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Saturday, October 21, 2006

Courts - Kentucky Supreme Court's future up to voters

Kentucky's Suprme Court justices are elective, serving 8-year terms. Andrew Wolfson of the Louisville Courier Journal writes today, in a story headlined "Supreme Court's future up to voters":

After Melissa Congleton was killed in October 2002 by a 37,000-pound steel coil that flew off a truck into her vehicle, a jury awarded her estate damages that included $100,000 for "pre-impact fear" -- the terror she experienced in the moments before her death.

It was the first time such a verdict had been allowed in Kentucky, and it's been appealed to the state Supreme Court, which will decide if it's justified or frivolous.

The decision, which could affect wrongful death suits for years to come, is one of the many legal issues whose fate may turn on the Nov. 7 election. Voters could elect as many as four new faces to the seven-member Kentucky Supreme Court.

A new pro-business group, the Partnership for Commonsense Justice, says the contested elections – -- in Louisville, Lexington, and Western and Northern Kentucky -- promise the biggest changes in the court's 30-year-history.

And lawyers of various stripes agree the races come at a crossroads for a court increasingly torn by politics and dissension.

"These seven people will shape the future of Kentucky law, and this is really important to Kentucky citizens," said Louisville attorney Edward Stopher. "As a practical matter, they have the last word on obligations, duties and damages in our state … so we need to cast our votes carefully."

The new court will decide such questions as whether:

A criminal lawyer denies his client effective counsel by walking out of the courtroom during his testimony because the attorney knows the defendant is lying.

A foundation that runs a university's dormitories is liable when a student is raped, sodomized and set on fire in one of them.

A Kentucky doctor was guilty of negligence when he slipped in a hospital operating room and grabbed a patient to keep from hurting himself -- injuring the patient.

Many law professors and other legal experts predict the court will move slightly to the left on criminal and civil law because of the justices who are leaving it, regardless who replaces them.

Professor William Fortune of the University of Kentucky noted, for example, that two of the justices most likely to affirm criminal convictions, Donald Wintersheimer of Covington and Bill Graves of Paducah, are among those retiring.

Defense attorneys have joked that Wintersheimer votes to reverse one conviction a year -- just so nobody can accuse him of reversing none. "You aren't going to get more pro-prosecution than Don," said former Justice James Keller of Lexington.

Court observers also say they expect the court to empathize more with plaintiffs in personal injury, medical malpractice and product liability cases because its staunchest voice for business, William Cooper, has retired.

He has been succeeded by former Court of Appeals Judge John D. Minton Jr. of Bowling Green, who was appointed to the court and faces no opposition as he seeks a full term. Practicing lawyers and professors describe Minton as a moderate and a scholar likely to be a leader on the court.

Predicting a court's future complexion is like playing a roulette wheel, Stopher says. And justices can be hard to pigeon-hole.

As Court of Appeals Judge Tom Wine quipped at a recent forum, "A strict constructionist is a judge who rules for you; while an activist judge is one who rules against you.'"

But lawyers and professors say the court could tilt to the right if voters retain Justice John Roach, who was appointed to the District 5 seat last year, and elect Republican activist Marcus Carey of Erlanger in District 6, who says on his Web site that "fundamental to my core philosophy is the unyielding belief that every right we have is given to us by God."

They would join Republicans Joseph Lambert of Mount Vernon and Deputy Chief Justice Will T. Scott of Pikeville.

[Kentucky] Supreme Court justices serve eight-year terms and are paid $132,012 a year.

The article continues with detailed looks at the positions of each of the candidates.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 21, 2006 01:02 PM
Posted to Courts in general