Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Rhonda Wood refused Thursday to step aside from a $75 million trucking-crash appeal, rejecting a claim that her friendship with the opposing side’s lawyer, a former Texas Supreme Court justice who co-hosted a podcast with her, created the appearance of bias.
“I can assure the litigants that I have not jointly vacationed with appellants’ counsel,” Wood wrote in a four-page opinion denying the motion. “Our friendship derives from our contact at professional gatherings, commitment to civic education, and care for the administration of justice.”
Wood decided the motion alone. Chief Justice Karen Baker, the court’s five other justices and Special Justice Cory Cox all declined to take part.
The case is Old Dominion Freight Line’s appeal of a St. Francis County jury verdict for six men who responded to a fatal April 20, 2018, wreck on U.S. Highway 70. A pickup driven by Charles Henley crossed into the path of an Old Dominion semi driven by Aaron Foster. Henley died at the scene, and the truck flipped and caught fire with a 565-pound barrel of formic acid aboard, according to the Arkansas Court of Appeals’ account of the trial.
The responders, a state trooper, a sheriff’s deputy and four members of a cleanup crew, said they were never told the load contained hazardous material and were sickened by the fumes. In December 2021, a jury before Circuit Judge E. Dion Wilson awarded $25 million to Frank McMillion, $20 million to Bengi Bokker, $15 million to Allen Jones and $5 million each to Hunter Bokker, Zack Billingsley and Carlton Pettus, according to the circuit court docket.
The Court of Appeals threw out the verdicts in 2025, ruling the damages were excessive and ordering a new trial on both liability and damages. The responders asked the Supreme Court to review that decision, and the court agreed in September 2025.
That is when Eva Guzman entered the case. Guzman served on the Texas Supreme Court from 2009 until she resigned in 2021 and is now a name partner at a Houston firm. She was admitted to practice in Arkansas for the appeal in July 2025, signed Old Dominion’s supplemental brief and argued the case before the justices March 5.
Guzman and Wood were two of the four state supreme court justices who launched the “Lady Justice: Women of the Court” podcast in September 2020. The show, produced by the Arkansas Supreme Court’s public education program, grew out of Wood recording answers to her granddaughter’s questions about the courts with Guzman, Michigan Chief Justice Bridget McCormack and West Virginia Justice Beth Walker.
The responders’ lawyers filed the recusal motion Sept. 29, nearly seven months after the argument. They pointed to a reunion episode in which Wood said she and Guzman had “bonded over the children’s issue” and told her co-hosts she was “so grateful for you. Knowing all four of you are out there if I need something.”
They also cited a Sept. 10 panel at the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner, where Wood appeared with Guzman and Walker at an event sponsored in part by Guzman’s firm. Wood said there that Guzman “has always been there for her,” the motion says.
“Justice Guzman replaced the lawyer who knew the case the best and brought with her the appearance of influence over one member of the Court,” wrote Sach Oliver of Rogers, who filed the motion with Forrest City lawyers John Houseal, Michael Easley and Austin Easley and Greenbrier lawyer Brian Brooks. Friendship alone is not enough to require recusal, the motion conceded, but Guzman’s late arrival combined with “the clear close personal relationship” crossed the line.
Old Dominion’s lawyers, Zachary Hill of Little Rock and Guzman, answered Oct. 2 that the motion was too late because the podcast and the friendship were public years before the case was submitted, and that it identified “no personal interest, financial interest, prejudgment, extrajudicial knowledge, or other objective circumstance” that would make a reasonable person doubt Wood’s impartiality.
Wood agreed. She wrote that Guzman left the podcast in July 2021, “five years ago, absent a single-episode return,” and that the two have not worked together on children’s issues since Guzman left the Texas court that June. Justices routinely sit on continuing-education panels with lawyers who appear before them, she wrote, and Guzman’s firm was one of “roughly thirty-nine sponsors” of the Texas dinner, from which Wood said she took no stipend or travel money.
Wood also noted she has worked more closely with the other side. Two of the responders’ lawyers served with her for nearly two years on the Supreme Court’s civil practice committee, she wrote, and the committee “celebrated him with a cake” last spring when one of them joined the appellate team. “One should not presume an impure motive without evidence for it,” she wrote.
“The recusal motion rests on the assumption that a judge must recuse herself if she is friends with a lawyer, has nice things to say about her, or has shared the stage on a continuing legal education panel,” Wood wrote. “Appellees provide no precedent that would justify such a rule.”
Granting the motion, she wrote, “would stifle judges from engaging with others. That would harm the judiciary, lawyers, and the public.”
The appeal itself remains undecided. The court pulled the case from submission Oct. 1, the same day Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed Cox to sit in place of Justice Barbara Webb, and said it would be resubmitted later.
The case is Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. v. McMillion, CV-22-305.
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