
The Arkansas Court of Appeals has ruled that the father of a 20-year-old man who died of a gunshot wound to the head at a Jefferson County hunting lodge in 2015 can refile his case.
“Although this case is based on a tragic factual situation, the issue before the court is procedural — whether a plaintiff’s right to dismiss a case pursuant to Arkansas Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a) is absolute,” Court of Appeals Chief Judge Mark Klappenbach wrote in the opinion delivered Nov. 20. “We find that it is and reverse and remand.”
Appellate Judges Cindy Thyer and Wendy Scholtens Wood agreed.
Kerry Baker will have a year to refile his lawsuit involving the death of his son, James “Luke” Baker, after the order of dismissal in Jefferson County Circuit Court is vacated. Kerry Baker didn’t immediately return a message left on his cellphone.
“It was the correct decision,” attorney Luther Sutter of Little Rock recently told Arkansas Business.
Sutter and his firm didn’t represent Kerry Baker, but they began representing Luke’s mother, Gena Downey Baker of Conway, after the wrongful death suit was filed in 2018. He and his firm exited the case in February 2020 because of a conflict.
The ruling is the latest in a messy legal battle that has spilled over to other lawsuits in various courts.
Kerry Baker initially filed the lawsuit to find out what happened to his son. He couldn’t believe the sheriff’s official version of events, which held that his son put a revolver to his head and pulled the trigger in a solo game of Russian roulette.
The wrongful death lawsuit was filed by Luke Baker’s immediate family and his estate against Luke’s companion on the night of his death, Skylar Wilson of Conway, and others. Also named as defendants were the owners of the lodge, even though they weren’t there at the time of the death: Wilson’s father, Bryan Adams of Faulkner County, and uncle, Brandon Adams of Washington County. The Adamses own dozens of long-term care facilities in Arkansas. The defendants were represented by several attorneys including the law firm of Wright Lindsey Jennings of Little Rock, which didn’t return messages for comment.
Kenneth Gregory Stephens of Monticello initially represented Luke Baker’s estate but voluntarily exited the case in 2019.
In 2020, all the plaintiffs, except for Gena Baker, asked that the lawsuit be dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled later. But the defendants objected. Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Alex Guynn denied the plaintiffs’ motion in July 2020.
The plaintiffs asked again for the case to be dismissed in August 2020. In April 2021, all the defendants asked for the case to be dismissed and that the court prohibit it from being refiled “due to alleged misconduct and fraud by Kerry and various plaintiffs’ attorneys,” Klappenbach’s order said.
Stephens told Arkansas Business in 2021 — when the case was the subject of a two-part series — that he did nothing wrong, nor did other attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case.
At a hearing before Guynn in June 2021, the plaintiffs’ attorneys “denied certain contentions against themselves personally,” and they said they were entitled to dismiss their lawsuit without prejudice.
But Guynn sided with the defendants and ruled to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice.
The Court of Appeals said that an order denying the voluntary nonsuit before the case has been submitted was reversible error.
Sutter told Arkansas Business recently that Guynn’s order “saying that I did all those bad things was entered without even giving me an opportunity to give my side of the story, and your paper’s focus on that order hurt me. … They made allegations that I bribed the coroner, and there was no evidence of it.”
“But now thankfully, without what you did and your paper did to me, then I wouldn’t be the man I am today,” he said.