Court Opinion

ID: 9730090
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:00:56.167724+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:04.087644
License: Public Domain

VENTERS, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with Chief Justice Minton’s opinion that the circumstances of this case weigh in favor of affirming the trial judge’s dismissal of this action; and I agree that a trial judge’s decision on whether to dismiss a case under CR 41.02 is not exclusively governed by the factors recited in Ward v. Housman, 809 S.W.2d 717 (Ky.App.1991). I write separately to make an additional point.
An essential consideration that for a trial judge ruling on a defendant’s motion under CR 41.02 is whether the defendant himself had undertaken any effort to move the case toward resolution before seeking dismissal with prejudice. The notion that a defendant, aggrieved by the burden of a lawsuit, bears some measure of responsibility for mitigating his own misery is well known to the law. The criminal law counterpart of a civil defendant’s CR 41.02 motion is a criminal defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial. We held very recently in Miller v. Commonwealth, 283 S.W.3d 690, 702 (Ky.2009), quoting the United States Supreme Court in Barker v. Wingo:33
(t)he defendant’s assertion of his speedy trial right, then, is entitled to strong evidentiary weight in determining whether the defendant is being deprived of the right. We emphasize that failure to assert the right will make it difficult for a defendant to prove that he was denied a speedy trial.
(Emphasis added).
A defendant in a civil case has no less of a duty to move his own case forward than does his criminal law counterpart. Just as the criminal defendant finds it “difficult” to win a dismissal for lack of prosecution when he has failed to complain of the delay, so, too, a civil defendant’s claim of *42prejudicial delay under CR 41.02 should be weighed against his own effort, or lack of effort, to move the case forward before seeking the ultimate sanction of dismissal.

. 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972) at 532.