Ex parte Tanner Medical Center, Inc., [Ms. SC-2025-0019, Sept. 12, 2025] __ So. 3d __ (Ala. 2025). In a plurality opinion, the Court (Stewart, C.J., and Bryan, J., concurs; Cook, J., concurs specially, which McCool, J., joins; Mendheim and Lewis, JJ., concur in the result; Shaw and Sellers, JJ., dissent, with opinions; Wise, J., dissents) denies Tanner Medical Center, Inc.’s (“Tanner”), petition for a writ of mandamus directing the Randolph Circuit Court to dismiss a medical-malpractice action filed by Richard Terry Cole based on lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue.
Tanner, a Georgia corporation, “operates four hospitals in west Georgia ... and an affiliated corporation, Tanner Medical Center Alabama, Inc., operates a 15-bed community hospital in Wedowee, Alabama, and two to three other medical clinics in east Alabama. Ms. *2. The main opinion, authored by Chief Justice Stewart, rejects Tanner’s challenge to personal jurisdiction
Tanner argues that the alleged acts of medical negligence occurred in Georgia and that those specific acts have no relationship to its activities in Alabama. That argument, however, sounds very much like the causation argument rejected by the United States Supreme Court in Ford. [Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Jud. Dist. CA., 592 U.S. 351 (2021)]. As the Court in Ford explained, the doctrine of specific jurisdiction is not so narrow as to require the directly causative conduct – in Ford, the design, manufacture, and sale of vehicles – to have occurred within the forum state. Rather, “the rule demands that the suit ‘arise out of or relate to the defendant’s contacts in the forum.’” Ford, 592 U.S. at 362 (quoting Bristol-Myers, 582 U.S. at 262); see also Sawyer, 412 So. 3d at 616 (holding that jurisdiction may exist “even if there is no direct causal link between the defendant’s conduct in the forum state and the plaintiff’s claims” so long as the claims are sufficiently related). In Ford, Ford’s marketing, selling, and servicing a specific model vehicle in the forum state was sufficient to establish specific jurisdiction when a forum resident was injured in an in-state crash involving the same type of vehicle. Here, the connection is more direct. Tanner’s marketing materials make clear that Tanner has positioned itself as a regional health-care provider serving east Alabama and west Georgia and that patients at Tanner’s east Alabama medical facilities have “access to Tanner’s full range of additional specialized services,” which are, by and large, located in Georgia. In line with that model, Cole, an Alabama resident, sought medical treatment at a Tanner-operated facility in Alabama and was then transferred by ambulance to a Tanner-operated facility in Georgia for more specialized care – a heart-catheterization procedure. For Cole, the heart-catheterization procedure was in continuity with the medical care he had sought at Tanner’s Alabama facility. Accordingly, even though the particular acts of negligence forming the basis of Cole’s claims occurred in Georgia, “the ‘relationship among the defendant, the forum[], and the litigation’ ... is close enough to support specific jurisdiction.” Ford, 592 U.S. at 371 (quoting Walden, 571 U.S. at 284).
Ms. **20-1.
The Court declines to reach the merits of Tanner’s alternative venue challenge, because its petition failed to address “whether § 6-5-546 [Ala. Code 1975] applies to an action like Cole’s, which is brought under another state’s substantive law for conduct occurring outside Alabama; nor has it cited any authority indicating that § 6-5-546 requires the outright dismissal of such an action.” Ms. *25.