Court Opinion

ID: 9932319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-09 18:40:37.995376+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:27.746911
License: Public Domain

The reasoning of the majority opinion on rehearing regarding the jurisdictional question turning on "the amount involved" is even more incredible than that employed upon original deliverance! By a convoluted and contorted illogic, the amount involved suddenly becomes not what was actually claimed in thead damnum clause of the dismissed Count One of each of the complaints but rather what was claimed in the impermissible and disallowed amendments to those counts. This being the case, this court had no jurisdiction. This fact should have been noted at the time the record reached this court and the cases should have thereupon been transferred to the Court of Civil Appeals. See Williamson v. Birmingham Transit Corp.,344 So.2d 489 (Ala. 1977); cf. Great Central Insurance Company v. Edge,292 Ala. 613, 298 So.2d 607 (1974). Under this state of the law, anytime a litigant wishes to bypass the Court of Civil Appeals, all that need be done is to proffer some known illegal or impermissible claim or amendment that recites a sum in excess of ten thousand dollars and in spite of it being properly stricken or disallowed, behold, you now have direct access to this court. What more specious reasoning can there be?
I reiterate my views concerning the merits, previously expressed in the original dissent.
ALMON and BEATTY, JJ., concur.