case was a final decision on the merits. When the Board filed this appeal, Waldrop filed a cross-appeal. In that cross-appeal, Waldrop challenged the correctness of that portion of the trial court's February 6, 2001, order refusing to award damages against the Board. The Board moved to dismiss Waldrop's cross-appeal, asserting that because Waldrop's notice of cross-appeal was not filed within 42 days of the entry of the judgment he was appealing from, i.e., the judgment entered on February 6, 2001, Waldrop's appeal from that decision was untimely. We agreed, and on December 19, 2001, we dismissed Waldrop's cross-appeal. We reached this conclusion even though the trial court had not entered a Rule 54(b) certification stating that the February 6, 2001, order was a final order. Thus, this Court has already concluded that the February 6, 2001, order was a final, appealable order. This fact, however, does not completely resolve the issue whether a trial court after it has issued a final order on the merits and awarded costsmay consider a request for attorney fees, where the attorney-fee issue was pending at the time the case was decided on the merits but was not expressly reserved for later consideration. Although the trial court labeled its February 6, 2001, order as a Final Order, the trial court subsequently announced that it did not intend to issue a final order until after the issue of attorney fees was cleared up. These comments by the trial judge could be interpreted as a nunc pro tunc amendment of its judgment; if that is the case, the trial court was not divested of jurisdiction when it issued its order awarding attorney fees. Additionally, in light of the record before us, we will not interpret the trial court's silence in its February 6, 2001, order as to Waldrop's request for attorney fees as a denial of that request. However, we note that, under different circumstances, a trial court's silence might be construed as a denial of a pending request. See, e.g., Lambert v. Lisanti Foods, Inc., 624 So.2d 625 (Ala.Civ.App.1993) (the trial court's judgment, which was silent as to the plaintiff's claim alleging retaliatory discharge, was taken to be a denial or rejection of that claim). Because we are inclined to reach the merits of the issue whether the trial court properly awarded attorney fees, we are unprepared to dispose of this case on the murky issue whether the trial court lacked jurisdiction to enter its September 6, 2001, order awarding attorney fees. We therefore address the issue whether Waldrop's lawsuit resulted in a common benefit.
The Board challenges the trial court's award of attorney fees under the common-benefit exception, asserting that Waldrop's lawsuit did not result in a common benefit to the general public. The trial court held that Waldrop's efforts resulted in a common benefit to Waldrop and to the general public and that Waldrop's lawsuit rendered a public service. However, the record does not support this conclusion. First, Waldrop presented absolutely no evidence tending to establish any relationship between the filing of this action and the amendment of the Foundation Act. Waldrop argued that his contact with the AEA and with Dr. Hubbert, the filing of his federal lawsuit, and the subsequent filing of this state-court action all combined to bring about the amendment to the Foundation Act. However, the record before this Court contains no evidence of the filing or the disposition of Waldrop's federal lawsuit, and we therefore do not consider that lawsuit. Even if the record adequately documented Waldrop's prior lawsuit and we accepted the argument that his filing of the federal lawsuit was the catalyst that prompted the AEA to review its position regarding the Foundation Act, this Court has previously rejected a similar argument in Battle v. City of Birmingham, 656 So.2d 344 (Ala.1995). In Battle, the Court affirmed the trial court's refusal to award attorney fees under a common-benefit theory, explaining that the arguments of the party seeking the fee appl[ied] solely to her efforts in another case and that she had failed to show that her efforts in this case resulted in any benefit to the general public that would support an award of attorney fees. 656 So.2d at 347 (first emphasis in original; second emphasis added). See also Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dep't of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598, 121 S.Ct. 1835, 149 L.Ed.2d 855 (2001) (rejecting an award of attorney fees under a catalyst theory, i.e., where the plaintiff's lawsuit brought about a voluntary change in the defendant's conduct). Second, it is significant to note that Representative Bill Fuller introduced the legislation proposing the amendment on February 4, 1997, the first day of the regular legislative session, while Waldrop's state-court action was not filed until February 18, 1997, some two weeks later. Thus, even Waldrop's state-court action lacks any causal relationship to the proposed amendment. At the hearing before the trial court on the attorney-fee issue, Waldrop's counsel essentially admitted that there was no evidence indicating such a causal relationship: Of course, Dr. Hubbert is going to say that it's not. Of course, Bill Fuller is going to say that it's not. You're never going to get a direct admission in this important case as to what wheels are turning where to bring what benefits about. But we believe it's almost res ipsa loquitur as far as the time sequence there. The deposition testimony of Dr. Hubbert and Representative Fuller was the only evidence submitted at the hearing on the attorney-fee issue. As Waldrop's counsel admitted, both Dr. Hubbert and Representative Fuller denied that the filing of Waldrop's lawsuit or his contact with the AEA had had any impact upon the drafting of, the lobbying for, or the passage of the amendment to the Foundation Act. Accordingly, the trial court's finding that Waldrop's lawsuit resulted in a common benefit is unsupported by any evidence; the trial court could only have speculated as to what prompted the Legislature to amend the Foundation Act. Although we agree that Waldrop's complaints to the AEA may have highlighted the deficiencies in the Foundation Act, merely highlighting a deficiency in a statute does not, without evidence of a more direct influence, rise to the level of prompting a correction of that deficiency. We cannot allow speculation to satisfy a narrow exception to the American rule and to create an entitlement to attorney fees, especially where substantial, uncontroverted evidence to the contrary has been presented. Additionally, to justify an award of attorney fees under the common-benefit exception, the litigation must result in a benefit not only to the plaintiff, but also to the general public. See Boeing Co. v. Van Gemert, 444 U.S. at 478, 100 S.Ct. 745; Campbell v. General Motors Corp., 19 F.Supp.2d at 1269-70 (recognizing that the purpose underlying an award of attorney fees under the common-benefit exception is to spread the cost of the benefit over those benefited); see also Ex parte Horn, supra (spreading the cost of the benefit over the citizens of Birmingham because all citizens benefited from the consent judgment in favor of the plaintiff); Brown v. State, supra (spreading the cost of the benefit over state taxpayers because all taxpayers benefited from the judgment in favor of the plaintiff). In this case, Waldrop and certain other public schoolteachers benefited from the amendment to the Foundation Act. However, Waldrop and those schoolteachers are not the ones being asked to pay for that benefit. The trial court's award of attorney fees against the Board attempts to charge the costs associated with Waldrop's lawsuit to the State Board of Education and the local boards of education. Nothing suggests that the State Board and the local boards benefited from the amendment to the Foundation Act. Thus, the Board is not the proper group over which to spread the costs associated with Waldrop's litigation. Finally, even if we attributed some tangential benefit to the Board as a result of the amendment to the Foundation Act, the Board would be required to pay Waldrop's attorney fees with funds from its annual budget. That money is allocated to the Board for the purpose of educating children enrolled in Alabama's public schools. Thus, any award of attorney fees against the Board reduces the funds available for that purpose. We cannot conclude that Waldrop's litigation benefited all children enrolled in Alabama's public schools to the level required to justify an attorney-fee award under the common-benefit exception. The benefit, if any, inuring to the Board and the children enrolled in public schools as a result of Waldrop's lawsuit is more than offset by the reduction in funds that would be available for public education if the Board were required to pay the attorney fees. We conclude that an award of attorney fees under the common-benefit exception is inappropriate in this case. We do not hold that attorney fees may never be awarded against the State Board of Education or against the local boards under a common-benefit theory. We simply conclude that the benefit, if any, resulting from Waldrop's lawsuit did not justify an award of attorney fees against the Board in this case.