Ex parte Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton, LLP, and Ashford, [Ms. SC-2023-0908, May 24, 2024] __ So. 3d __ (Ala. 2024). The Court (Cook, J.; Parker, C.J., and Shaw, Wise, Bryan, Sellers, Mendheim, Stewart, and Mitchell, JJ., concur) issues a writ of mandamus to the Baldwin Circuit Court directing dismissal of the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. More than four months after all claims for medical malpractice against all defendants had been dismissed, the trial court granted Plaintiffs’ motion to substitute their prior counsel for fictitious defendants and assert claims for legal malpractice against them.
The Court unanimously concludes that because “the trial court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to enter that order [allowing the amended complaint and substitution], it is a nullity and must be set aside.” Ms. *16. While “a trial court has the authority to alter, amend, or vacate a judgment, either on its own or on a party’s Rule 59(e), Ala. R. Civ. P., motion, within 30 days after the entry of that judgment,” jurisdiction was lacking here because “neither the trial court nor the Penningtons took any such action within 30 days of the entry of the trial court’s January 4, 2023, order.” Ms. **15-16. The Court also reiterates that a trial “‘court cannot, by its subsequent action, divest a [judgment] of its character of finality. A final [judgment] is not rendered interlocutory by the retention of the case on the docket, nor by the subsequent rendition of another [judgment] therein.’” Ms. *14, quoting Faith Props., LLC v. First Com. Bank, 988 So. 2d 485, 491 (Ala. 2008) (some internal quotation marks omitted).