## Facts

- James H. Faulkner III and his wife, Paris, attended Dalraida Church of Christ in Montgomery, Alabama, where M. Floyd Bailey, Jr. served as pastor.
- Paris was hired as the church secretary, leading to frequent interaction with Bailey.
- The Faulkners were receiving marital counseling from a licensed counselor, but Bailey began advising them and the couple stopped seeing the licensed counselor.
- Bailey allegedly represented that he could devote more time to the couple and could “fix” the marriage.
- While counseling the couple, Bailey and Paris began a secret, consensual sexual relationship that continued for several months.
- Bailey advised James to decline a job opportunity that would have required a move, warning that the move could harm the marriage; James declined the offer.
- After James discovered the affair and confronted them, Bailey admitted it and resigned as pastor.
- James filed for divorce; the marriage ended in divorce.
- James sued Bailey for negligence and wantonness in providing marital/pastoral counseling, seeking damages for the failure of the marriage and severe mental anguish.
- A jury returned a verdict for James with compensatory and punitive damages; Bailey appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether a claim pleaded as negligent/wanton pastoral or marital counseling is barred when, in substance, it seeks damages for marital breakdown and emotional distress caused by the defendant’s consensual affair with the plaintiff’s spouse, given Alabama’s statutory abolition of heart-balm actions.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Alabama reversed the judgment entered on the jury verdict and remanded.
- The court held that the action, though styled as negligence and wantonness, was substantively an impermissible heart-balm claim based on interference with the marital relationship.
- Because the gravamen of the claimed injury was the loss of the marriage and associated emotional distress tied to adultery, the verdict could not stand.

## Legal Principles

- Alabama’s statutory abolition of heart-balm actions (including alienation of affections and criminal conversation) bars recovery not only under those labels, but also under alternative tort labels when the substance of the claim is the same marital-relations grievance.
- Courts determine the “real nature” of a claim by examining the complaint and the proof; a plaintiff may not avoid the statutory bar through relabeling.
- Claims for damages measured by marital breakdown, loss of spousal affection, or emotional distress arising from a third party’s consensual sexual relationship with a spouse fall within the prohibited category, even if pleaded as negligent or wanton counseling.
- Absent an independent injury separable from the marital interference theory, a negligence or wantonness theory cannot proceed when it depends on the affair and resulting dissolution of the marriage.

## Conclusion

The court set aside the jury verdict because the plaintiff’s negligence and wantonness theories were, in substance, an attempt to obtain civil damages for adultery-based interference with the marriage—claims Alabama law has abolished—so the case was reversed and remanded.


Bailey v. Faulkner, 940 So. 2d 247 (Ala. 2006)