An Alabama State court denied Alabama One's request to temporarily restrain the Alabama Credit Union Administration from enforcing its April 2 cease and desist order, according to legal sources and Alabama One members in the Tuscaloosa, Ala., courtroom May 14.
Tuscaloosa Circuit Court Justice John England ruled on the motion for the order.
One legal expert who asked to not be identified recounted how Alabama One's chief outside counsel, Victor Hayslip of the Birmingham Ala., law firm of Burr & Forman, complained that he couldn't understand why the court couldn't grant the cooperative the injunction it sought, asking what the ACUA feared in a TRO.
The legal source reported that ACUA attorney Robert Reynolds, of the Tuscaloosa firm Reynolds, Reynolds and Little, replied that the agency feared the cooperative would continue lying to the agency. Reynolds then recounted several years' of occasions when the agency has taken regulatory measures against Alabama One only to see senior management ignore them.
The three and a half hour session took no testimony from witnesses and consisted entirely of questions and answers from the bench to the agency and credit union counsels, legal observers recounted.
Another legal source whose firm previously dealt with the cooperative, said Alabama One simply failed to convince the judge that it would suffer irreparable harm from the cease and desist order if the agency was not restrained. The cooperative saw its argument further weakened after the ACUA entered a modified cease and desist order that pushed the deadlines for many of its compliance actions beyond early June, when the cooperative can appeal the order.
The coup de grace for the argument may have come when Reynolds pointed out that the entire ACUA board, made up of largely of credit union CEOs, had voted for the modified cease and desist order and had not found it difficult to understand, the observers said.
Alabama One members who attended the hearing but asked to remain anonymous reported that the majority of courtroom spectators appeared to be other Alabama One members interested in the outcome of the case. And, for the first time, the said a television news crew from a local broadcast affiliate was present and covered the hearing.
England set a May 18 court date to hear motions on Alabama One's request for an injunction against the cease and desist order, acording to a local media outlet.
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