Hilgers v. Jefferson County’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 1 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Because the district court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over [the] complaint, its judgment is void. Riley v. Pate, 3 So.3d 835, 838 (Ala.2008). ‘A void judgment will not support an appeal, and “an appellate court must dismiss an attempted appeal from such a void judgment.”’ Colburn v. Colburn, 14 So.3d 176, 179 (Ala.Civ.App.2009) (quoting Vann v. Cook, 989 So.2d 556, 559 (Ala.Civ.App.2008)). Consequently, the circuit court never acquired jurisdiction over the ... appeal, and that court could take no action other than to dismiss the ... appeal. See Ex parte Smith, 438 So.2d 766, 768 (Ala.1983) (opining that ‘on appeal [for a trial de novo], the circuit court lack[s] subject matter jurisdiction to consider more than a final judgment over which the district court had subject matter jurisdiction’; citing State v. Pollock, 251 Ala. 603 , 38 So.2d 870 (1948), and Craig v. Root, 247 Ala. 479 , 25 So.2d 147 (1946)). Therefore, the circuit court’s judgment is also void. Because the circuit court’s judgment is void, this court lacks jurisdiction over the ... appeal. Colburn, 14 So.3d at 179 . Thus, we dismiss the ... appeal, and we instruct the circuit court and the district court to vacate their respective judgments in this case.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. A.S. v. C.M.