Alcohol lawsuit against Hanceville, other Alabama towns dropped

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September 29, 2012

Alcohol lawsuit against Hanceville, other Alabama towns dropped

By Benjamin Bullard The Cullman Times The Cullman Times Sat Sep 29, 2012, 07:20 PM CDT

HANCEVILLE — A class action lawsuit filed against Hanceville and more than two dozen small Alabama towns has been dropped by the four Cullman County plaintiffs who filed it two weeks ago in Montgomery County circuit court.

The plaintiffs — Jeremy Eddleman, David Holmes, Jason Hunt and Gregory Shedd — filed a motion asking that the suit be dismissed, which Montgomery County circuit judge Truman Hobbs granted Monday.

Todd McLeroy, the Cullman-based attorney who had represented the plaintiffs in the suit, could not be reached by phone Saturday.

Filed earlier this month, the short-lived suit had named Hanceville, along with 26 other Alabama towns and the Alabama Beverage Control Board, as defendants, claiming the plaintiffs had been wrongly taxed after purchasing alcohol in each of the named municipalities.

All the towns named in the suit had recently approved alcohol sales by voter referendum under a 2009 tweak to state law that allows residents of smaller cities and towns to decide the issue for themselves.

At the time the suit was filed, McLeroy had stated its intent wasn’t to harm small towns; rather, he said, the suit was intended to pose a challenge to the contentious piece of alcohol legislation, which he said had been improperly passed through the 2009 session as an add-on to an unrelated bill.

Hanceville mayor Kenneth Nail was more angry than relieved Friday, saying the suit should never have been brought against towns where the plaintiffs don’t live, and whose voters decided the issue under legal provisions the state had made.

“All it was ever going to do is cost these little towns money and hurt their businesses. It was done by a group of people who don’t have a share in the welfare of any of these places; it was frivolous, and — to be honest, this thing may not be over,” said Nail.

“I’ve been talking to some of the other mayors, and we’re all just put out by it. We’re discussing a countersuit, because it’s ridiculous to just lie here and take it every time someone wants to put a frivolous lawsuit on a city. I think folks who do things like this need to realize — if you’re going to sue, you better have a doggone good reason.”

In attacking the state law that has made wet/dry referenda possible in small towns, the suit claimed the state legislature violated the Alabama Constitution when it passed a bill amending an older statute that had previously allowed only cities with populations of 7,000 or more the same privilege.

That bill, HB 175, amended the Alabama Municipal Option law of 1984. Controversial at the time of its 2009 passage, HB 175 was vetoed by then-governor Bob Riley, but that veto was overturned by the legislature.

* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.

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Alcohol lawsuit against Hanceville, other Alabama towns dropped

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