Devosky Hood v. Barbara L. Smith (Commercial Lease Eviction Judgment Voided for Lack of Jurisdiction)

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The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals on November 6, 2026 voided a circuit court judgment in a Montgomery commercial-property dispute, ruling that the case had no business being in circuit court in the first place. The decision in Devosky Hood v. Barbara L. Smith erased more than a year of litigation over a disputed commercial lot and sent the matter back to where it started, underscoring how jurisdictionally rigid Alabama's summary unlawful-detainer remedy really is.

Barbara L. Smith commenced an unlawful-detainer action against Devosky Hood in the Montgomery District Court in December 2025, alleging the two had entered into a commercial lease in July 2022 and that Hood owed roughly $53,500 in unpaid rent. Hood answered that he was not Smith's tenant at all, producing what he described as a purchase agreement for the same property, plus a 2024 addendum under which he would receive a deed once he finished paying Smith $53,000 in installments. Mid-trial, the district court concluded the dispute had strayed into territory beyond its authority and transferred the case to the Montgomery Circuit Court, where Hood counterclaimed that the matter was a contract dispute over the alleged sale, not a landlord-tenant case.

The circuit court held its own trial in April 2026 and entered judgment in May 2026 finding Smith held legal title and Hood had defaulted under the lease, while expressly declining to decide whether the alleged purchase agreement was valid. Hood appealed, and the Court of Civil Appeals raised a jurisdictional problem neither party had argued: Alabama law gives district courts exclusive original jurisdiction over unlawful-detainer actions, and a circuit court can only acquire jurisdiction over one after the district court has actually adjudicated it and a party has appealed that adjudication, not through a mid-case transfer ordered by the district court itself.

Because the district court never ruled on Smith's unlawful-detainer claim before transferring it, the panel held the circuit court never acquired jurisdiction, making its May 2026 judgment void from the start. The court dismissed Hood's appeal but ordered the circuit court to vacate its void judgment and transfer the action back to the district court where it began, also noting that Smith's $53,000 claim exceeds the district court's $20,000 jurisdictional damages cap, meaning she will have to waive the excess or file a separate circuit court action to recover the balance.

For commercial landlords relying on Alabama's unlawful-detainer statute, the case is a reminder to treat the remedy as a narrow, summary one that a trial court cannot broaden by moving a complicated case somewhere more comfortable once the facts get tangled with a competing sale theory, and that any landlord whose claim could plausibly exceed the district court's statutory damages ceiling should weigh filing in circuit court directly or be prepared to cap the claim, rather than risk a judgment that later proves to have been entered without jurisdiction at all.

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