Alabama Supreme Court Appellate Alert: Decisions from April 24, 2026

PDF

The Alabama Supreme Court issued its weekly release list on Friday, April 24, which included the following orders and opinions of interest to the business community:

• Ibach v. Stewart: This opinion followed the chorus of decisions across the country that have imposed heavy sanctions on attorneys who have filed briefs with citations hallucinated by generative artificial intelligence. As a result of briefing that was replete with AI-generated fabricated citations, the Court ordered the appellant’s attorney to pay $17,200 of his opponent’s fees and double the costs of the appeal, prohibited him from making further filings in the Court unless they are co-signed by another attorney in good standing with the Bar, and referred him to the Bar for disciplinary proceedings. The Court also denied his clients’ motion to file a supplemental brief (for which they proposed to represented by a replacement attorney) and dismissed their appeal.
• Ex parte 3M Company, Inc.: This 8–0 opinion by Justice Shaw held that a significant environmental case must proceed in federal court alone, pending the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in a related appeal. The Town of Pine Hill filed this case in state court, alleging that upstream paper mills polluted the Alabama River with PFAS (so-called “forever chemicals”). Besides suing Alabama-based defendants, the Town asserted state-law claims against 3M and other alleged PFAS suppliers. 3M removed the case to federal court under the federal-officer removal statute, contending that at least some purported contamination related to substances that it developed for the military and that were used at Maxwell Air Force Base. After the federal district court remanded the case to state court, 3M appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, and the district court stayed its remand order pending that appeal. Even so, the state trial court held that it had regained jurisdiction and that litigation would proceed in the state forum. On 3M’s petition for a writ of prohibition, the Alabama Supreme Court held that because the remand order was properly appealed and expressly stayed, the federal judiciary still has jurisdiction. As a result, state-court proceedings must stop until the Eleventh Circuit decides 3M’s appeal. And in light of a recent United States Supreme Court decision that broadly interprets the scope of federal-officer removal, 3M’s case may stay in federal court for good. This illustrates the potential benefits of quickly assessing any federal connections to a state-court lawsuit.
• Moore v. State ex rel. Sims: This is an election case with salutary lessons for all Alabama practitioners. The dispute arose after the reelection of three members of the Lipscomb City Council. After the election, Lipscomb mayor Robin Sims commenced an action for writ of quo warranto and injunctive relief, contending that the council members could not maintain their seats because they did not reside in the districts they represented. Agreeing with Sims, the trial court entered a judgment declaring the council members’ seats vacant and ordering that they be filled. A unanimous Supreme Court reversed the judgment. In a written opinion by Justice Mendheim, the Court reasoned that the trial court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over the action because, though Sims purchased a bond for the injunction he sought, he failed to likewise provide security for commencement of the quo warranto action. Unlike security for an injunction, the Court explained, security for commencement of a quo warranto action is a condition precedent to the trial court’s jurisdiction over the action. Because Sims provided security only for the injunction and not for the quo warranto action, the Court deemed the trial court’s judgment void.

If you have questions about these decisions or want to discuss any other matters relating to Alabama appellate law, please do not hesitate to reach out to any member of Maynard Nexsen’s Appellate Group.