Elaine Steele, et al. v. Sylvester McCauley, et al.

The present petition involves the iconic winter coat worn by Rosa Parks at the time of her arrest on a Montgomery, Alabama bus on December 1, 1955. Mrs. Parks died in 2005. The Respondents, who are Mrs. Parks’ nieces and nephews, failed to deliver the coat to Petitioners in breach of an agreement executed by the parties in 2007. Petitioners, who are Mrs. Parks’ closest friend and the charity they established together in 1987, filed a breach of contract action against Respondents in 2013. Despite lacking jurisdiction over a controversy involving property Mrs. Parks had given to her family thirty years before she died, the probate court judge presiding over her estate arrogated authority over the action (that had originally been filed in the court of general jurisdiction). He then proceeded to issue, in continuation of a pattern established years earlier, a series of bizarre and grossly biased rulings against the Petitioners, including the novel and impossible ruling that his denial of Petitioners’ 2009 procedural motion to compel arbitration of the controversy constituted a final decision on the substantive merits that barred litigation of the action and required its dismissal. The question presented for review is as follows: WHETHER THE ARBITRARY, BIASED AND CORRUPT PROCEEDINGS CONDUCTED BY THE WAYNE COUNTRY PROBATE COURT IN A SIMPLE AND UNCONTESTED BREACH OF CONTRACT ACTION VIOLATED THE DUE PROCESS GUARANTEED BY THE FIFTH AND