Case Title: Tucker v. Lake View School Dist. No. 25

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: arkansas

Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

Date: 1996-03-11T00:00:00Z

Document:
Jim Guy TUCKER, Governor, et al. v. LAKE VIEW
SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 25 OF PHILLIPS COUNTY, et
al.

95-471                                             ___ S.W.2d ___

                    Supreme Court of Arkansas
                Opinion delivered March 11, 1996


1.   Appeal & error -- finality of judgments and orders --
     jurisdictional requisite -- duty of appellate court to
     determine. -- The appellate court was required to consider
     whether the decision appealed from was a final, appealable
     order; this was a jurisdictional requisite, which the
     appellate court had a duty to determine.

2.   Appeal & error -- finality of judgments and orders --
     requirements. -- For a judgment to be final and appealable, it
     must dismiss the parties from the court, discharge them from
     the action, or conclude their rights to the subject matter in
     controversy; to be final, an order must not only decide the
     rights of the parties, but also put the court's directive into
     execution, ending the litigation or a separable part of it.

3.   Appeal & error -- finality of judgments and orders --
     requirements for finality not met. -- Where the chancellor
     made a final determination that the school funding system was
     unconstitutional but stayed the effect of her decision to
     allow the General Assembly to implement a constitutional
     system and consequently neither considered the
     constitutionality of the individual elements of the system nor
     addressed appellee school district's requests for injunctive
     relief and mandamus, the chancellor's failure to grant the
     specific relief requested by the prevailing parties was in
     effect a deferral; the supreme court determined that appellee
     school district's rights in the matter had not been concluded
     and that they had no way to put the chancellor's directive
     into execution without further proceedings before the trial
     court; thus, the supreme court held that the requirements for
     finality had not been met.

4.   Courts -- subject-matter jurisdiction -- raised by appellate
     court on its own motion. -- The issue of subject-matter
     jurisdiction is one that the appellate court raises on its own
     motion.


     Appeal from Pulaski Chancery Court; Annabelle C. Imber,
Chancellor; appeal dismissed.
     Winston Bryant, Att'y Gen., by:  Tim Humphries, Deputy Att'y
Gen., for appellant.
     Mitchell, Blackstock & Barnes, by:  Clayton R. Blackstock, for
amicus curiae Arkansas Education Ass'n.
     
     Andree Layton Roaf, Justice.March 11, 1996.
*ADVREP9*







JIM GUY TUCKER, GOVERNOR, ET
AL.
                    APPELLANTS,

V.

LAKE VIEW SCHOOL DIST. NO. 25
OF PHILLIPS COUNTY, ET AL.
                    APPELLEES,






95-471


APPEAL FROM THE PULASKI COUNTY
CHANCERY COURT,
NO. 92-5318,
HON. ANNABELLE C. IMBER,
CHANCELLOR,




APPEAL DISMISSED.


                  Andree Layton Roaf, Justice.

     Appellants, Jim Guy Tucker, and others, appeal from an order
of the Pulaski County Chancery Court which declared that the public
school financing system then in effect violated the equal
protection and education provisions of the Arkansas Constitution.
     Appellants raise two points on appeal: the trial court erred
by 1) misapplying the equal protection and education provisions of
the Arkansas Constitution; and 2) incorrectly applying statistical
measures of equity.  As the ruling by the chancellor does not
constitute a final appealable order, we dismiss the appeal.
                              Facts
     On September 19, 1994, appellees Lake View School District
("Lake View") and various of its students and patrons filed an
amended complaint against Governor Jim Guy Tucker, the State Board
of Education and its members, the State Treasurer, Speaker of the
House of Representatives, Senate President Pro Tempore, and the
Director of the Department of Education ("the State").  The
complaint alleged that the system of school funding then in place
violated the Arkansas constitutional guarantees of equal protection
and of a general, suitable, and efficient system of education.  The
complaint also asserted that the funding system violated the equal
protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to
the United States Constitution.  Lake View sought declaratory and
injunctive relief, mandamus against the State to enact a
constitutional system of school funding and to increase funding for
public schools, nominal damages, attorney's fees, and costs.
     After a trial on the merits before Chancellor Annabelle
Clinton Imber, involving numerous witnesses and exhibits, the
chancellor issued 147 findings of fact and eighteen conclusions of
law on November 9, 1994.  She determined that the school funding
system was constitutional under the United States Constitution and
dismissed with prejudice Lake View's claims in that regard. 
However, she ruled that the funding system was in violation of the
equal protection provision of the Arkansas Constitution, "as it has
no rational bearing on the educational needs of the district," and
that the system also violated the education provision of the
Arkansas Constitution by "failing to provide a general, suitable,
and efficient system of free public education."  The chancellor
stayed the effect of her decision for two years to allow the
General Assembly time to enact and implement appropriate
legislation in conformity with her opinion.  
     The General Assembly subsequently enacted new school funding
statutes, Acts 916 and 917 of 1995, which effectively repealed the
funding system at issue in this appeal.
     There are three questions raised by the posture of this case
and by the chancellor's decree which would all have to be answered
in the affirmative for us to reach the merits of this case --
whether the order entered by the chancellor was a final, appealable
order, whether the chancellor had jurisdiction to hear the case, 
and whether the enactment of a new school funding system renders
this matter moot.  We conclude that there has been no final order
entered in this action.
                        Finality of Order
     Because the chancellor stayed for two years the effect of her
decision finding the school funding system unconstitutional, and
declined to grant Lake View any of the specific remedies requested,
we must consider whether the decision is a final, appealable order. 
This is a requisite for appellate jurisdiction, which we have a
duty to determine.  See Walker v. Kazi, 316 Ark. 616, 875 S.W.2d 47
(1994); Chambers v. Manning, 315 Ark. 369,