Court Opinion

ID: 9783922
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 20:25:20.988105+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:42.153734
License: Public Domain

*908NOBLE, J.,
dissenting:
I dissent because I do not believe that a claim involving the Court of Justice, the AOC, or any judicial officers or court employees may proceed at the Board of Claims. Nevertheless, in Horn by Horn v. Commonwealth, 916 S.W.2d 173, 176 (Ky.1995), this Court held in part that the Board had jurisdiction over the Court of Justice and thus the AOC. And the majority, though it does not accept all the reasoning of Horn, reaches the same holding. But in my view, Horn and the majority opinion are flawed and have perpetuated an application of the waiver doctrine that does not comfortably fit with elected officers.
The AOC argues against this part of Horn in two ways. First, it claims that allowing the Board to have jurisdiction would violate, or at least harm, the separation of powers included in sections 27 and 28 of the Kentucky Constitution. Second, it claims that the Board of Claims act does not unambiguously waive sovereign immunity as to the Court of Justice and the AOC.
The constitutional question need not— and indeed cannot — be resolved in this case if it can be decided on another ground. See Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Gov’t v. TDC Group, LLC, 283 S.W.3d 657, 660 (Ky.2009) applying “ ‘the long-standing practice of this Court ... to refrain from reaching constitutional issues when other, non-constitutional grounds can be relied upon.’ ” (quoting Baker v. Fletcher, 204 S.W.3d 589, 597-98 (Ky.2006)); Baker, 204 S.W.3d at 598 (“[W]e must not reach a constitutional issue if other grounds are sufficient to decide the case.”); Dawson v. Birenbaum, 968 S.W.2d 663, 666 (Ky.1998) (“It is well settled that where a party pleads both statutory and constitutional claims, the court deciding those claims should limit itself to considering the statutory claims if in so doing the court may avoid deciding complex constitutional issues.”); see also Spector Motor Serv. v. McLaughlin, 323 U.S. 101, 105, 65 S.Ct. 152, 89 L.Ed. 101 (1944) (“If there is one doctrine more deeply rooted than any other in the process of constitutional adjudication, it is that we ought not to pass on questions of constitutionality ... unless such adjudication is unavoidable.”).
Essentially, a constitutional issue may and should be avoided if a claimant can obtain relief on some other ground. Because I ultimately agree with the AOC’s second point in this regard, that the Act did not waive immunity as to the courts, the separation of powers issue need not be addressed. Though the majority disclaims the reasoning of Horn, it nevertheless maintains that case’s holding that the Court of Justice is subject to the Board of Claims. I disagree with that holding, because both Horn’s and the majority’s reasoning are erroneous.
Horn read the Board of Claims act as waiving sovereign immunity for two reasons. It “first not[ed] ... discomfort with the proposition ... that the Board of Claims has no jurisdiction over the AOC.” Horn, 916 S.W.2d at 174. It then claimed that the language of the Act itself was broad enough to waive the immunity of the Court of Justice and its agencies, officers, and employees.
This first concern — the Court’s “discomfort” — simply is not sufficient to allow a waiver of sovereign immunity. Inherent in the very concept of such immunity is that wrongs by the government may not be remedied by a suit at law or otherwise without the state’s permission. Absent a waiver, which may only be created by the *909General Assembly, see Ky. Const. § 221, there is no avenue to seek redress for wrongs committed by the Commonwealth or its agents. Though this “discomfort” may be a persuasive policy argument in favor of waiving sovereign immunity, it is an insufficient rationale for this Court to find such a waiver.
The second part of Horn’s discussion is simply a misreading of the Act. This part of the opinion focused on KRS 44.070(1), the core of the Act, which states in part:
A Board of Claims ... is created and vested with full power and authority to investigate, hear proof, and to compensate persons for damages sustained to either person or property as a proximate result of negligence on the part of the Commonwealth, any of its cabinets, departments, bureaus, or agencies, or any of its officers, agents, or employees while acting within the scope of their employment by the Commonwealth or any of its cabinets, departments, bureaus, or agencies....
(Emphasis added.) The Court focused on the use of the word “departments” in the statute, and noted that the judiciary is one of the “departments” of government under section 27 of the Kentucky Constitution. Construing the use of “departments” in both the statute and the constitution, the Court held that “[i]t is clear to us that the intent of the legislature, in enacting KRS 44.070, was to give citizens the right of recourse against the government — the government, to refer back to the beginning of our discussion, being made up of the three separate ‘departments.’ ” Horn, 916 S.W.2d at 175.
