LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — The legal battle between Arkansas County and Jones Digital, the company that began installing a cryptomine just outside DeWitt city limits last year, continued in federal court Friday. The two parties tried to come to an agreement in the form of a consent decree that would conclude the litigation.
The hearing Friday certainly appeared to go in favor of Arkansas County, which has been on the backfoot for a while in its months-long legal struggle with Jones Digital.
Jones Digital sued the county after it passed a noise ordinance last October aimed at the company’s cryptomine, still under construction.
In November, a federal judge struck down that noise ordinance. Since then, private citizens in the county who have been vocally against the new cryptomine say Jones Digital has been subpoenaing them even though they aren’t party to the lawsuit, demanding phone records and more.
“That really initiated concerns with those of us, the citizens, about our personal rights being infringed upon. And so, this has continued and we, in turn, hired a lawyer to support and represent us to file objections to those subpoenas,” said Tami Hornbeck, chair of the Committee to Protect Arkansas County.
Hornbeck and three other Arkansas County citizens who have been subpoenaed withdrew their motion to intervene in the lawsuit when both parties came to an agreement to add language protecting their constitutional rights and exempting them from subpoenas.
“The rights of the nonparty individuals in Arkansas County and in the state have been preserved, so we’ve accomplished that mission,” said Jerry Bogard, a member of the Committee to Protect Arkansas County.
Presiding Judge Lee Rudofsky also ordered serious revisions to the consent decree, which he called “crazy broad” in its language, such that it would “unnecessarily hamstring Arkansas County.”
Rudofsky said that Jones Digital appeared to be intending to use the consent decree as protection if the state amends Arkansas’ cryptomining laws—something that is looking very likely at the ongoing fiscal session, in which two bills regulating the industry have already been passed in the Senate.
The basis for Jones Digital’s lawsuit against Arkansas County is the protections given cryptominers in Act 851, the controversial law passed last legislative session that limits local government control.
Rudofsky said he would not feel comfortable with federal court stepping in like that and told Jones Digital’s attorneys that the consent decree “needs work to make sure it does not violate public policy.”
Rudofsky also said he was concerned that, because the litigation is so expensive for Arkansas County, it may yield and agree to an unfair consent decree from Jones Digital.
“The cost of this litigation is unbelievable,” Arkansas County attorney Burt Newell told Rudofsky at the hearing today.
“The case between Arkansas County and Jones Digital, it’s quite imbalanced in the amount of resources that our county has versus a company like Jones Digital which is connected to one of the top businesses in the world,” Hornbeck said.
Now, with new cryptomining bills that give power back to local governments drawing closer to being signed into law, things are beginning to look up for Arkansas County.
“Looks like the Arkansas legislature is well on their way to making some significant changes,” Bogard said. “Judge Rudofsky recognized that that was possible today, therefore he wanted to make sure and we greatly appreciate his wisdom that there would be conformity and fairness.”
To read the consent decree proposed at the hearing and the version amended later, see below:
