Alabama Supreme Court Appellate Alert: Decisions from March 6, 2026

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The Alabama Supreme Court issued its weekly release list on Friday, March 6^th, which included the following orders and opinions of interest to the Alabama business community:

• Ex parte Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church et al. - The Alabama Supreme Court issued 15 related writs of mandamus in civil actions between a regional conference of the United Methodist Church and local churches. In the proceedings below, the local churches sought to quiet title to the real property where the churches are located. The conference filed declaratory-judgment counterclaims, which the trial courts dismissed on ecclesiastical-abstention grounds. Procedurally, in granting the conferences’ petitions for review, the Supreme Court held that mandamus was a proper vehicle to challenge the trial courts’ orders granting the local churches’ motions to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Substantively, the Supreme Court held that the circuit courts improperly dismissed the conference’s counterclaims, which could be resolved based on secular legal principles. Four Justices recused themselves from the case. As a result, the lead opinion was a two-Justice plurality opinion, while two judges of the Civil and Criminal Courts of Appeals were specially appointed and concurred in the result. Justice Bryan dissented on the procedural issue, and Justice Mendheim dissented on the substantive issue, each writing separately.
• Schumpert v. Wallace – This case involves elderly parents’ annulment of a conveyance of realty to their child. Schumpert left her home and law practice in Memphis and moved to Orange Beach to care for her ailing parents. In return, her parents conveyed to her by deed an interest in their Orange Beach condominium. When Schumpert returned to Tennessee almost two years later, her parents filed a lawsuit to annul the deed. The trial court determined that the deed should be annulled under § 8-9-12 of the Alabama Code. The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed, holding that § 8-9-12 provided grantors with a unilateral right to annul a conveyance given in exchange for a promise to support the grantor during his lifetime. The statute’s broad text, said the Court, reflects a legislative response to the problem of elderly property owners conveying property in reliance on promises of support, only to be neglected thereafter.
• Ex parte Affinity Hospital – A 9-0 Court issued a writ of mandamus requiring dismissal of a wrongful-death claim as untimely. The original complaint named a fictitious defendant, the entity that owned or operated the hospitals or clinics at issue in the case. The named defendant’s response had apprised the plaintiff that Affinity was the licensee of the hospital, but the plaintiff waited six months to file an amended complaint naming Affinity in the place of the fictitious party. Because that amendment occurred after the expiration of the wrongful-death statute’s two-year period for bringing an action, the Supreme Court held that the trial court was required to dismiss the claim against Affinity. The plaintiff’s amendment did not relate back to the date she filed her original complaint naming the fictitious party, the Court reasoned, because the plaintiff failed to exercise due diligence in amending her complaint after the named defendant informed it that Affinity was the licensee.
• Smith v. ARC Realty, LLC – Smith is another in a long line of Alabama Supreme Court cases addressing the circumstances under which an arbitrator, rather than a court, should decide which parties must arbitrate their claims. In a dispute among real estate developers, signatories to a related set of land-sale contracts containing arbitration provisions filed an AAA arbitration. The arbitration provisions included “delegation” clauses committing threshold questions of arbitrability to an arbitrator’s review. In response, parties to the arbitration that were nonsignatories to the land-sale contracts filed a lawsuit. The question before the Supreme Court was whether an arbitrator or a court should decide whether the claims involving the nonsignatories were governed by the arbitration provisions. The Supreme Court unanimously held, in line with its rulings in several prior cases, that this was a question for the arbitrator to decide under the delegation clauses.

If you have questions about this decision 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.