However, the legislature, which has the only power to waive sovereign immunity, has distinguished the constitutional use of “department,” which was used as a synonym for “branch,” from the statutory meaning of the word by specifically defining it and commanding that the statutory definition be used throughout the Kentucky Revised Statutes whenever possible. KRS 12.010 provides definitions for terms relating to administrative organizations and states that they are to be used “throughout the Kentucky Revised Statutes where applicable and appropriate unless the context requires otherwise.” The word “department” is one of those defined terms and “means that basic unit of administrative organization of state government, by whatever name called, designated by statute or by statutorily authorized executive action as a ‘department,’ such organization to be headed by a commissioner.” KRS 12.010(2).
Clearly, this definition is incompatible with classifying the Court of Justice as a statutory “department,” since that term contemplates an agency within the executive branch of government. KRS 12.010 as a whole describes executive branch entities, falling as it does under that part of the Kentucky Revised Statutes titled “Executive Branch,” and referring repeatedly to “executive action” and “executive branch.” The statute even goes so far as to place a “department” directly in the executive branch by including it in the definition of an “organizational unit,” which “means any unit of organization in the executive branch of the state government that is not an administrative body, including but not limited to any agency, program cabinet, department, bureau, division, section or office.” KRS 12.010(1) (emphasis added). That “department” refers to an executive branch entity should be plainly evident from this language.
Comparison of the definition with the Court of Justice and the AOC, however, *910further cements this understanding. Departments are required to be “headed by a commissioner.” Yet neither the Court of Justice nor the AOC are “headed by a commissioner.” Both are headed instead by the Chief Justice of the Commonwealth, who is “the executive head of the Court of Justice,” Ky. Const. § 110(5)(b), and for whom the “Administrative Office of the Courts [wa]s created to serve as the staff,” KRS 27A.050.
The Horn Court was presented with this argument, though apparently in a simplified form. Rather than discussing its merits, the Court dismissed it in a summary fashion, stating: “We choose ... not to become entangled in semantics, for the general rule in statutory construction ‘is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the General Assembly.’ ” Horn, 916 S.W.2d at 175 (quoting Beckham v. Bd. of Educ. of Jefferson County, 873 S.W.2d 575, 577 (Ky.1994)).
But such “statutory construction” is only necessary where the statutory language is not clear. Legislative intent siphoned out of the ether cannot trump clear statutory language. After quoting the intent language in Beckham, which actually described only the Court’s “duty,” not a rule of construction, Horn unfortunately disregarded the very next sentence, which stated: “We are not at liberty to add or subtract from the legislative enactment nor discover meaning not reasonably ascertainable from the language used.” Beckham, 873 S.W.2d at 577.
The question then is whether the context of the Board of Claims Act requires use of a different definition of “department” than appears in KRS 12.010. Upon reading the Act as a whole, it does not.
No doubt, this is why the majority has declined to perpetuate Horn’s emphasis on the word departments in the Board of Claims Act. Instead, the majority reads the Act’s broad language referring to waving the immunity of the Commonwealth and all its various agencies and agents to apply to the judicial and legislative branches of government. This claim, too, is flawed. The Act only waives immunity for the executive branch.
The most important point in this regard is that the language used to describe the entities whose immunity is waived by the Act tracks the structure of the executive branch. KRS 44.070(1), which includes the primary waiver of sovereign immunity for the Board, uses the language “cabinets, departments, bureaus, or agencies”; the first two of these terms is defined in KRS 12.010 and all four are discussed under the executive branch in KRS 12.010(1). Both KRS 44.072, which discusses the intent of the General Assembly as to waiver, and KRS 44.073, also uses the same “cabinets, departments, bureaus, or agencies” language. This alone indicates the General Assembly’s intention that the waiver only apply to the executive branch. It is also abundantly clear that much of this language was used prior to the existence of the AOC or the unified Court of Justice, which lends credence to the argument that the language was not intended to apply to the judiciary.
