Frazer Ryan partner emeritus Chick Arnold has received the Horace Rumple Inn of Court TOPs Award as its 2023 “Citizen of the Year.”

The award, presented at the Inn of Court’s April 12 meeting, honors Chick for his decades-long commitment to the rights of mentally ill persons in Arizona.

For more than 40 years, Chick Arnold was Arizona’s most forceful voice and effective advocate for the mentally ill. His 1981 class action lawsuit, Arnold v. Sarn, on behalf of Maricopa County’s seriously mentally ill population alleged that the State of Arizona failed to fund a comprehensive mental health system as required by state law.

In 1989, the Arizona Supreme Court agreed, and the State’s subsequent compliance with the Court’s ruling has resulted in additional annual funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars for the benefit of seriously mentally ill Arizonans.