Effort aims to change 'Fail Room' name at Bryant-Denny Stadium

A former general counsel for the Alabama Department of Insurance and assistant attorney general is trying to get the name of a structure on the University of Alabama’s campus renamed.

The locker room for visiting football teams, the “Fail Room,” was named in 2008 for James M. Fail, who faced charges decades ago related to an alleged insurance fraud scheme that left over 100,000 Alabamians without burial insurance coverage. The charges were dropped, though he was barred from selling insurance in the state.

“It makes no sense to me to honor someone who has that track record in the insurance business,” Phillip Stano, who worked on Fail’s case, said in a recent phone interview. “If that’s the best that the university can do, it might be best to not name any buildings or structures.”

Fail died in 2010. An attempt to contact one of Fail’s family members was not successful.

The University of Alabama did not respond to interview requests or written questions. In a response to Stano dated Dec. 7, Mark Foley, the secretary of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees, said that it is unclear what football coach Mal Moore knew about the case at the time of the naming.

“I have no idea what Mal Moore knew in 2008. Neither does Sid (Trant, general counsel and senior vice chancellor of UA). Mal has been dead for ten years,” Foley wrote. “What I told you was that the matters you cited were not secret. They were disclosed in public records and, as you cited in your materials, discussed extensively in news media.”

Former trustee Joe Espy, a Montgomery attorney who had represented Fail, forwarded questions to the school.

Stano said he had not heard about the renaming until 2019.

“The University’s disrespect will morph into callousness over time if the Fail naming issue is not addressed,” he wrote in an email. “I urge the Board to revoke the Fail naming convention immediately.  Besides, Bama can win without the need to have a ‘gimmick’ name on Bryant-Denny Stadium’s visitors locker room.”

In a Sept. 6 letter sent to the trustees, Stano said Fail had misrepresented information before transferring assets from one insurer to another. After the transfer, there was an inadequate cash flow and about 140,000 people were left without burial insurance, according to Stano and a 1976 article in the Montgomery Advertiser.

Stano recounted the tale of a daughter who was left with the body of her mother after a funeral home would not allow her to purchase a casket or burial, saying her mother was on her couch for several days. According to Stano, he and the other ADOI section heads gathered all of the money they had in their pockets, but it was insufficient for a burial.

Fail in 1976 agreed to stop selling insurance in the state in exchange for criminal charges of diverting $12 million being dropped against him. The Alabama Journal reported in 1983 that Fail, who later said he was not at fault for the failure of the company, paid a $1 million settlement in a civil case, while one of his companies paid a $5,000 fine.

A 1993 New York Times article said the agreement dropped charges against him personally but allowed for the criminal conviction of his company.

That same New York Times article said that federal regulators were suing Fail over allegations that he committed fraud to better his chances of buying insolvent companies.

In 1982, Fail registered to work in Alabama through a Maryland-domiciled insurer.

According to the Alabama Journal in 1983, the Department of Insurance negated the plea agreement. Stano wrote to the board that Fail retained Gerald Wallace, Gov. George Wallace’s brother.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Charles Price in 1984 issued a ruling that held Fail to the original plea agreement.

In 2008, the University of Alabama renamed the locker room “The Fail Room,” in a release that referenced Fail’s “storied” career. According to a press release at the time, Fail made a “generous gift” to the Crimson Tide Foundation, a nonprofit booster organization that the school says does not need to file with the Internal Revenue Service due to its association with the university, according to a 2015 Al.com article by John Archibald.

The size of the donation was not reported. Fail’s donation does not appear in the financial reports of the time, and the university did not respond to a question asking how much money was donated.

The Fail Room is not the only structure on campus that is named for a controversial figure, nor is the University of Alabama the only university with controversial names. A February 2022 report from the SPLC found that 201 schools were named for the Confederacy.

That same month, the University of Alabama trustees voted to rename a building from Bibb Graves, former governor and Ku Klux Klan member, for Autherine Lucy, the school’s first Black student. In September 2021, Alabama State University also renamed a Bibb Graves building for Jo Ann Robinson, a civil rights advocate active in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Name of visitors' locker room at University of Alabama under fire