That the Act is intended to apply only to the executive branch is supported by language throughout the Act describing the composition and operation of the Board by the executive branch. The Board itself is composed of the members of the Crime Victims Compensation Board, KRS 44.070(1), who are all appointed by the governor, KRS 346.030(1), and one of whom, the chairman, serves at the pleasure of the governor, KRS 346.030(3). *911The hearing officers who assist the Board are also appointed by the governor, KRS 44.070(6), and they are impliedly removable by the governor, KRS 44.070(7).
The Board’s powers also indicate the Act applies only to the executive branch. The Board has the power to order the “affected state agencfy] to investigate claims and the incidents on which they are based and to furnish to the board and the claimant in writing the facts learned by investigation,” KRS 44.086. Since the Board itself is an executive entity, such power should only go to other executive entities, not entities in other branches of government.
Additionally, legal decisions about defending a claim are made by the executive branch. KRS 44.090 provides that the defense shall be made by “[t]he attorney[ ] appointed by the governor,” and refers to that attorney as the “cabinet attorney” who “represent[s] his respective cabinet, department, bureau, agency, or employee.” If such an attorney is unavailable, the Attorney General, another executive branch official, shall appoint one of his assistants to present the defense. KRS 44.100 again refers to the attorneys who defend claims as “assistant attorneys general or attorneys, appointed by the Governor to represent the Commonwealth’s cabinets, departments, agencies or employees, agents or officers thereof.” Finally, the decision whether to appeal an award by the* Board is controlled by the Attorney General, KRS 44.140(1) (“No state agency can appeal any decision of the board without securing the prior approval of the Attorney General.”), which only makes sense if the decision can affect only an executive branch entity.
These aspects of the Act make the AOC’s claim that it violates the constitutional separation of powers more than understandable. Under the Act, the Board, an executive branch entity, gets to order an investigation of any affected entity; decisions about claims are made by the executive branch; and the claim itself is decided by the executive branch. Each of these creates a danger of violating separation of powers when applied to other branches of government.
But this danger of separation of powers simply augurs in favor of reading the Act as applying only to the executive branch. As the majority notes in another context, interpretations of statutes rendering them unconstitutional should be avoided whenever possible. Ante, op. at 900-01; see also Yanero v. Davis, 65 S.W.3d 510, 525 (Ky.2001) “It is a well established principle of constitutional law and statutory construction that if a statute is reasonably susceptible to two constructions, one of which renders it unconstitutional, the court must adopt the construction which sustains the constitutionality of the statute.’ ” (quoting Davidson v. American Freightways, Inc., Ky., 25 S.W.3d 94, 96 (2000)).
Setting any constitutional concern aside, this interpretation is also compelling in light of the Act’s expressed intent to be a limited waiver of sovereign immunity. KRS 44.072 states that “[t]he Commonwealth ... waives the sovereign immunity defense only in the limited situations as herein set forth.” (Emphasis added.) The statute goes on to say that “[i]t is further the intention of the General Assembly to otherwise expressly preserve the sovereign immunity of the Commonwealth ... in all other situations except where sovereign immunity is specifically and expressly waived as set forth by statute.” KRS 44.073 also expressly preserves the state’s sovereign immunity except as expressly stated otherwise in statutes; in fact, it *912includes three subsections further expressing the idea that the General Assembly intended to retain a substantial portion of its sovereign immunity. See KRS 44.073(11) (“Except as otherwise provided by this chapter, nothing contained herein shall be construed to be a waiver of sovereign immunity or any other immunity or privilege....”); KRS 44.073(12) (“Except as otherwise specifically set forth by statute and in reference to subsection (11) of this section, no action for damages may be maintained in any court or forum against the Commonwealth....”); KRS 44.073(13) (“The preservation of sovereign immunity referred to in subsections (11) and (12) of this section includes, but is not limited to, the following: (a) Discretionary acts or decisions; (b) Executive decisions; (c) Ministerial acts; (d) Actions in the performance of obligations running to the public as a whole; (e) Governmental performance of a self-imposed protective function to the public or citizens; and (f) Administrative acts.”).
This reservation of immunity and requirement that any waiver be express and specific in a statute is also reflected in this Court’s jurisprudence on the subject. For example, this Court has held:
“Statutes in derogation of sovereignty should be strictly construed in favor of the state, so that its sovereignty may be upheld and not narrowed or destroyed, and should not be permitted to divest the state or its government of any of its prerogatives, rights, or remedies, unless the intention of the legislature to effect this object is clearly expressed.”
