reversing chancery court's injunction that barred school from enforcing expulsion
How later courts described this case
- reversing chancery court's injunction that barred school from enforcing expulsion
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Darrell Hickman, Justice, dissenting. I join Justice Purtle’s dissent but write separately to emphasize my position.
The chancery court did not have jurisdiction. In two cases, both involving the discipline of students by a school board, the aggrieved parties filed a petition for writ of mandamus in circuit court. Fortman v. Texarkana School Dist. No. 7, 257 Ark. 130 , 514 S.W.2d 720 (1974); Williams v. Board of Education, 274 Ark. 530 , 636 S.W.2d 361 (1982). It has been the law in Arkansas since 1909 that a pupil claiming to have been suspended maliciously, arbitrarily or without reason has a remedy by mandamus to compel the school authority to reinstate the pupil. Douglas v. Campbell, 89 Ark. 254 , 116 S.W. 211 (1909).
This case is in chancery court through a legal fiction, an oxymoron, called a mandatory injunction. (Literally, a mandatory injunction is to make someone not do something they have done.)
Courts of equity have jurisdiction to issue injunctions, preventing acts before they occur, if there will be irreparable harm unless the injunction is issued, and if there is no adequate remedy at law. Ahrent v. Sprague, 139 Ark. 416 , 214 S.W. 68 (1919).
In this case the act has already occurred — the student has been expelled — and there is an adequate remedy at law — mandamus in circuit court. The mandatory injunction is a legal fiction that cannot create jurisdiction.
I would reverse on grounds of jurisdiction.