Court Opinion

ID: 9732938
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:45:24.405884+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:36.530302
License: Public Domain

GRAVES, Justice.
In 1993, the Court of Appeals declared KRS 65.115 1, a statute which was enacted to provide compensation for taking sewage treatment utility property, unconstitutional as special legislation. Consequently, the Jefferson Circuit Court in this case correctly granted a motion to dismiss a subsequent complaint seeking recovery based on the same statute. Once an appellate court has declared a statute unconstitutional in its entirety, the statute cannot thereafter provide any rights or powers under Kentucky law.
Appellant, Spanish Cove Sanitation, owns a waste water treatment facility that is composed of grounds, equipment and pipe systems providing waste water and sewage treatment to residential customers in the Fern Creek area of Jefferson County. Appellee, Louisville-Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District, is a municipal corporation with the power to acquire land by eminent domain proceedings pursuant to KRS 76.110. Appellee, as part of its project to expand services into the Fern Creek area, planned to tie into the pipe system that served Appellant’s customers. This would render Appellant’s facility valueless. Appellee did not plan to pay Appellant, nor did it file an eminent domain action.
Appellant filed this action in the Jefferson Circuit Court asserting federal claims under the 5th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution and state claims under Sections 13 and 242 of the Kentucky Constitution relating to the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. Appellant also made a claim pursuant to KRS 65.115 which requires a public corporation that maintains a sewer service to compensate for taking the customers of another sewer service. Appellee filed a motion to dismiss the action for ripeness, as, at that point, Appellee had not yet tied into Appellant’s lines. Appellee also argued that the claim under KRS 65.115 should be dismissed because the Court of Appeals had found the statute unconstitutional in Monticello Co. v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet, Ky.App., 864 S.W.2d 921 (1993).
The trial court granted the motion to dismiss, stating that the record reflected that the taken property had, in fact, been paid for. The Court of Appeals thereafter stated in an unpublished opinion that the ruling below indicated the trial court’s con*920fusion between this case and a previous action between the same parties that had been resolved in another division of Jefferson Circuit Court.
The Court of Appeals’ opinion focused on KRS 65.115. In Monticello, the Court of Appeals deemed the statute special legislation 2, because it exempted urban county government from the provisions of the statute, an exemption which only applied to the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government. In considering the instant case, the Court of Appeals panel opined that KRS 65.115 could be saved by severing out the unconstitutional language “other than an urban county” and leaving the rest of the statute intact. Thus, in the panel’s opinion the Monticello decision went too far and Appellant, in fact, had a cause of action. The panel referred the case for en banc consideration of this proposition and the entire Court split 7-7 on the question.
The Court of Appeals thereafter recommended transfer to this Court. We denied transfer because the taking had not actually occurred at the time the suit was filed and a judgment dismissing the claim was entered. On reconsideration by the en banc panel, the Court of Appeals held that the trial court had dismissed the case “with prejudice” and such a dismissal would operate to foreclose Appellant from presenting the case when the taking actually did occur.3 Further, the panel pointed to a notation on the trial court’s ruling concerning KRS 65.115:
An appeal should be taken in this action in regard to the interpretation of KRS 446.090 versus the interpretation of KRS 65.115. The issue of a lack of constitutional standing and the issue of special legislation should be decided by the appellate court.
KRS 446.0904 deals with severability of unconstitutional provisions from the balance of a statute.
Turning to the KRS 65.115 issue, the panel on reconsideration concluded it was bound by Monticello, supra, because a majority of the Court of Appeals had declined to overrule it. The panel then turned to a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit for guidance, Calvert Investments, Inc. v. Louisville-Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District, 847 F.2d 304 (6th Cir. 1988), which held that the owner of the treatment facility had bare legal title to the pipes. However, the customers had the right of free usage of those pipes. Servicing those customers was deemed to be a mere expectancy and not a protected property interest. Id. at 308. Thus, the Court of Appeals panel concluded in this case that Appellant did not have an ave*921nue by which to seek compensation. We granted discretionary review to address the concerns raised by Monticello and we now affirm the Court of Appeals’ decision.
At the outset, we should note that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in determining that the issue was not ripe. Under Kentucky law, before a plaintiff can make a claim of inverse condemnation, there must be an actual taking. Holloway Const. Co. v. Smith, Ky., 68B S.W.2d 248, 249 (1984). In Associated Industries of Kentucky v. Commonwealth, Ky., 912 S.W.2d 947 (1995), we held that Kentucky courts cannot grant advisory opinions or rule on hypothetical questions, but rather must rule on real disputes. At the time this action was filed, nothing had even arguably been taken.
Notwithstanding, Appellant’s claim would still fail based on the KRS 65.115 argument. The Court of Appeals, under KRS 446.090, may have theoretically been able to sever the unconstitutional portion of KRS 65.115, leaving the remainder intact. However, the Court of Appeals held the statute unconstitutional in its entirety in Monticello, a fact neither this Court nor the General Assembly has changed in eight years. It is not now appropriate for this Court to revisit the severability of a statute previously held unconstitutional.
What Appellant fails to recognize in arguing that the unconstitutional portions of KRS 65.115 are severable from the remainder of the statute is that KRS 65.115 no longer exists. For 85 years, it has been the law in Kentucky that any statute passed in contravention of the Constitution is void ab initio, and any action taken thereunder is a nullity. City of Henderson v. Lieber’s Ex’r, 175 Ky. 15, 192 S.W. 830 (1917). The effect of the Court of Appeals declaring KRS 65.115 unconstitutional is to render it a nullity. It is impossible to now parse out the unconstitutional pieces of something that does not exist.
We agree with the Court of Appeals that, in the absence of KRS 65.115, the Calvert Investments, Inc., swpra, rationale is applicable in this case. Appellant has no protected property interest in providing sewage treatment services to the Fern Creek customers, it has but a mere expectancy. Therefore, we affirm the Court of Appeals in its opinion that the trial court properly granted summary judgment in favor of the Louisville-Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer district.
LAMBERT, C.J., COOPER, GRAVES, JOHNSTONE, STUMBO, and WINTERSHEIMER, JJ., concur.
KELLER, J., dissents in a separate opinion.

