Ex parte Baldwin County Sewer Service, LLC, [Ms. SC-2023-0723, Sep. 6, 2024] __ So. 3d __ (Ala. 2024). The Court (Bryan, J.; Shaw, Wise, Mendheim, Stewart, and Mitchell, JJ., concur; Sellers, J., concurs in the result; Cook J., concurs in the result, which Parker, C.J., joins) denies Baldwin County Sewer Service, LLC’s (“BCSS”) mandamus petition challenging the Baldwin Circuit Court’s order denying its motion for summary judgment challenging whether the plaintiffs are successors in interest to a private contract entered in 1991 limiting BCSS’s right to raise sewer rates in the Garden at Glen Lakes subdivision.
The Court denies the petition because “BCSS has failed to demonstrate that an appeal from a final judgment of the circuit court would not be an adequate remedy for review of the circuit court’s determination regarding whether the plaintiffs are real parties in interest …” Ms. *12. The Court explains “[t]he nature of the real-party-in-interest question requires a factual resolution by the trial court that is squarely within its judicial function. Therefore, that issue does not implicate the subject-matter jurisdiction of the trial court. Consequently, a trial court’s denial of a defendant’s summary-judgment motion challenging a plaintiff’s status as a real party in interest does not fall within the subject-matter-jurisdiction exception to the general prohibition against mandamus review of denials of summary-judgment motions.” Ms. *21.