Court Opinion

ID: 9596693
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:52:15.489454+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:35.863191
License: Public Domain

KELLER, Justice,
Concurring.
While I concur in the majority’s ultimate conclusion that summary judgment for Ap-pellee T.I.G. Insurance Company was improper and that this case must be reversed and remanded for the trial court to enter summary judgment for Appellants, the path I follow to that conclusion diverges substantially from the one taken by the majority. In my opinion, this Court “lost its way” almost a decade ago in Potts v. Draper1 when it dismissed, with little explanation other than that the Court found it “unpersuasive,” a sound argument that “K.R.S. Chapter 186A ... has little to do with determining ownership for insurance purposes”2 and adopted the reasoning of Cowles v. Rogers,3 in which the Court of Appeals held that “since the effective date of KRS 186A, the provisions of that statute ... govern the issue of who owns a motor vehicle for purposes of insurance coverage.” 4 In my opinion, when this Court is asked to determine the “owner” of a motor vehicle for insurance purposes it should do so by applying the definition of “owner”5 found in the • Motor Vehicle Reparations Act subtitle of the Insurance Code6 — an act adopted with a stated purpose of “re-quirting] owners ... of motor vehicles in the Commonwealth to procure insurance covering basic reparation benefits and legal liability arising out of ownership ... of such motor vehicles”7 — rather than the one KRS Chapter 186A uses in connection with provisions establishing an automated motor vehicle registration system designed for entirely different purposes like logistical efficiency, the inhibition of trafficking in stolen vehicles, and easier collection of taxes and licensing fees.8
Thus, in the case at bar, I believe that the trial court should have granted summary judgment for Appellants because, at the time of the accident, J.D. Byrider, Inc. *403neither owned the motor vehicle — it had, after all, sold the vehicle to Chandler the day before — nor possessed title to it, and thus, applying the KRS 304.39-020(12) definition, J.D. Byrider, Inc. was not the “owner” of the vehicle responsible for insuring it. Although I recognize that the majority’s analysis tracks existing precedent, I believe that precedent to be inherently flawed, and I would overrule Potts v. Draper so that, in future cases, Kentucky courts may determine ownership for insurance purposes under statutory provisions germane to that inquiry.

. Ky., 864 S.W.2d 896 (1993).

. Id. at 899.

. Ky.App., 762 S.W.2d 414 (1989).

. Id. at 416-417. See Potts v. Draper, supra note 1 at 899.

. KRS 304.39-020(12) ('"Owner' means a person, other than a lienholder or secured party, who owns or has title to a motor vehicle or is entitled to the use and possession of a motor vehicle subject to a security interest held by another person.” (emphasis added)).

. See KRS 304.39-010 — 304.39-340.

. KRS 304.39-010(1).

. See KRS 186A.010(1):
An automated motor vehicle and trailer registration and titling system shall be developed and implemented as expeditiously as practicable in all counties of the Commonwealth. The automated motor vehicle and trailer registration system shall be designed to enable Kentucky’s county clerks to produce motor vehicle and trailer certificates of registration in their offices, and certificates of title in Frankfort, by automated means utilizing telecommunication terminals and associated devices supplied by the Commonwealth, to inhibit registration and transfer of stolen motor vehicles or trailers, to improve the capability of detecting and recovering such vehicles, to ensure development of a common vehicle information database to improve efficiency in auditing motor vehicle usage tax, license fee collections, and in collecting personal property tax to provide information to the traffic record system, and to provide improved security interest protection to potential creditors throughout Kentucky while simultaneously reducing the number of forms that must be processed and stored each year in Kentucky.

Id.