Court Opinion

ID: 9666665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:24:25.019067+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:31.807335
License: Public Domain

JONES, Justice
(dissenting) :
I disagree with the result and the rationale of the majority. The question presented by this Petition for Mandamus is controlled by the Bessemer Court Act of 1919 (Local Acts of 1919, p. 62), §§ 2 and 9J4, which provides in pertinent part that all equity cases arising in the Bessemer CutOff may be brought either in Bessemer or Birmingham, and that no case at law or in equity is to be brought in Bessemer unless the case arose in the Bessemer Cut-Off. Ex parte Central of Georgia Ry. Co., 243 Ala. 508, 10 So.2d 746 (1942). All of the territory sought to be annexed through the annexation election is situated in the Bessemer Cut-Off, and all of the people affected thereby live in the Bessemer CutOff. To hold — as the majority does — that, since the election was scheduled by the Probate Court to be held in Birmingham, the cause of action arose in Birmingham and not in the Bessemer Cut-Off is an adjudication of one of the principal issues raised in the complaint filed by Mead Corporation challenging the legality of the election.
The opinion states as a fact that “the subject matter is an election having its situs in Birmingham. The Probate ' Judge ordered the election held in Birmingham, the ballots were canvassed in Birmingham, and the results were made known there.”
It seems to me that the entire factual basis for concluding that the cause of action (Mead’s complaint contesting the election) did not arise in the Bessemer Cut-Off has been adjudicated adversely to Mead for the first time in this cause on appeal. The only issue properly before this Court is whether Mead’s election contest suit is an action which accrued in the Bessemer Cut-Off and thus was properly filed there.
For this Court to adjudicate the merits of Mead’s claim of contest can only have the effect of cutting the pattern to fit the cloth. By prejudging the merits of Mead’s main action, the Court has found a factual basis for concluding that the cause of action accrued outside the territorial limits of the Bessemer Cut-Off. The fact that the election has already been held in Birmingham, in support of the conclusion that the cause of action accrued in Birmingham, constitutes some sort of reverse rationale to which I am judicially unaccustomed.
I have made no prejudgment as to the merits of Mead’s contentions for contesting the election; but I have no difficulty in concluding that the legislative acts creating the Bessemer Cut-Off permit a suit to be filed and maintained in Bessemer which has as its gravamen the contest of an annexation election affecting solely the territory and people within the geographical confines of the Bessemer Cut-Off.