Opinion ID: 1745096
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Organizational Framework of Immunity Analysis

Text: In Yanero , a junior-varsity high school baseball player, who was not wearing a helmet, was struck in the head and injured by a baseball thrown by a teammate during batting practice. 65 S.W.3d at 517. The batsman ultimately brought suit against the Jefferson County Board of Education, the school's athletic director, assistant coaches, and the Kentucky High School Athletic Association (KHSAA), alleging negligence for failure to require that players wear helmets while participating in batting practice. This Court upheld summary judgment in favor of defendants, the Board of Education, the athletic director and the KHSAA, on grounds of governmental or sovereign immunity and qualified official immunity. Id. at 531. As Yanero notes, sovereign immunity is an inherent attribute of a sovereign state that precludes the maintaining of any suit against the state unless the state has given its consent or otherwise waived its immunity. Id. at 517 ( citing Restatement (Second) of the Law of Torts § 895B(1) (A.L.I. 1979); 72 Am.Jur.2d, States, Territories, and Dependencies, § 99 (1974)). Governmental immunity is, thus, a policy-derived offshoot of sovereign immunity and is premised upon protecting government entities from civil liability. See Yanero, 65 S.W.3d at 519. The constitutional and policy justifications for the doctrine are rooted in notions of separation of power, the principle being that courts should not be in the position to impose civil liability on government entities engaged in official functions, as this would disrupt the business of the government governing. See id.; Ky. Const. §§ 27, 28; see also Dalehite v. United States. 346 U.S. 15, 57, 73 S.Ct. 956, 97 L.Ed. 1427 (1953) (Jackson, J., dissenting). This Court has long struggled with where the permissible limits of sovereign immunity extend. The decision when the sovereign immunity defense applies to an entity created by an act of the General Assembly has been historically troublesome to our Court, resulting in diverse decisions difficult to reconcile. Berns, 801 S.W.2d at 328. To be sure, [t]he only positive conclusion one can draw from the various cases is that the appropriate line separating persons and entities entitled to claim inclusion in the Commonwealth's sovereign immunity is not a line which the General Assembly may draw in its discretion, but a problem of constitutional law which our Court must address on a case by case basis. Id. at 329. The reigning authority on the matter holds that sovereign immunity (as embodied in Ky. Const. § 231) will trump jural rights (Ky. Const. §§ 14, 54, 241) because it is a specific provision of the Constitution, rather than a general provision. See id. However, this only holds true in instances wherein it is the Commonwealth who is being sued. Thus, the crucial determination in sovereign immunity analysis boils down to: whether the entity being sued is the sovereign, its agency, or one who goes about the business of conducting the sovereign's work. Therefore, if CVFD was an agent of the Commonwealth, engaged in the Commonwealth's work, KRS 75.070 is constitutional.