Court Opinion

ID: 9775024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:40:55.259679+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:19.018640
License: Public Domain

COMBS, Justice,
dissenting.
I join in the dissenting opinion by the Chief Justice, and also dissent for the following additional reasons. I can identify with the plight of appellant and his family. My father was a coal miner and was killed in a slate fall in 1937. As a practicing attorney for almost a third of a century, I devoted a large percentage of my practice to coal miners and their dependents. But as a jurist I am bound by oath to support both the United States and Kentucky constitutions. Both constitutions prohibit the impairment of obligations assumed under contracts. Here the contract expressly provides as a condition precedent that there be timely notice of the claim. No convincing explanation or justification was given for the delay of more than six months. To ignore the contract provision would not only impair the obligations assumed thereunder but would in fact be rewriting the agreement.
STEPHENS, C.J., joins in this dissent.