. KRS 65.115(1) Compensation for sewage treatment utility property — Eminent domain- — Surcharge to customers: "The provisions of any other law, rule, or regulation notwithstanding, if any city, county, public body corporate or politic or special district or subdistrict, other than an urban county, furnishes, or proposes to furnish, sewage treatment utility services to customers of another sewage treatment utility by means of all or any part of the installations owned or paid for by such other sewage treatment utility, then such city, county, public body, district or sub-district taking over or proposing to take over the customers, shall pay just compensation for such installations prior to the time the customers are taken over. If an agreement for compensation is not reached, then just compensation for the installations shall be payable by said city, county, public body, district or subdistrict after condemnation as provided for in the Eminent Domain Act of Kentucky.”

. Ky. Const. § 59 provides that “[t]he General Assembly shall not pass local or special acts concerning any of the following subjects, or for any of the following purposes ...: Twenty-ninth: In all other cases where a general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted.” Section 60 provides in part that "[t]he General Assembly shall not indirectly enact any special or local act .... by exempting from the operation of a general act any city, town, district, or county....”

. The parties have indicated this has since happened.

.446.090. Severability. It shall be considered that it is the intent of the General Assembly, in enacting any statute, that if any part of the statute be held unconstitutional the remaining parts shall remain in force, unless the statute provides otherwise, or unless the remaining parts are so essentially and inseparably connected with and dependent upon the unconstitutional part that it is apparent that the General Assembly would not have enacted the remaining parts without the unconstitutional part, or unless the remaining parts, standing alone, are incomplete and incapable of being executed in accordance with the intent of the General Assembly.