2026-09-09 · Arkansas · Courts

Diamondhead, Arkansas has a property owners association and, since 2024, a city. They are suing each other, and separately a group of owners is suing the POA over the vote that put the community's largest landowner in control of its board. Both cases are open and both were active this month.

It is the clearest current example in Arkansas of a collision that arrives whenever a covenanted development incorporates: two bodies, overlapping territory, and a set of roads that somebody owns.

Case one: the takeover

Ralph Carruth et al. v. Diamondhead POA, No. 26CV-24-657, was filed in Garland County Circuit Court on June 4, 2024 and remains open, with more than 150 docket entries. Roughly 22 property owners are plaintiffs, among them Carruth — who became the new city's first mayor — alongside Charles and Melanie Landrum and John and Kathy Barnhart. The defendants are the POA, Mark Lane and Omni Home Builders.¹

The challenge is to a May 2024 bylaws vote that the plaintiffs say handed board control to the community's largest landowner. The Hot Springs Sentinel-Record reported in February 2026 that a pleading alleges the landowner used POA funds to reimburse his company more than $60,000 for monthly assessments he had paid on some 1,400 lots.² That is an allegation in a pleading, not a finding; the case has not been tried.

The decisive procedural event came on May 8, 2026, when the judge denied both sides' motions for summary judgment, sending to a jury the question whether the takeover complied with the governing documents.³ A jury trial and pre-trial hearing were set for June 25, 2026, with a contempt motion two days earlier. The docket records an order of dismissal on August 19, 2026 and a further amended complaint adding parties on September 2, 2026 — so whatever was dismissed, the case did not end.

Case two: who owns the roads

Diamondhead POA and Omni Home Builders v. City of Diamondhead, Mayor Ralph Carruth and six council members, No. 26CV-25-1294, was filed in the same court on August 21, 2025 and is also open, with a second amended complaint filed August 12, 2026.

On August 13, 2026 the Sentinel-Record reported that the city was weighing cancellation of its security services contract after the largest landowner claimed control of the roads.⁴

Strip out the personalities and the legal question is a clean one, and it recurs across Arkansas: when a covenanted development incorporates, are its streets private roads owned and maintained by the association, or public streets of the new municipality? The answer decides who maintains them, who polices them, who may restrict access to them, and who pays.

1. Carruth v. Diamondhead POA, No. 26CV-24-657 (Garland County Circuit Court, filed June 4, 2024) — docket, Arkansas Judiciary CourtConnect ↩
2. Hot Springs Sentinel-Record (David Showers), reporting on the pending petition and the alleged assessment reimbursement (Feb. 18, 2026) ↩
3. Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, “Judge denies dueling motions for summary judgment” (May 8, 2026) ↩
4. Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, “Diamondhead considers canceling security contract” (Aug. 13, 2026) ↩
5. Diamondhead POA v. City of Diamondhead, No. 26CV-25-1294 (Garland County Circuit Court, filed Aug. 21, 2025) — docket ↩