A ruling has been made in the Arkansas Court of Appeals regarding a civil case originating in Clark County. | Shutterstock.com/Zhanna Hapanovich
By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com
A Clark County couple’s lawsuit against the City of Arkadelphia is headed back to a lower court after the Arkansas Court of Appeals remanded parts of an appeal by the city.
In an opinion delivered March 11, 2026, Chief Judge N. Mark Klappenbach affirmed parts of an appeal by the Clark County Circuit Court, and reversed and remanded other parts of the appeal.
The lawsuit dates to 2023, when Brandon and Kortni Beene sued the city, naming its administration and several nongovernmental entities as defendants in a complaint for declaratory judgment to determine property rights. The complaint stems from a 2022 confrontation at the Beenes’s property on Gorman Loop, located just outside the city limits and adjacent to a new housing development. Brandon Beene approached a crew preparing to install a water line that would supply North Ridge Estates.
A city employee, also at the site, said there was an easement allowing them to dig. Beene asked the crew to halt work on his property until that easement could be produced. Court records say the crew returned the next day and proceeded to place the water line, despite not producing proof of an easement.
The suit names Nicky Goff’s Mill Creek Investors Group LLC and Good Ole Boys Holding Company LLC as defendants, as well as Kyle Smith’s Precision Excavating LLC, the City of Arkadelphia and City Manager Gary Brinkley. Arkadelphia attorney Clayton Sexton is representing the Beenes.
The city claimed that it was entitled to immunity because a private contractor—not the city’s employee—had performed the work on the Beenes’s property. The Beenes argued that the city’s actions went beyond negligence when the crew returned the following day to complete the work, without producing an easement.
In an apparent effort to dismiss the case in late 2024, defendant attorney Sara Monogham filed a motion in Circuit Court for summary judgment, requesting that the court address the city’s claim for tort immunity. Circuit Judge Blake Batson denied that motion, and the city appealed the order in January 2025.
The Court of Appeals affirmed Batson’s ruling. Klappenbach wrote: “When a municipality acts in a manner that substantially diminishes the value of a landowner’s land, and its actions are shown to be intentional, it cannot escape its constitutional obligation to compensate for the taking of property on the basis of its immunity from tort action.”
As for claims of trespass, Klappenbach ruled that the city was entitled to immunity because the Beenes “failed to assert a claim of deliberate, knowing trespass … based on negligent conduct.”
The case now heads back to Clark County Circuit Court.
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