Court Opinion

ID: 9669199
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:43:01.185005+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:53.225833
License: Public Domain

VANCE, Justice,
dissenting.
This certification of law reminds me of the man who when asked what time it was proceeded to explain how to manufacture a clock.
CR 76.37 authorizes this court to answer questions of law pending before courts of other states and the federal courts upon a certification of the question by the originating court. Pursuant to this rule, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky certified to us for answer a specific question, namely, whether K.R.S. 413.135 is constitutional as applied to the facts of a particular case.
No where in the certification of law by the majority is there an answer to this question. Instead, the majority concludes that K.R.S. 413.135 is not applicable to the facts of the case. Thus, an answer is given to a question that was not asked.
Not only did the United States District Court not ask us to advise it as to whether the statute is applicable, but on a prior appeal of the subject case the United States 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has held, for the purposes of this case at least, that the statute is applicable.
In effect, we decline to answer the question certified to us, and we answer a question not certified by telling the United States District Court that the United States Circuit Court was wrong.
Since the question answered was not the question asked, the United States District Court will be perfectly free to ignore the answer and probably will ignore it in view of the opposite conclusion reached by the superior federal court. Nevertheless, the certification will become precedent in Kentucky courts.
It is almost always helpful in deciding important legal issues to have the issue clearly stated, to have a record of evidence pertaining to the issue, and to have the briefs and arguments of counsel presenting all sides of the question. We do not have that situation here.
I think we should proceed with greater care in establishing precedents controlling in Kentucky, and I fear that in answering a question not asked by the United States District Court we have not only been presumptuous but also that we may have answered it incorrectly.
STEPHENSON, J., concurs in this dissent.