Coan v. Championship Property, LLC, [Ms. SC-2023-0740, May 31, 2024] __ So. 3d __ (Ala. 2024). In a case orally argued before the Supreme Court on April 3, 2024, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3rejOK4icE), the Court (Sellers, J.; Mendheim, J., concurs in part and concurs in the result, which Wise, J., joins; Cook, J., concurs in part and concurs in the result, which Parker, C.J., and Stewart and Mitchell, JJ., join; Shaw and Bryan, JJ., concur in the result) affirms in part and reverses in part the Lauderdale Circuit Court’s judgment holding Crystal Kaye Coan (“Coan”) in contempt and imposing sanctions for failure to comply with an escrow order requiring monthly payments to the clerk pending resolution of an ejectment action filed by Championship Property, LLC (“Championship”).
The plurality opinion concludes the escrow order was proper because it was “designed as an equitable remedy to maintain the status quo and to protect the parties’ competing interests in the property, pending a final ruling on the issue of the right to possession.” Ms. *6. Coan argued her failure to pay was not willful but resulted from financial inability. Ms. *11. While “‘[t]he inability to comply with the trial court’s judgment is a valid defense in contempt proceedings,’ Stamm v. Stamm, 922 So. 2d 920, 924 (Ala. Civ. App. 2004), the trial court did not abuse its discretion holding Coan in contempt “because there is evidence in the record to support the trial court’s determination that Coan willfully failed or refused to comply with the escrow order.” Ms. *16. However, the sanction awarding Championship possession of the property was reversed as “counterintuitive to the current posture of the litigation.” Ms. *18.
Justice Cook’s special concurrence, joined by Chief Justice Parker and Justices Stewart and Mitchell, argues that “a trial court has the power in the appropriate case to issue an order requiring some payment from a person possessing real property, before the entry of a final judgment in an ejectment action,” but “differ(s) with the main opinion regarding the basis for such an order…” Ms. *27. Justice Cook asserts “that all the requirements of Rule 65 must be met before the issuance of such an order.” Ibid.