A class (less) act

The question is not whether the spouse of a class-action lawyer should ever be chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court.

The better question is whether this particular spouse of this particular class-action lawyer should be this particular chief justice at this particular time with this particular choice.

Courtney Goodson, currently an associate justice on the Supreme Court, has never actually practiced much law. She was a law clerk and then a judge on the Arkansas Court of Appeals.

She was married effectively, in political terms, her first time around.

Her husband, Mark Henry, was of the politically connected Morriss and Ann Henry family in Fayetteville. The Henrys were hosts of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s wedding reception. So Courtney was able to boast as a Supreme Court candidate that she was endorsed both by John Paul Hammerschmidt, now deceased, a friend of her own family in her native Harrison, and Bill Clinton, a famous Democratic opponent of the Republican Hammerschmidt.

Very soon after her election to the Supreme Court in 2010, Goodson dumped Henry. Quickly she remarried, again effectively—to a multimillionaire class-action lawyer in Texarkana, John Goodson.

In 2013, Fortune magazine wrote about Miller County—that’s Texarkana—as a judicial “hell hole” where two area law firms, one of them Goodson’s, filed suits seeking class-action certification and then got tacitly permitted by the local judge to draw the matters out until the defendants decided their best course was to negotiate a settlement.

A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 essentially did away with Miller County as a class-action speed trap. It effectively permitted a defendant to move any class-action case to federal court.

Now Courtney Goodson seeks to be elected chief justice of the state Supreme Court. She is opposed by Circuit Judge Dan Kemp of Mountain View, 64, who has been a circuit judge for 29 years.

Kemp has backing from liberals who disapprove of Courtney’s marrying ways and courtship of Republicans, and of John’s class-action methods. And Kemp has backing from business conservatives who resent or fear John’s class-action activism.

Courtney has support from Republican legislators and lobbyists close to John or savvy to the fact that, win or lose for chief justice, she’ll remain on the Supreme Court.

John Goodson will tell you—perhaps by barging in on you at lunch at the Oyster Bar—that most of the bad publicity stems from his being a lawyer with a history of challenging insurance companies on behalf of little guys, which, he will explain, has rallied some in the business community against his wife.

Word is that the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce was about to endorse Kemp until a few Goodson pals in the lobbying fraternity objected.

So here’s the latest: Arkansas Business reported Monday that Goodson’s firm and another seemed to have found a way around the federal court requirement.

Goodson’s firm was among a legal team suing the United Services Automobile Association, an insurer of military veterans. The charge was that the insurer routinely denied portions of claims inappropriately.

U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes in Fort Smith told the parties it was time to get going toward a settlement or a determination on class-action certification, and the parties reacted by getting the case dismissed in federal court.

Then the supposedly opposing parties went straightaway to refile the suit in Polk County Circuit Court in Mena, but with a settlement agreement attached. They could move to state court only by the defendants’ agreement, you see.

Arkansas Business quoted a national class-action activist as believing the maneuver was designed to avoid an uncertain outcome in federal court, position for a more reliable outcome in a state court, maximize lawyers’ fees and limit the insurance company’s liability.

Actual claimants—the people supposedly helped—would have to file affidavits to petition for an amount of money less than what they ought to get automatically, according to attorney Robert Trammell in Little Rock.

The sad pattern in such cases is that a small percentage of claimants actually jumps through prescribed hoops to get the money.

Trammell, representing four military veterans, has petitioned Polk County Circuit Court to reject the settlement on grounds that claimants’ interests have been insufficiently considered.

Courtney Goodson’s candidacy should be judged on her husband’s controversies only in the context of a veteran judge like Kemp offering himself as an alternative.

The main criticisms I’ve heard of Kemp are that he is backed by tort-reform advocates and his wife is too zealous in her religion.

“It’s a Hobson’s choice,” I’ve heard, as if a wife a little fanatic in her personal religion—if that indeed is so—would be a problem for a chief justice comparable to a husband who is a class-action wheeler and dealer.

For once I’d prefer the religious fanatic.

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.