City of Bowling Green v. T & E Elec. Contractors, Inc., 602 S.W.2d 434, 436 (Ky.1980) (quoting Commonwealth, Department of Highways v. Hale, 348 S.W.2d 831, 832 (Ky.1961)). This Court has also stated that it “will find waiver only where stated ‘by the most express language or by such overwhelming implications from the text as will leave no room for any other reasonable construction.’ ” Withers v. University of Kentucky, 939 S.W.2d 340, 346 (Ky.1997) (quoting Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 673, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974)); see also Jones v. Cross, 260 S.W.3d 343, 347 (Ky.2008); Grayson County Bd. of Educ. v. Casey, 157 S.W.3d 201, 205 (Ky.2005); Young v. Hammond, 139 S.W.3d 895, 914 (Ky.2004); Reyes v. Hardin County, 55 S.W.3d 337, 340 (Ky.2001).
Under this paradigm, I cannot say that the Act includes a waiver of sovereign immunity for any branch of government except the executive branch “by the most express language or by such overwhelming implications from the text as will leave no room for any other reasonable construction.” It is reasonable that the General Assembly intended to limit the applicability of the Act’s waiver only to the executive branch. Compared to the other branches, the executive branch has dozens of administrative entities and tens of thousands of employees, making it by far the largest branch of government. The vast majority of injuries caused by the state stem from the executive branch’s actions. The Court of Justice, on the other hand, has only one administrative agency and only a few thousand employees, a large fraction of whom are directly elected officials. Similarly, the legislative branch is small in comparison to the executive branch, having relatively few officers and employees and only one administrative agency, the Legislative Research Commission. KRS 7.090(1) (“There is created a Legislative Research Commission as an independent agency in the legislative branch of state government, which is exempt from control by the execu*913tive branch and from reorganization by the Governor.”). Thus, only a small percentage of potential claims would arise from the actions of those two branches.
Nor is this exclusion of the judiciary and legislature from otherwise generally applicable statutes unprecedented. For example, the Court of Justice and the General Assembly, despite each having an administrative agency, are expressly excepted from some of the statutory scheme relating to regulations for administrative entities. See KRS 13A.010(1) (“ ‘Administrative body’ means each state board, bureau, cabinet, commission, department, authority, officer, or other entity, except the General Assembly and the Court of Justice, authorized by law to promulgate administrative regulations.... ” (emphasis added)).
There is also the fact that the Act just is not a good fit with elected officials. The judiciary and the legislature are all elected directly by the people. As such, their work is direct state action, as they are not “employees” of their administrative agency, but rather the other way around. The agencies perform a public purpose only to the extent that they support or provide staff for the elected officials. Judges and legislators are the state embodied in the person of an official. Both have additional personal immunity other than through sovereign immunity: judicial and legislative. In fact, in Horn, despite holding that the Act applied to the judiciary, the Court went on to also hold that the claim at the Board could not continue because the employee had “quasi-judicial immunity” which barred the claim. (This was erroneous, as the claim at the Board was against the state, not the individual. The presence of other immunities, of course, further underscores the difference between executive and judicial branch personnel.)
Taken as a whole, it is evident that the Act contemplates only actions against executive branch agencies. Simply put, there is nothing in the Act to indicate that its use of the term “departments” refers to anything other than administrative organizations under the executive branch as defined in KRS 12.010, and the use of the term “Commonwealth” cannot be read so broadly as to rewrite the entire Act. I therefore conclude that the definition of “department” in KRS 12.010 is applicable and appropriate for use in the Board of Claims Act and the context does not require otherwise. Thus, Horn was incorrect to hold that “department” as used in KRS 44.070 applied to the “departments” of government — normally referred to as “branches” — as defined in section 27 of the Kentucky Constitution. I also conclude that the majority errs in reading the term “Commonwealth” expansively to apply outside the executive branch.
I instead would hold that the Board of Claims Act, as currently drafted, does not waive the sovereign immunity of the Court of Justice, or its agency, officers and employees. (Nor does it waive the immunity of the General Assembly, the LRC, or its employees, though that is the clear implication of the majority opinion.) The Board therefore properly determined that it did not have jurisdiction over the Appellant’s claims.
CUNNINGHAM, J., and CONNOLLY, Special Justice, join.