Ford v. State

Decided September 25, 1987

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1987-09-25

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“[a] denial of certiorari should never be considered as an expression by the reviewing court on the merits of the controversy.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 835 So. 2d 137 - Patterson v. Gladwin Corp.

Relies on Hamilton-Brown Shoe Company v. Wolf Brothers & Company · 47 Ala. App. 182 - Felton v. State · O. L. Cooper v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1987-09-25

How this case has been cited

Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently December 2015 · most notably Coral v. State (1992), 835 So. 2d 137 - Patterson v. Gladwin Corp. (2002)

1 federal appellate · 27 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

MADDOX, Justice.

¶1Writ denied. By denying the writ, we point out that writs of certiorari are frequently denied without any consideration of the merits. Haden v. Olan Mills, Inc., 273 Ala. 129, 135 So.2d 388 (1961). A denial of certiorari should never be considered as an expression by the reviewing court on the merits of the controversy. See Hamilton Brown Shoe Co. v. Wolf Brothers, 240 U.S. 251, 36 S.Ct. 269, 60 L.Ed. 629 (1916). Our denial of the writ should not be understood as approving or disapproving the language used, or the statements of law contained, in the opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeals. See Cooper v. State, 287 Ala. 728, 252 So.2d 108 (1971).

¶2WRIT DENIED.

TORBERT, C.J., and JONES, BEATTY, ADAMS, HOUSTON and STEAGALL, JJ., concur.ALMON and SHORES, JJ., not sitting.