Whether petitioners were denied due process of law by an ex parte order enabling an electric utility to seize their property without notice and a preliminary hearing

QUESTIONS PRESENTED 1. Whether petitioners were denied due process of law by an ex parte Circuit Court order enabling an electric utility to seize, without service of notice and without a preliminary hearing, a .95-acre high-power transmission easement across their property. 2. Whether it was a denial of due process for a state’s judicial authority to permit a utility operating under the state’s eminent domain power to manipulate a delay of service of condemnation process so as to facilitate its ex parte seizure of an elderly couple’s private property. 3. Whether the Arkansas Court of Appeals denied equal protection of the laws to Petitioners by refusing to adhere to that Court’s own admonitions against ex parte decision making by upholding the entry of an ex parte judgment ordering the seizure of a substantial easement across Petitioners’ homestead in the absence of any proof of compelling or exigent circumstances warranting same. 4. Whether petitioners, proceeding pro se, were denied due process of law by the Circuit Court’s failure sua sponte to set aside a jury’s award of a mere $1,995 in damages for the utility’s ex parte seizure of a .95-acre swath of their property, effectively cleaving the remnant acreage from their homestead and awarding nothing in severance damages or for the strip-cutting of timber on the seized parcel.