Justices decline late-dues petition

Hopeful sought discipline clarity

The Arkansas Supreme Court declined on Thursday to immediately settle the question of how lawyers who pay their annual dues late can be disciplined.

The high court refused to consider a petition by interim Circuit Judge H.G. Foster, whose eligibility for election had been challenged through a lawsuit by his opponent, Doralee Chandler, because he’d paid his bar dues late four times out of the past six years.

In the past, lawyers who missed the March deadline to pay their annual licensing fee were automatically suspended by court administrators. However, recent litigation forced the administrators to rethink that 30-plus-year practice.

That litigation, against Foster and three other judicial candidates, proceeded under the theory that those suspensions amounted to lapses in their licensing as attorneys that prevented them from meeting the constitutional requirements for circuit judges.

The lawsuits asked that the candidates be disqualified and removed from the May 20 ballot.

Foster and two other candidates have prevailed over the lawsuits and remain on the ballot. A fourth candidate was disqualified from running.

With early voting to begin May 5, Foster had asked the high court to act now rather than wait to consider the question on an appeal from one of the lawsuits so the issue could be resolved ahead of the election.

Thursday’s ruling cited, without elaboration, prior cases dealing with the action Foster wanted from the court. It was unsigned, but showed that three of the seven justices, Paul Danielson, Courtney Goodson and Karen Baker, did not participate in the decision to reject Foster’s petition.

Two of the circuit judges who decided the lawsuits, Sam Bird and Wendell Griffen, have issued broad holdings, reaching their conclusions through different analysis.

Griffen found the automated nature of the suspensions to be unconstitutional, ordering the clerk of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, which administers the bar licensing and dues, to cease the practice.

Bird said court rules provided a means for lawyers to prevent the late-dues suspensions from going on their permanent records by allowing them to pay a $100penalty to remove the sanction and restore their license.

Bird’s decision involving Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox was appealed on Wednesday while Griffen’s rulings in the suits against Foster and Angela Byrd ofConway have not been challenged.

The disqualification ruling made by the third judge, Sam Cole, has been understood to affect only that candidate, Valerie Thompson Bailey.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/18/2014

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