Employment discrimination lawsuits against Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey, brought by two of his three assistant chiefs, will proceed at least for now in separate courtrooms after Circuit Judge Alice Gray declined to transfer the proceedings involving Alice Fulk.
Gray's single-sentence order Monday did not state a reason for denying Fulk's request to transfer her lawsuit to the judge presiding over the litigation filed by her fellow assistant chief, who is also being represented by Fulk's legal team.
Fulk's lawyers had argued that the separate suits are so similar that the litigation would proceed more smoothly if one judge presided over both of them.
Humphrey's lawyers responded to the transfer request by accusing Fulk attorney Chris Burks of trying to move the litigation to a court where he thought he could get a favorable outcome, an unethical practice known as "judge-shopping."
Burks denied that, accusing Humphrey's attorneys of engaging in character assassination over legal arguments in recent pleadings.
"In an attack-the-messenger strategy, defendant has concocted a theory that Plaintiffs are prejudicing the administration of justice by judge-shopping. Defendant's theory is baseless," Burks wrote, describing Humphrey's lawyers' "zeal to cast aspersions." "Defendant's counsel ... got the headline they sought in accusing plaintiffs' counsel of judge shopping."
Burks stated in his response that the defense's accusations have left him with no other choice than to formally request that Gray recuse, which will be done in a forthcoming motion.
In lawsuits filed about a week apart in April, Fulk and Hayward Finks, joined by some lesser ranking officers, accused Humphrey of retaliating against them for their public testimony in a fatal police shooting. They said their statements contradicted representations that Humphrey had made about the incident, which made him look bad.
Under the court's case assignment procedure, each suit was assigned a different judge. Finks' suit, the first to be filed, was assigned to Judge Chris Piazza.
In the most recent action in that case, Piazza has scheduled an Aug. 24 hearing to hear a motion by Finks regarding an internal affairs investigation that he claims Humphrey initiated to retaliate against him and his two co-plaintiffs, Sgt. Duane Finks, his brother, and Sgt. Reginald Parks.
City lawyers say that internal inquiry has been halted because of the lawsuit. Piazza last week formally ordered police to discontinue the probe until he's heard arguments over the legality of the investigation.