Simmons Group, Ltd. v. Caine O'Rear, Jr. Family Trust

' I concur in the result insofar as the majority reverses the circuit court’s judgment in favor of the O’Rear defendants.

I dissent in part because I believe that the main opinion unnecessarily limits a trial court’s discretion in considering relevant evidence in a property dispute when it is presented with the situation, as in this case, where competing chains of title cannot be traced to a common grantor or to a patent deed from the United States as a result of the destruction of the relevant land records. I agree that the rule from Whitehead v. Hester, 512 So.2d 1297 (Ala. 1987), applies in…