Caldwell v. Loveless

• Decision Date: 03 February 1920
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 687
• Citation: 17 Ala.App. 381,85 So. 307
• Parties: CALDWELL v. LOVELESS.
• Court: Alabama Court of Appeals

85 So. 307

17 Ala.App. 381

CALDWELL v. LOVELESS.

6 Div. 687

Court of Appeals of Alabama

February 3, 1920

Rehearing Denied April 6, 1920

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; J.C.B. Gwin, Judge.

T.W Loveless, A.F. Parsons, and H.C. Caldwell entered into an agreement to arbitrate certain land lines and certain land values. There was an award, and, it not having been carried out, Loveless filed a motion to enforce said award. Caldwell entered motion to strike the motion to enforce the award which was denied, and Caldwell appeals, and submits the case on the merits and on petition for mandamus to require the trial judge to set aside his judgment overruling motions to dismiss. Mandamus denied, and appeal dismissed.

Appeal from judgment overruling motion to strike an award of arbitrators will be dismissed, where subsequent to submission of appeal the matters involved have been amicably adjusted and fully settled between the parties; the question in such case having become moot.

A writ of error will be dismissed, if, while it is pending, an event occurs which makes the determination of it unnecessary.

Pinkney Scott, of Bessemer, for appellant.

McEniry & McEniry, of Bessemer, for appellee.

BRICKEN P.J.

This appeal was from a judgment of the circuit court overruling a motion to strike an award of arbitrators in a matter pending between appellant and appellee.

Since the submission of this appeal in this court it has, without dispute, been affirmatively made known to the court that the matters involved in the original proceedings have been amicably adjusted and fully settled between the parties, and that the present status is such that neither the appellant defendant in the court below, nor the appellee, plaintiff in court below, now have any interest in the matters involved that the interests and claims of both parties to this action have been purchased by another, not a party here or in the court below; that all the costs of the proceedings here and in the court below have been settled, and that there now remain no questions to be settled between these parties, and hence a decision of the case would be of no value; that said cause has become moot before this court.

The necessary requisite to appellate jurisdiction is the existence of an actual controversy; therefore it is not within the province of this court to decide abstract or hypothetical questions, which are disconnected from the gravity of actual relief, or from the determination of which no practical result can follow. Nor is it the province of this court to consider a fictitious case, submitted merely for the purpose of testing the right to do a particular thing.

The...