¶2The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit released its opinion in Cunningham v. Fleetwood Homes of Georgia, Inc., 253 F.3d 611 (11th Cir. 2001), on June 6, 2001, after this Court *736 released its opinion on original submission in Cavalier Manufacturing, Inc. v. Jackson, [Ms. 1000391, April 13, 2001] So.2d (Ala. 2001). Therefore, this Court did not have the benefit of the Eleventh Circuit's opinion in Cunningham when Cavalier was decided. When it comes to predispute arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 2 (which I personally do not believe Congress intended to apply in State Courts, see my special writing in Ex parte Dan Tucker Auto Sales, Inc.,718 So.2d 33, 38 (Ala. 1998) (Houston, J., concurring specially)), I follow not only the direction of the United States Supreme Court, which I am required to do under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States, but also the direction of the United States District Courts and Courts of Appeals, although the Supremacy Clause does not require that I do so. See my special writing in Southern Energy Homes, Inc. v. Lee, 732 So.2d 994, 1003-04 (Ala. 1999) (Houston, J., concurring specially):
¶3 "The United States Supreme Court has not specifically addressed the issues presented in this present case. However, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama has. See Rhode v. E T Investments, Inc., 6 F. Supp.2d 1322 (M.D.Ala. 1998); Wilson v. Waverlee Homes, Inc., 954 F. Supp. 1530 (M.D.Ala. 1997), affirmed, 127 F.3d 40 (11th Cir. 1997) (table); Boyd v. Homes of Legend, Inc., 981 F. Supp. 1423 (M.D.Ala. 1997). It is also significant to me that the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment in Wilson, albeit without an opinion. Although I am not bound to follow the decisions of the federal courts that decided those cases, I nonetheless find the reasoning of the district court to be sound, at least on its face. Because of the strong public policy in this state against the specific enforcement of pre-dispute arbitration agreements, I will not go behind the reasonable decisions of these federal courts interpreting a federal statute as barring the specific enforcement of such agreements."
¶4Therefore, I concur in overruling Jackson to the extent that it is inconsistent with Cunningham; in doing so, I compare myself with the "barrister" in the quote from Christopher Sinclair Stevenson's When in France, p. 166 (1989): "There is nothing like a new precedent to cause a barrister to leap with joy like a springtime lamb."
¶6I concur fully in the main opinion, and I write specially only to express my view that much of the information contained in the affidavit excerpts quoted in Part III of the opinion would not be relevant to the analysis of whether this particular transaction had the requisite "substantial" effect on interstate commerce. For example, the statement in the affidavit provided by Fantasy's sales manager that it "purchases manufactured homes for resale from at least one foreign corporation that ships their products into Alabama from out-of-state locations" could have no relevance to the Thicklin transaction, because the mobile home Thicklin purchased never left Alabama at any point in time from its manufacture to its delivery to Thicklin. Likewise, the statement in that affidavit that Fantasy "frequently orders home decorations from a Georgia company to be shipped and delivered to [Fantasy's] location in Alabama" does not establish that any such home decorations were used in Thicklin's mobile home.
¶7Our observation in Sisters of the Visitation v. Cochran Plastering Co., 775 So.2d 759, 767 (Ala. 2000), remains well taken: *737
"[W]e should not hold that the proximity of this particular contract to contracts substantially affecting interstate commerce is determinative, lest we err by expanding the Commerce Clause to the point of `effectually obliterat[ing] the distinction between what is national and what is local.' [NLRB v.] Jones Laughlin Steel, 301 U.S. [1] at 37, 57 S.Ct. 615 [(1937)]."
¶9I would grant Sharon Thicklin's application for rehearing because, for the reasons I articulated in my dissent in Selma Medical Center, Inc. v. Fontenot, 824 So.2d 668, 676 (Ala. 2001), I do not believe her claims in this case are subject to arbitration. I therefore dissent from the majority's decision to overrule Thicklin's application. *739
¶10For the same reasons that I dissent from the majority's denial of Thicklin's application for rehearing, I concur in the result as to its decision to overrule the defendants' applications for rehearing. Specifically, I concur with the holdings in the majority opinion (1) that arbitration should not be compelled as to Thicklin's express-warranty claim and her Magnuson-Moss Act claims, and (2) that the provision in the arbitration agreement prohibiting an award of punitive damages is void.