Court Opinion

ID: 9662890
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:21:16.00545+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:43.545552
License: Public Domain

Steele Hays, Justice, dissenting. For Cordell Luis Lopez, aged four, life has offered little more than reverses. He has been renounced by his mother, had only minimal contact with the man who claims to be his father, is separated from his older brother, and lived in two foster homes. Yet now, under the order appealed from, he faces removal from an adoptive home, presumably the first potentially stable family environment he has known, so that a putative father who eschewed earlier opportunities, and who has contributed nothing whatever to his support, can belatedly assert parental rights, for no greater reason than because ARAP Rule 2 does not now provide for interlocutory appeal of disputes involving children. But we have twice amended the rule on an ad hoc basis to affect pending litigation on less compelling grounds than the welfare of a child. I refer to Ford Motor Credit Corp. v. Nesheim, 285 Ark. 253, 686 S.W.2d 777 (1985), where we changed the rule to permit interlocutory appeal from a class action certification, and Herron v. Jones, 276 Ark. 493, 637 S.W.2d 569 (1982), where we held that an order disqualifying an attorney from further participation in a case is appealable. I suggest the placement of children ranks at least on a par with commercial and professional disputes as warranting interlocutory review. Since it will be many months before a final order is entered and an appeal concluded, it seems evident that this child has become a victim of society and of the legal system as well. I would allow the appeal and address the merits.