Elliott Builders, Inc. v. Timbercreek Property Owners Ass'n

128 So. 3d 755, 2013 WL 2130949, 2013 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 120
CourtCourt of Civil Appeals of Alabama
DecidedMay 17, 2013
Docket2110758 and 2110759
StatusPublished

This text of 128 So. 3d 755 (Elliott Builders, Inc. v. Timbercreek Property Owners Ass'n) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Elliott Builders, Inc. v. Timbercreek Property Owners Ass'n, 128 So. 3d 755, 2013 WL 2130949, 2013 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 120 (Ala. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

PITTMAN, Judge.

These appeals are taken in consolidated cases involving the operation of the Tim-bercreek Property Owners Association (“TPOA”), the board of directors of TPOA, and the Timbercreek Architectural Review Board (“TARB”). We summarized much of the pertinent procedural history involving these litigants in an opinion rendered in a previous appeal, Elliott Builders, Inc. v. Timbercreek Property Oumers Ass’n, 73 So.3d 1274 (Ala.Civ.App.2011), which was actually the second of two previous appeals arising from the underlying trial-court litigation:

“In June 2007, Elliott Builders, Inc., brought an action against TPOA and TARB in the trial court, which was assigned case no. CV-07-900390 (‘the 2007 action’), seeking declaratory relief and damages arising out of those defendants’ alleged wrongful conduct with respect to their failure to approve the construction of a retaining wall on a lot located in the [Timbercreek] subdivision; the defendants filed an answer denying liability and asserted a counterclaim seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against Elliott Builders and Chris Elliott, an individual owner of a lot in the subdivision who was named as an additional defendant in the counterclaim. In July 2008, Elliott Builders filed a motion for a summary judgment in the 2007 action; in September 2008, an amended complaint was filed in which Chris Elliott asserted claims against the defendants in the 2007 action. TPOA and TARB filed a motion for a summary judgment as to all claims in the 2007 action. Both of those summary-judgment motions were denied in November 2008. In April 2009, Elliott Builders and Chris Elliott filed, without leave of court, a second amended complaint in the 2007 action adding new tort claims, adding a claim under the Alabama Litigation Accountability Act, Ala.Code 1975, § 12-19-270 et seq., and restating other claims previously presented; TPOA and TARB filed an amended answer and counterclaim challenging the procedural propriety of the second amended complaint, asserting defenses to the plaintiffs’ claims, and restating claims against the plaintiffs.
“In July 2009, TPOA, its board of directors, and TARB filed a ‘motion to consolidate’ in which they averred that, in April 2009, four other plaintiffs (Robert M. Hoover, John C. Brutkiewicz, Lucille M. Dean, and Paul C. Davis) had brought a separate civil action seeking injunctive relief against them in the trial court, an action that had been assigned case no. CV-09-900412 (‘the 2009 action’); the movants requested that the 2007 action and 2009 action be consolidated because of the purported existence of common legal and factual questions. The trial court apparently [758]*758granted the relief requested because the record contains a motion filed by the plaintiffs in the two actions seeking separate trials in which the plaintiffs acknowledge that a consolidation order had been entered in. the 2009 action. It also appears that, in an amended complaint filed in the 2009 action in July 2009, Chris Elliott, Elliott Builders, and Sterling Hershiser joined as plaintiffs in the 2009 action, although the record does not contain that amended pleading. In September 2009, TPOA, its board of directors, and TARB filed an answer and asserted counterclaims in the 2009 action seeking injunctive relief, declaratory relief, and damages for an alleged breach of contract; that pleading stated claims against, among other parties, Hoover (who apparently was dropped as a plaintiff in the 2009 action) and his wife (who had never been a plaintiff in either action).
“In July 2009, a new round of dispos-itive motions began. First, in that month, the plaintiffs in the 2009 action filed a summary-judgment motion (which does not appear in the record). Elliott Builders and Chris Elliott moved in August 2009 for the entry of a partial summary judgment in their favor as to various claims and counterclaims in the 2007 action. TPOA, its board of directors, and TARB filed responses to those motions and filed a motion for a summary judgment as to the claims asserted in ■ the plaintiffs’ ‘amended complaint’ (apparently, the amended complaint filed in the 2009 action); the motion did not seek a summary judgment as to any counterclaim. The plaintiffs in both cases moved to strike various evidentiary exhibits that were filed in support of the summary-judgment motion filed by TPOA, its board of directors, and TARB, as well as those defendants’ filings in opposition to the August 2009 partial-summary-judgment motion filed by Chris Elliott and Elliott Builders. Finally, it appears that four of the plaintiffs in the 2009 action (Hoover, Brutkiewicz, Dean, and Davis) were permitted in September 2009 to voluntarily dismiss, without prejudice, their claims in the 2009 action; although the order granting those parties’ request does not appear in the record, a motion filed by TPOA, its board of directors, and TARB sought amendment of that dismissal order to direct that the dismissal be with prejudice.1
“On November 17, 2009, the trial court, in the 2007 action, simultaneously rendered and entered, by transmitting electronic documents to the State Judicial Information System (‘SJIS’), four orders. Two of the orders denied motions to strike that had been filed by the plaintiffs; one order denied the partial-summary-judgment motion filed by Elliott Builders (and Chris Elliott); and a fourth order granted the summary-judgment motion filed by TPOA, its board, and TARB. Because the orders did not adjudicate all claims as to all parties in the 2007 action, the orders were not final and appealable. See Rule 54(b), Ala. R. Civ. P.
“On December 18, 2009, Chris Elliott and Elliott Builders moved the trial court for the express direction of entry of a final judgment as to the denial of their August 2009 partial-summary-judgment motion in the 2007 action. On December 23, 2009, a notice of appeal was filed on behalf of the ‘Plaintiffs,’ identified in the style solely as ‘Robert M. Hoover, et al.’ from the ‘Summary Judgment in favor of Defendants’ (which, as we have noted, was entered in response to a motion directed to the amended complaint in the 2009 [759]*759action, not the 2007 action). That appeal, pursuant to § 12-2-7(6), Ala.Code 1975, was transferred to this court, where it was assigned case no. 2090361. This court called for supplemental briefs from the parties regarding whether a final, appealable judgment had been entered. Replies to that order indicated that the trial court, on January 29, 2010, had directed the entry of a final judgment in the 2007 action as to the denial of the August 2009 partial-summary-judgment motion filed by Chris Elliott and Elliott Builders. The ‘Appellants/Plaintiffs’ (listed as being Brut-kiewicz, Dean, Davis, Chris Elliott, and Elliott Builders) filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss the appeal in case no. 2090361, and this court entered an order granting that motion on March 11, 2010.
“Rule 41, Ala. R.App. P., provides that, in the absence of an appellate court’s order to the contrary, that court’s certificate of judgment finally terminating appellate proceedings in a case will not issue contemporaneously with the entry of a judgment in the case, but will be withheld for either 18 days or until final disposition of a rehearing application and/or final action upon a cer-tiorari petition, whichever is later. It is well settled that a judgment of an intermediate appellate court in this state ‘ “is not final until that court issues its certificate of judgment.” ’ Ex parte Tiong-son,

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Bluebook (online)
128 So. 3d 755, 2013 WL 2130949, 2013 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 120, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/elliott-builders-inc-v-timbercreek-property-owners-assn-alacivapp-2013.