⚖️ Case: Madding v. Keech Law Firm, P.A., et al., 2023 Ark. App. 377.
🔑 Key Takeaway: If the circuit court has more than one independent ground or basis for its ruling, make sure to address all of the grounds for the ruling in your appellate brief.
📝 Background: This was a legal malpractice case. The plaintiff sued two law firms, and the circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of both law firms on the issue of the statute of limitations. But for one of the law firms, the circuit court also based its summary judgment ruling on the issue of a lack of proximate causation (because some of the issues the plaintiff complained about occurred while she was acting pro se). The plaintiff appealed, but in her argument that the circuit court erred in granting summary judgment, she only briefed the issue of statute of limitations. She did not brief the issue of proximate causation.
🪶 Opinion: Quoting United Food & Com. Workers Int’l Union v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 2014 Ark. 517, at 6, 451 S.W.3d 584, 587, the Arkansas Court of Appeals held that if a circuit court has more than one independent ground for its decision, and the appellant does not address all of the grounds, then the Court of Appeals will “affirm without addressing any of the grounds.” When this happens, the Court of Appeals will not develop an argument for the appellant, but instead will summarily affirm.
💭 Our Thought: Whether the circuit court has relied on an independent ground for its decision, and whether the appellant has adequately addressed the independent ground, is not always a clear-cut analysis. In fact, in Corbitt v. Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n, 2023 Ark. 61, the issue of whether the appellant had adequately addressed one of the independent bases for the circuit court’s decision was the subject of some debate during oral argument and ultimately resulted in a dissent on that issue. Therefore, it is important to thoroughly review the record for all of the grounds for the circuit court’s decision, and then the make abundantly clear in the brief that you are addressing all of those grounds.
🔎 A Closer Look: There’s actually one more procedural issue in this case. A plaintiff can overcome a statute of limitations defense if there is fraudulent concealment. In her brief, the plaintiff argued that one of the firms had engaged in fraudulent concealment. But at the trial court, the plaintiff had only mentioned concealment “in passing” at the hearing, but had not otherwise developed the argument. Therefore, the Court of Appeals held that the fraudulent concealment argument was not preserved for appeal.
ArkansasAppeals.com 