Court Opinion

ID: 9675622
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:59:15.368711+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:35.931873
License: Public Domain

ON REHEARING
Appellee filed an application for rehearing on the issue of the $1,200 valuation assigned appellant’s interest in the real property by the trial court. Finding no evidence in the record to support that amount, we reversed in part and remanded for further inquiry into the value of the realty. Appellee asks us to reconsider this aspect of our opinion.
A careful re-examination of the entire record confirms that it shows no evidence as to valuation before the trial court at any time up to the entry of the decree appealed from. However, appellee insists that the pleadings, motions and testimony which are in the record allow an inference that the trial court heard valuation testimony which was not taken down, transcribed, or placed in the record. This, according to appellee, insulates from reversal the trial court’s decree, Williams v. Clark, 263 Ala. 228, 82 So.2d 295.
The record does show that numerous pleadings and motions were filed by the parties over a period of several years prior to the appealed from decree. The record also suggests that hearings on these motions were held on January 26, 1971, and October 7, 1971. The nature of these hearings, with particular reference to whether or not any valuation evidence was taken, is not set forth in the record with any degree of definition. Rather, the very fact that evidence was even taken at the hearings is left to conjecture. In fact, the issues raised by the motions before the court at those hearings do not seem to require evidence of valuation.
This does not constitute an affirmative appearance from the record that there was before the trial court unrecorded evidence that might have influenced its decision on .valuation. Therefore, under Fretwell v. Fretwell, 282 Ala. 377, 211 So.2d 795, appeal after remand 283 Ala. 424, 218 So.2d 138, this case does not come under the principle on which appellee relies.
Opinion extended.
Application for rehearing overruled.
WRIGHT, P. J., and HOLMES, J., concur.