Court Opinion

ID: 9634593
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:17:39.766802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:06.297790
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, dissenting. This case has taken on a life of its own. It began in 1992, and with this court unnecessarily continuing further trial and review of the matter, it will predictably continue at least another two or more years. In my opinion, the trial court, should be affirmed for the reasons it found and others. The trial court recognized its predecessor court in 1994 entered orders holding the Arkansas school funding formula unconstitutional. However, since those orders, Amendment 74 to the Arkansas Constitution was adopted in 1996 and five legislative acts were passed in 1995 and 1997, which altered the school formula. In short, Arkansas’s school funding system, as it exists today, is indisputably different from the one found unconstitutional in 1994. Amendment 74 and the acts passed in 1995 and 1997 are presumed constitutional and render this appeal moot. The majority court seems to agree with Lake View School District that the district is entitled to a “compliance trial” — which apparently is for the purpose of determining the constitutionality of the laws enacted since 1994, and whether those acts have cured the unconstitutional disparities the chancellor found earlier. Neither the trial court, nor our court, has the authority or jurisdiction to hold “compliance trials.” It is telling that the majority mentions no citation of authority that provides for such trials. In fact, our court defined its limited role in such matters in Dupree v. Alma Sch. Dist. No. 30, 279 Ark. 340, 651 S.W.2d 90 (1983). Similar to the case here, school districts brought suit in Dupree, charging that the state’s financing system of its schools was unconstitutional because its financing of the state’s educational needs was inadequate to rectify the inequalities based on widely varying local tax bases. The districts further contended that the state’s system actually widened the gap between the property-poor and property-wealthy districts. The trial court agreed with the districts, found the system unconstitutional, and the Dupree court affirmed; but in doing so, our court delineated its limit of judicial interpretation when addressing such constitutional issues. The court stated as follows: The dispositive answer is simply that this court is not now engaged in — nor is it about to undertake — the “search for tax equity ’’ which defendants prefigure. As defendants themselves recognize, it is the Legislature which by virtue of institutional competency as well as constitutional function is assigned that difficult and perilous quest. Our task is much more narrowly defined: it is to determine whether the trial court committed prejudicial legal error in determining whether the state school financing system at issue before it was violative of our state constitutional provisions guaranteeing equal protection of the laws insofar as it denies equal educational opportunity to the public school students of this state. If we determine that no such error occurred, we must affirm the trial court’s judgment, leaving the matter of achieving a constitutional system to the body equipped and designed to perform that function. (Emphasis added.) In the present case, the chancellor, by her November 9, 1994, order, performed her judicial duty by entering her 1994 orders, declaring the funding system violative of the Arkansas Constitution. She further correctly recognized that it was the duty of the General Assembly to provide for a system of free public schools, and that the trial court should not dictate the elements of that system. Our court has never sanctioned a procedure whereby a trial court, after ruling a statute unconstitutional, could retain jurisdiction of the case until the General Assembly enacts a new measure the trial court believes meets constitutional muster. Here, when the chancellor interpreted existing law and rendered an opinion that the school funding formula was unconstitutional, her duty ended. As for the changes made by the 1995 and 1997 laws, those laws will require new legal arguments and proof which may be tested in new and separate actions.1  In rendering her decision, the chancellor also denied Lake View School District the injunctive relief it requested, and instead stayed her decision for two years in order to give the General Assembly time to implement a funding system in conformity with her opinion. The chancellor exceeded her authority and jurisdiction with these directives. Certainly, the chancellor could issue a stay order while the case was pending on appeal, but that is all that Arkansas law allows. See Ark. R. Civ. P. 62(d) and Ark. R. App. P. — Civ. 8; see also Ryder Truck Rental, Inc. v. Sutton, 305 Ark. 374, 807 S.W.2d 909 (1991).2  Lake View School District’s remedy was to cross appeal the chancellor’s refusal to grant the district the injunctive relief it sought, so the district could enforce the orders it had obtained. Nor did Lake View question on cross appeal the chancellor’s authority or jurisdiction to stay the 1994 orders entered in Lake View School District’s favor. My alluding to this jurisdiction issue should be of no surprise to the litigants in this appeal, since this court in Tucker v. Lake View Sch. Dist. No. 25, 323 Ark. 693, 917 S.W.2d 530 (1996), pointed out that “the matter of jurisdiction may again arise if further proceedings before the trial court result in another appeal of this case.” In my opinion, this case ended when (1) the chancellor entered her opinions in 1994, (2) the Lake View School District failed to cross appeal, and (3) the direct appeal was dismissed. If Lake View School District had appealed the 1994 orders and pursued the injunctive relief to which it was likely entitled, the Lake View School’s counsel then could have sought any attorneys’ fees which they believed were due them. As to the attorneys’ fees issue, I am doubtful that counsel for Lake View School District are in a position to prove their entitlement at this stage of the litigation because they failed to establish the required class action or a common fund prior to the chancellor’s decision in 1994. Again, if counsel had been unjustifiably denied such class action by the chancellor by her 1994 decision, that decision should have been challenged on cross appeal by the Lake View School district. Regardless, I respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the majority opinion wherein the court stretches the Millsap holding whereby this court allowed attorneys’ fees to the plaintiffs in an action involving private shareholders and their business corporation and the corporation received some economic benefit as a result of the litigation. See Millsap v. Lane, 288 Ark. 439, 706 S.W.2d 378 (1986). Even if the Millsap case involving private parties and a private entity should be extended to an action against governmental entities (an extension with which I disagree), the Lake View School District, to qualify under such a common-benefit theory, was required to show that a common fund or benefit was created for an identifiable class of beneficiaries. Here, the chancellor correctly held that there was no such pool of money; but even if there had been a pool, it was impossible to determine which of the class members benefitted and which did not. In short, Lake View School District made no attempt to delineate which school districts, taxpayers, and students benefitted, and which did not do so. For the above reasons, I would affirm.   Obviously districts or taxpayers may file suit later questioning the constitutionality of any or all of the General Assembly’s enactments if they are satisfied those new acts fail to end the unconstitutional disparities in the state’s school funding formula.    I note that the chancellor cited to a Montana case, Helena Elementary Sch. Dist. 1 v. State, 784 P.2d 412 (Mont. 1990) (supplementing and amending Helena Elementary Sch. Dist. 1 v. State, 769 P.2d 684 (Mont. 1989)), where that state’s supreme court held it had equitable power to postpone the effect of its earlier opinion which held that state’s funding of public schools unconstitutional. However, that court offered no actual authority to support the “equitable power” proposition. Even if the Montana decision had been based on a sound legal footing, the Montana court did not empower a trial court to withhold the effectiveness of its constitutional ruling. Clearly, if trial courts can be said to be empowered to postpone the effectiveness of their decisions, such authority could play havoc with appeals as has been the situation in this case.