Court Opinion

ID: 9622419
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:17:20.650385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:16.216543
License: Public Domain

KELLER, Justice,
dissenting.
Without any hesitation, I join Chief Justice Lambert’s dissent. I write separately merely to note my observation that the remedy the majority approves for Appellant’s violation of CR 8.01 — reversal of the jury’s verdict and remand to the trial court for entry of a judgment for only those items of damages included in earlier answers to interrogatories — actually sanctions “trial by ambush” and creates significant externalities likely to disrupt the “Economic Theory of Settlement.” I cannot fathom how an interpretation of our Rules of Civil Procedure that discourages proactive efforts by defendants to seek information relating to damage exposure could possibly foster settlements. After all, why would any defendant have an incentive to settle when he or she can wait until the day of trial and then — without any previous complaint or showing of prejudice — exploit opposing counsel’s oversights and invoke hypertechnical constructions of the rules to keep a plaintiff from recovering his or her damages?
Here, after the trial court denied Appel-lee’s motion in limine to prohibit the Appellant from introducing evidence showing damages in excess of the damages claimed in the interrogatory responses, Appellee asked the trial court to continue the trial in order to give it an opportunity to prepare for evidence concerning these additional elements of damages. While the majority chooses a remedy that leads to a harsh result, it could easily remedy any prejudice it believes Appellee’s tardy notice may have caused by holding that the trial court erred when it denied Appellee’s motion to continue the trial, reversing the judgment, remanding the claim for a new trial, and assessing the costs thereof against Appellant. Notwithstanding the majority’s notions of economic theory, “there are no good economies in an unjust law,” 1 and, above all else, this Court is *483charged with the duty to do justice.2 The majority has failed to do so in this case.
LAMBERT, C.J. and GRAVES, J„ join this dissenting opinion.

. Hilen v. Hays, Ky., 673 S.W.2d 713, 718 (1984).

. Id. ("Above all else, court-made law must be just.”).