Court Opinion

ID: 9690979
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 19:57:42.446687+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:25.102007
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Justice ABRAMSON.
In the course of making an authorized arrest, a deputy of the Barren County Sheriff injured two Kentucky State Police Officers who were assisting him. The injured officers brought suit against the deputy, alleging that he was negligent, and against his employer, Sheriff Barney Jones, alleging that Jones was subject to vicarious liability for torts committed by his deputy in the line of duty. The Barren Circuit Court dismissed the suit against Sheriff Jones on the ground that as a county official Jones and his office were immune from vicarious liability. In ordering that the suit against Jones be reinstated, the majority holds that the sheriff does indeed come within the usual rules whereby county government and its officials are immune from suit, but that KRS 70.040 waives that immunity with respect to the sheriff. Because this case involves thorny but important issues concerning the reconciliation of old law with modern circumstances, issues currently unaddressed, I write separately to acknowledge them.
As my colleagues note and as this Court has had several occasions in recent years to reiterate, the doctrine of sovereign immunity and its offshoots of governmental and official immunity derive from the common law rule that the sovereign — the state — could not be sued except with its consent. Yanero v. Davis, 65 S.W.3d 510 (Ky.2001). Sections 230 and 231 of our current Constitution have been held to recognize and incorporate the common law practices by declaring the General Assembly’s authority to waive the immunity the common law supplied. Reyes v. Hardin County, 55 S.W.3d 337 (Ky.2001). Counties in Kentucky are political subdivisions of the state, and as such have been held to share the state’s sovereign immunity. Schwindel v. Meade County, 113 S.W.3d 159 (Ky.2003). County officials, moreover, who in their official capacities are generally as immune as the County, Yanero v. Davis, supra, have been held to have no vicarious liability for torts committed by *347their subordinates and employees. Franklin County v. Malone, 957 S.W.2d 195 (Ky.1997) (overruled on other grounds by Yanero). Pursuant to this now familiar analysis, my colleagues reason that Sheriff Jones, an elected County official, would be immune from the injured officers’ vicarious liability suits were it not for KRS 70.040. That statute provides as follows:
The sheriff shall be liable for the acts or omissions of his deputies; except that, the office of sheriff, and not the individual holder thereof, shall be liable under this section. When a deputy sheriff omits to act or acts in such a way as to render his principal responsible, and the latter discharges such responsibility, the deputy shall be hable to the principal for all damages and costs which are caused by the deputy’s act or omission.
The majority opinion deems the first clause of this provision a waiver of the sheriffs immunity from vicarious liability, and so concludes that the injured state police officers’ suits against him should be reinstated.
The statute can reasonably be read as my colleagues read it but to find a waiver of immunity, Kentucky law demands more than a reasonable reading. As we declared in Withers v. University of Kentucky, 939 S.W.2d 340 (Ky.1997),
[w]e 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.
Id. at 346. Applying Withers just three years ago in Grayson County Board of Education v. Casey, 157 S.W.3d 201 (Ky.2005), we held that KRS 160.310, a provision authorizing boards of education to insure against the negligence of school bus drivers, failed the Withers test despite expressly requiring that insurance policies issued pursuant to the statute “shall bind the company to pay any final judgment rendered against the insured.” Although this language could reasonably be construed to contemplate suits against the insured and hence a waiver of immunity, we rejected that reading as not comporting with the strong presumption against waiver. On the contrary, because the statute did not otherwise refer to “suits, jury verdicts, or courts,” and because the reference to judgments could be thought to apply to “suits brought in judicial courts when the board or its employee is not cloaked with immunity,” we held that Withers precluded a finding of waiver.
Similarly, although KRS 70.040 is susceptible to the reading my colleagues give it, that reading is not compelled by “overwhelming implications from the text.” As in Casey, there is no mention in KRS 70.040 of suits, jury verdicts, courts or other words expressly or by clear implication addressing, much less waiving, immunity. And as in Casey, this statute allows a reading that would preserve immunity: the clause providing that the sheriffs office shall be liable for deputy torts could be construed by analogy with Casey and the Claims Against Local Governments Act, KRS 65.2001 to 65.2006, as not waiving the sheriff’s immunity from suit, but rather as compelling his office to pay judgments obtained against non-immune employees. See Schwindel v. Meade County, supra (discussing the Claims Against Local Governments Act).
Because the statute does not on its face either express or “overwhelmingly imply” a waiver of immunity, it behooves us to consider it more critically. To do so, as the parties and amicus have ably and interestingly demonstrated, requires one first to observe that like the doctrine of sovereign immunity, the office of sheriff has roots deep in the common law. It is, indeed, one of the oldest offices in our law, extending back at least to Anglo-Saxon times (the word “sheriff” derives from the Old English word for the “shire’s reeve”), *348and possibly as far as the Roman occupation of Britain. Magenheimer v. State, 120 Ind.App. 128, 90 N.E.2d 813 (1950). At common law, it appears, the sheriff was a notable exception to the rule that the sovereign and its agents were generally immune from suit. Indeed, numerous early decisions from other states and from our own Commonwealth recognize that at common law the sheriff was answerable for the official acts of those he employed. See, e.g., Owens v. Gatewood, 4 Bibb 494, 7 Ky. 494 (1817); McIntyre v. Trumbull, 7 Johns 35 (N.Y.Sup.1810); Grinnell v. Phillips, 1 Mass. 530 (Mass.1805). Several states, Kentucky among them, passed legislation recognizing and declaring this common law practice. Williams v. United States, 353 F.Supp. 1226 (D.C.La.1973); Magenheimer v. State, supra, KRS 70.040 is the codified descendant of two provisions enacted in 1893, two years after the adoption of our current Constitution that affirm the common law rule. Those statutes did no more than declare the prevailing rule and that conclusion is apparent by the fact that even in their wake our courts continued to rely on the older authority. West v. Nantz’ Adm’r., 267 Ky. 113, 101 S.W.2d 673 (1937); Johnson v. Williams’ Adm’r, 111 Ky. 289, 63 S.W. 759 (1901).
In 1971, the former Court of Appeals was asked to construe KRS 70.040, and citing both West v. Nantz’ Adm’r., supra, and Johnson v. Williams’Adm’r, supra, it held that the statute rendered a sheriff liable, both personally and on his bond, for wrongful injuries inflicted by a deputy in the course of an otherwise lawful arrest. Lawson v. Burnett, 471 S.W.2d 726 (Ky.1971). In response, perhaps, to this reminder that the common law sheriff was subject to personal as well as bond liability for his deputies’ torts, in 1972 the General Assembly amended KRS 70.040 and brought it to its present form by adding the proviso that “the office of sheriff, and not the individual holder thereof, shall be liable under this section.” Thus, Sheriff Jones cannot be personally liable for his deputy’s act but his office can be liable.
In summary, Sheriff Jones is indeed subject to the injured state police officers’ suits, but not because KRS 70.040 waives his immunity. He is subject to suit, rather, because that statute codifies the long tradition in our law that the sheriff will be answerable for his deputies’ wrongful performance of their duties, a tradition the record before us does not allow us to question. However, revised KRS 70.040 makes it abundantly clear that liability for the deputies’ acts or omissions extends only to the sheriffs office and not to the sheriff personally. Thus, I concur in the result reached by the majority. For the reasons stated, however, I respectfully depart from my colleagues’ reasoning.