Penalties stick in firing suit; high court rules against Little Rock in ex-officer’s gender-bias case

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday upheld contempt-of-court penalties against Little Rock and its chief attorney that stemmed from a former Little Rock police officer's gender-discrimination suit against the city.

Little Rock cannot reclaim a $10,000 fine because it already paid it, and the six hours of case-management and ethics training mandated of City Attorney Tom Carpenter was warranted because the city took too long to pay the fine, the state's high court ruled while closing the book on a year-old case.

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox ruled in January that Carpenter had complied with the legal-training penalty he ordered, meaning Thursday's ruling does not require additional action from the city.

Carpenter said he is reviewing the decision and considering filing a request for the court to reconsider, saying portions of the order "don't make sense."

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Fox issued two contempt rulings against Little Rock in 2016 after repeated pretrial delays in its defense of a civil-rights lawsuit brought by former officer Tiffany Malone.

Fox, in an April 25 order, found that Little Rock disrespected the court by assigning only one attorney -- LaTonya Austin -- who Fox said indicated in on-the-record statements that "she had not properly or professionally prepared the case for trial" and did not comply with the judge's scheduling order. Fox ordered the city to pay a $10,000 fine within 10 calendar days.

Austin resigned the day the fine was issued amid threats that she would be fired if she did not step down, she previously said.

On May 20, Fox found the city in contempt of the initial order because it paid the fine on May 12, after the deadline. He applied the training-hours penalty to Carpenter, because the attorney advised the city against paying the fine. Carpenter has argued that he did so in order to preserve a legal challenge to Fox's initial order.

Little Rock appealed both contempt findings to the Arkansas Supreme Court.

The high court ruled that the city's appeal on the financial penalty was moot because it "voluntarily" paid the fine, so it did not consider whether Fox lacked authority under Arkansas Civil Procedure Rule 11 to specifically impose a monetary penalty. Justices deemed the fine voluntarily paid because the city did not request that the check be held pending appeals.

"It simply paid the penalty," the order says.

Associate Justice Josephine Hart, in lone dissent, wrote that the logic used by the majority of justices is "delightful," but only in the proper context.

"The majority seems to concede that the circuit judge did not have the authority under Rule 11 to sanction the behavior on the part of the deputy Little Rock Attorney," the opinion says. "However, it excuses it because, in the words of the majority, the circuit judge was only acting in 'excess' of his jurisdiction. This is the kind of logic that made the novels of Lewis Carroll so delightful."

Hart then excerpts a passage from Alice in Wonderland in which March Hare offers Alice "more tea" even though she's had none. When Alice points this out -- "so I can't take more" -- the Mad Hatter interjects to say it's "very easy to take more than nothing" as opposed to taking less.

"Such logic makes lively children's stories and poor judicial opinions," Hart wrote.

On the second contempt ruling, the state Supreme Court majority said all of the city's arguments against the training-requirement order were intertwined with the first contempt penalty.

"Because the City clearly failed to abide by the April 25 order of the circuit court and we cannot review that order as a result of the City's paying the penalty, the finding of contempt was not clearly against the preponderance of the evidence," the majority wrote.

Malone, who was known as Tiffany Johnson when she worked for the city Police Department, sued in 2014 to get her job back and said she was fired for reporting harassment by her one-time supervisor, Corey Hall.

City officials said Malone was fired because she pepper-sprayed a drunk, one-legged homeless man while he was in handcuffs after an arrest.

Fox in March ordered Hall to issue Malone a written apology and dismissed the former police officer's accusations against the Police Department and top officials.

Metro on 06/09/2017

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