Court Opinion

ID: 9531886
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:15:40.527578+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:36.976579
License: Public Domain

Abbott, J.
dissenting: I would affirm. While I disagree with much of the reasoning behind the majority opinion, I do not want to distract from the thrust of this dissent and will not nitpick the majority opinion. I would comment that this is not a case involving contribution between joint tortfeasors, and I am confused as to what part that erroneous conclusion plays in the majority opinion.
I dissent on the basis that due process is violated because a remedy to due course of law is denied, contrary to § 18 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights. Here, the majority concludes § 18 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights is not violated. Thus, the issue becomes whether there is a legitimate public purpose and an adequate quid pro quo. I would hold there is neither.
We are not dealing with broad policy decisions such as the legislature trying to make health care affordable and available to the general public or make insurance available to protect the public from injuries sustained in automobile accidents. Here, the legislature authorized a method of investing in or making loans of KPERS funds to entities that might otherwise not be able to obtain venture capital. When over $200,000,000 of KPERS funds were lost and numerous lawsuits filed, the legislature, at the request of those who wished to settle and be protected from other defendants who might have a legal right to look to that settling party for full recovery of any sum that the nonsettling defendants might ultimately be required to pay to KPERS, passed the statutes in question.
The sole purpose in passing the statutes was to protect the settling parties at the expense of the remaining defendants. There is no broad general purpose involved — only claims or causes of actions by KPERS are covered. It forces those who KPERS makes a claim against to either settle or lose their right to recover from a settling party who was required by law, at the time the act or acts *45occurred, to recompensate the nonsettling party for its liability to KPERS. In other words, the statute requires potential defendants to settle first or bear all risks, thus denying them their day in court.
I take no comfort in what the majority finds as an adequate quid pro quo. There is no difference in what the majority is holding as an adequate quid pro quo than in this example: You, as an individual, guarantee a promissory note of a friend for $10,000. The friend defaults on the note and the lender makes demand on you and the friend. During the time period at issue in this example, the law was that if you are forced to pay the note, pursuant to its terms, there was an implied contract that your friend, who should have paid the note, will make you whole. If the legislature then enacted a similar statute to the one at issue in this appeal (which in our case at bar applies to only one lender or investor in the state) and your friend settled with the bank for $100 (and the court approved the settlement), you would have to pay $9,900 (or $10,000 less the $100). According to the majority opinion, you should be happy, even though you lost your right to go against your friend for his or her portion of the liability awarded against you ($9,900), because you received an adequate quid pro quo, i.e., you received credit for the $100 your friend settled for.
The net effect of the statute is that KPERS’s risk of settling for less than what is ultimately determined to be the settling defendants’ share is shifted from itself to the remaining nonsettling defendants. The risk of the settling defendants paying more than what is determined to be the settling defendants’ share had always been on the settling defendants and remains there under the statute at issue.
I see no benefit which this statute provides to the nonsettling defendants and would hold that it does not offer an adequate quid pro quo. I would affirm the trial court, albeit for a different reason.
Allegrucci and Larson, JJ., join in the foregoing dissent.