Power expects resistance to be loud.
It expects speeches, knee-jerk reactions, and someone eager to perform until they wear themselves out and go away. What it rarely expects is quiet attention — someone willing to read closely, track the details, and keep their cool, asking questions even after others assume the answer is settled.
That is how Chris Burks works.
He listens. He reads the record. He notices what doesn’t add up. And he’s respectful without being impressed by authority just because it comes with a title.
That approach shows up throughout his work at Punchwork — and why he often ends up on cases where powerful institutions expect not to be questioned.
When Courts Claim They Can’t Be Challenged
Recently, Chris Burks was part of a legal team that won an important decision at the Arkansas Supreme Court.
The ruling protects a basic right:
when the government takes your money without legal authority, you can go to court to challenge it.
That may seem obvious. But in real life, it usually isn’t.
Government agencies — including courts — frequently argue that they can’t be sued at all because of sovereign immunity. When that argument succeeds, whether a law was broken or not doesn’t matter because the case never gets heard.
In this case, The Arkansas Supreme Court rejected that approach.
Burks worked on the case with Michael Kaiser of Lassiter & Cassinelli, a firm he connected with through the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association (ATLA) and the Arkansas Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (AACDL). Together, the team took the case to the state’s highest court.
The Court ruled that when the Arkansas Constitution allows a lawsuit — especially in cases where the government may have collected money it wasn’t allowed to take — the courts must hear it. The Court also confirmed that constitutional claims cannot be blocked just because the government is the defendant.
What the Case Was About
The case began in Garland County, Arkansas.
John Mercer pleaded no contest to two DWI charges in Garland County District Court. As part of his sentence, the district court put him on probation and required him to pay monthly probation fees. Mercer paid the fees as ordered. Like most people, he assumed that if a court charged them, the fees must be lawful.
But Arkansas law usually prohibits probation as punishment for DWI offenses.
Mercer argued that the Court put him on probation— and collected fees — without legal authority.
On behalf of himself and others in the same situation Mercer filed a suit claiming:
- an illegal-exaction claim under the Arkansas Constitution (charging fees that the law doesn’t permit)
- a federal due-process claim, (the government didn’t follow basic rules of fairness before taking money, rights, or freedom) and
- a state due-process claim (same but guaranteed by state law) under the Arkansas Civil Rights Act.
The district court moved to dismiss the case, arguing sovereign immunity — basically: you can’t sue us.
That argument turned the case into something bigger than one person.
If courts can collect money without legal authority and then claim they can’t be challenged, there is no real limit on that power.
A Consistent Type of Work
This Supreme Court case fits a larger pattern in Burks’s practice.
In Arnette v. Little Rock Public Housing Authority, Chris was part of the legal team representing a whistleblower who exposed government fraud. The case settled for $150,000, reinforcing that public agencies can be held accountable for how they operate.
In Skinner v Hunt, Chris helped represent a class of maintenance workers who had been underpaid. The case resulted in $1,058,777.75 returned to workers.
These cases and others aren’t about headlines. They’re about enforcing limits — on employers, on agencies, and, when necessary, on courts.
Burks’s day‑to‑day work focuses on worker‑side labor law. But the same instinct that drives that work — insisting that power explain itself — carries into cases outside any single practice area.
Whether he’s representing workers or helping take a constitutional challenge to the Arkansas Supreme Court, Burks approaches the work the same way: by reading the record, tracking the details, and pressing the questions until they are answered.
That’s how this case moved forward.
And it’s how Punchwork approaches the work every day.
