Court Opinion

ID: 9676236
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:18:54.507604+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:46.016380
License: Public Domain

GRAVES, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
This Court has unnecessarily circumscribed the jurisdiction of the circuit court. By virtue of KRS 23A.010, the circuit court is a court of general jurisdiction that has original jurisdiction of all justiciable causes not exclusively vested in some other court. The question is, therefore, whether the statute here under review mandates that actions of this type and kind be brought in district court.
The claim asserted by Appellant was for an accounting, removal of Appellee as custodian, and for reimbursement of sums allegedly spent improperly.
Even though KRS 385.192(1) grants the district court jurisdiction for an accounting or for a determination of responsibility for claims against the custodial property, it *533does not grant such jurisdiction when the claim becomes adversarial and, as here, seeks reimbursement. Such was the case in Lee v. Porter1 and Priestley v. Priestley.2 In each of those cases, the district court was held to have supervisory jurisdiction with respect to the estates involved, but when the claim became adversarial, circuit court jurisdiction was recognized. Priestley quoted with approval from Lee v. Porter as follows:
Even though KRS 387.210 confers exclusive jurisdiction upon the district court to appoint, remove and require accounting of committees and provides further for appeal to the circuit court from such acts or failure to act there appears to be no power to entertain actions involving such a fiduciary where mismanagement, fraud or deception is involved. Neither does there appear any authority to surcharge accounts or assess damages. Since the case at bar seeks the relief last mentioned based upon mismanagement of the estate by the committee, then the appellant had no alternative but to commence this action in the circuit court since the district court was without statutory power to render the judgment sought.3
I am unable to harmonize the majority holding in the instant case with our decisions in Priestley v. Priestley and Lee v. Porter. Accordingly, I dissent.

. Ky.App., 598 S.W.2d 465 (1980).

. Ky., 949 S.W.2d 594 (1997).

. Ky., 949 S.W.2d at 597.