Background
GRO Marketing provided apartment-listing and other marketing services for Texas rental properties owned by COR3 Capital. Another company originally managed the properties and signed the marketing agreement, but COR3 later took over management. After invoices went unpaid, GRO sued COR3 for breach of contract and unjust enrichment, alleging that COR3 had assumed responsibility for the agreement. Emails from COR3’s property manager acknowledged outstanding balances and discussed payment. COR3 did not answer, and the Tuscaloosa Circuit Court entered a default judgment that included attorney fees calculated from GRO’s 20% contingency agreement.
COR3 appeared months later and sought to set aside the judgment. It invoked Alabama’s Kirtland framework, disputed service, and listed multiple defenses, including that it never contracted with GRO or received its services. The motion was denied by operation of law. On appeal, COR3 challenged both the refusal to set aside the default and the fee award. Its separate Rule 60(b)(4) service challenge remained pending below because such a motion is not denied automatically under Rule 59.1.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court affirmed the default judgment. A defendant seeking Kirtland relief must first present a plausible, complete, and factually supported meritorious defense. COR3 supplied conclusions rather than evidence, and its manager’s affidavit largely repeated those conclusions. More importantly, the defenses were either irrelevant or contradicted by the manager’s own emails reflecting COR3’s intent to pay. Without clearing that threshold, COR3 could not show reversible error from the lack of an express three-factor Kirtland analysis.
The attorney-fee ruling went the other way. Alabama’s Peebles line of cases requires consideration of 12 reasonableness factors. A contingent percentage may be relevant, but it cannot substitute for evidence of time expended or a reasoned assessment of the remaining factors. Because GRO presented no accounting of counsel’s time and the trial court relied on the 20% agreement alone, the Court reversed that portion and directed the trial court to take useful evidence and enter an order explaining its evaluation of all 12 factors.
Key Takeaways
- A Kirtland motion needs specific facts supporting a plausible and complete meritorious defense.
- Contradictory emails can defeat conclusory defenses offered to reopen a default.
- A contingency percentage alone cannot support an Alabama attorney-fee award without Peebles evidence and findings.
Why It Matters
For Alabama litigators, the decision reinforces that a motion to open a default must do more than recite defenses. Counsel should attach admissible facts addressing every element of at least one complete defense and reconcile adverse documents already in the record. The unresolved service issue also illustrates the importance of identifying the correct procedural rule: a voidness challenge follows Rule 60(b)(4), not the automatic-denial clock applicable to ordinary postjudgment motions.
Fee applicants should build a Peebles record even when the client agreed to a percentage fee. Time records, staffing, skill, customary local rates, responsibility assumed, expenses, results, and other relevant factors should be presented in a form that permits findings. The ruling preserves the underlying liability judgment while requiring a transparent fee calculation tied to evidence.
The opinion should be read in its procedural posture. Mandamus protects a clear legal right when ordinary appeal is inadequate; summary judgment depends on the admissible record; and an appellate remand may preserve issues not finally decided. Alabama counsel should match the holding to that posture, preserve objections and supporting evidence at the first available stage, and avoid extending the result beyond the question the Court actually resolved. Transactional and institutional lawyers should convert the ruling into written procedures, forms, and checklists rather than waiting for the same issue to recur in litigation.