This post leads with another point of personal privilege: my youngest daughter, Maddie (on the left) passed the bar exam earlier this month. We asked Justice Courtney Hudson of the Arkansas Supreme Court (on the right) to swear her in early. She very graciously did so on September 17th - it was a very memorable occasion.
There's a bit of a back story. Maddie met Justice Hudson when Maddie was four years old - because when I served on the Court of Appeals from 1997-98, I hired Justice Hudson, recently graduated, to be one of my law clerks. And here we are, twenty-eight years later.
Justice Hudson gave Maddie a tour of the building, which we all enjoyed. Here she is with an obviously younger picture of her father.
On to the opinions. The Supreme Court did not release any opinions this week; the Court of Appeals handed down nine opinions. Let's consider a couple of those decisions.
Dunklin v. Chatham, 2025 Ark. App. 427, involved a post-divorce dispute over the mother's access to her minor child. She filed motions for reunification counseling and for the trial court's recusal. The former motion was denied in a March 8, 2024, order; the latter motion was denied on April 11, 2024. Ultimately, the trial court dismissed with prejudice all pending motions at the mother's request on April 23, 2024.
The mother appealed that April 23, 2024, order and "all interlocutory orders entered prior to the final order." The father moved to dismiss her appeal for two reasons. First, he argued that the mother invited error when she sought dismissal of her pending motions with prejudice. Second, he noted that she did not designate the earlier two orders in her notice of appeal, and they did not qualify as intermediate orders under Ark. R. App. P.-Civ. 2(b).
The court declined to dismiss the appeal. The father's motion "is supported only by a blanket statement and reference to Rule 2(b) without any convincing argument as to why the orders are not intermediate orders that involve the merits and affect the final order." Dunklin, 2025 Ark. App. 427, at 9. Further, the two earlier orders were not appealable, and the court could not say that these orders did not affect the final order.
Rothwell v. Rothwell, 2025 Ark. App. 431, involved a contentious divorce and property division. The trial court credited the wife for a payment the husband made to his attorney. The husband failed to object to this in a posttrial motion, but did on appeal. The court concluded that this argument was not preserved for appeal.
Although a party is not required to file a posttrial motion to preserve error, a party who files such a motion and fails to include an argument that could be addressed by the circuit court has not raised the issue at the earliest opportunity and therefore has waived the issue.
Rothwell, 2025 Ark. App. 431, at 26.
Thanks for reading, including the point of personal privilege.
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