Background
Jeremy Kennedy, an incarcerated person, petitioned for declaratory and mandamus relief against the Arkansas Post-Prison Transfer Board and the Arkansas Division of Correction. His claims arose from a September 2023 decision denying him parole or transfer for two years. He alleged that the agencies acted beyond their authority, including by refusing to transfer him after his asserted transfer-eligibility date.
The Jefferson County Circuit Court dismissed Kennedy’s second amended petition under Arkansas Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(8), finding that he had at least two pending actions involving the same parties and transaction. It also counted the dismissal as a “strike” under the Arkansas prisoner-indigency statute. Kennedy appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Arkansas Court of Appeals reversed and remanded. Rule 12(b)(8) permits dismissal only when an identical action between identical parties is pending in another Arkansas state court. The two cases principally cited by the defendants were already on appeal, so they were not pending in circuit court for purposes of the rule.
The remaining cited Izard County cases were not part of the record. The appellate court could not take judicial notice of separate case records to determine whether those cases were pending or identical. Because the Rule 12(b)(8) dismissal could not be sustained on the record, the court also reversed the associated strike designation. It declined to reach the merits of Kennedy’s underlying parole-transfer claims because the circuit court had not ruled on them.
Key Takeaways
- A case on appeal is not “pending” in circuit court for Rule 12(b)(8) purposes.
- A court cannot rely on records from separate cases unless those proceedings are made part of the record.
- Reversal of the duplicative-action dismissal required reversal of the prisoner-litigation strike based on that dismissal.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that a duplicative-action dismissal requires a record demonstrating genuinely identical, concurrently pending state-court actions. Bare references to other case numbers are not enough for appellate review.
It also limits the use of a statutory strike where the asserted frivolousness rests entirely on an unsupported duplicative-litigation theory.