Court Opinion

ID: 9705730
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:18:23.108108+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:14.469703
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Justice KELLER.
Because this is a civil action by an employee against an employer and is based on a violation of the Kentucky Occupational Safety and Health Act1 (KOSHA), it is precluded by KRS 838.021(2), and therefore, I respectfully dissent.
A violation of KOSHA may not be the basis of a civil action by an employee against his or her employer. The Legislature could not have stated it any clearer when it authorized in KRS Chapter 338 the promulgation and adoption of the KO-SHA regulations:
Nothing in this [CJhapter [3S8] shall be construed to supersede or in any manner affect any workers’ compensation law or to enlarge or diminish or affect in any manner the common law or statutory rights, duties, or liabilities of employers or employees, under any law with respect to injuries, diseases, or death of employees arising out of, or in the course of employment.2
This exclusion is even repeated almost verbatim in KOSHA itself.3 In other words, if a civil action for an employee’s injury or death did not exist before the adoption of KOSHA, then KOSHA could not be the basis thereafter for such an action. But the majority opinion has ignored this clear *49mandate of the Legislature, and a civil action based on a KOSHA violation is exactly what the majority has sanctioned with today’s opinion.
To avoid the prohibition of the statute and to reach its desired result, the majority opinion employs the circular reasoning that although the KOSHA provisions themselves do not create a private right of action, violation of those provisions constitutes a violation of KRS 338.031(l)(b),4 which in turn invokes KRS 446.070,5 which provides that a “person injured by the violation of any statute may recover from the offender such damages as he sustained by reason of the violation.” The majority opinion claims that this “creat[es] a right of action in favor of a person damaged by a violation of KOSHA.” The first four words of KRS 338.021(2) — “Nothing in this chapter” — are rendered totally meaningless by this reasoning. Those words, of course, are referring to KRS Chapter 338 and therefore include KRS 338.031(l)(b) and KRS 338.051(3), which specifically authorized 6 the Kentucky Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to promulgate and adopt the KOSHA regulation that was violated and is the basis for Appellants’ civil suit against Appellee, Allen Baize, Darrell Hargis’s employer for the purpose of KOSHA.
As the majority opinion correctly points out, KRS 446.070 was enacted eighty years prior to the adoption of KOSHA. So what happened between KRS 446.070’s enactment in 1892 and now, more than one hundred years later, that gave Appellants a statutory cause of action against Baize? The answer is simple — KOSHA was enacted — and but for the enactment of KOSHA, there would be no alleged civil remedy stemming from KRS 446.070. The majority opinion attempts to sidestep this issue by claiming that KRS 446.070 is the source of the right of action and by noting that it is not part of KRS Chapter 338. But this fails to recognize that KRS 446.070 does not allow a cause of action to bootstrap itself into existence. Rather KRS 446.070 only creates causes of action by acting as a channel for the action of other statutes. As such, KRS 446.070 is merely a codification of the common law.7 The only way *50then for a cause of action in this case to exist is that it results indirectly from the existence of KRS 338.031(l)(b), which was enacted long after KRS 446.070. But if the majority opinion is correct, then this means that KOSHA’s enactment served to expand a statutory right, specifically the right granted under KRS 446.070, or to expand a right granted under the common law. Yet this is exactly why the cause of action in this case is precluded by KRS 338.021(2), which states clearly and unambiguously that KOSHA is not to be construed “to enlarge or diminish or affect in any manner the common law or statutory rights, duties, or liabilities of employers or employees.” This language is clear, the enactment of KRS Chapter 338 did not, directly or indirectly, bring into existence a new cause of action. If the cause of action did not exist before KRS Chapter 338’s enactment (the cause of action claimed in this case did not), then it does not come into existence because of the enactment of KRS Chapter 338. The majority opinion construes KOSHA otherwise.
The majority opinion relies on Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Reker8 for the proposition that “[i]t is not KOSHA, but KRS 446.070, that authorizes Appellants to bring this private civil action for damages.” But as we noted in that case, when “two statutes are irreconcilable, the later enactment prevails”9 and “when two statutes are in conflict, one of which deals with the subject matter in a general way and the other in a specific way, the more specific provision prevails.”10 This is why we read the Workers’ Compensation statute in that case as not giving rise to a cause of action through KRS 446.070. Similarly, in this case, KRS Chapter 338 was enacted long after KRS 446.070 and addresses specifically occupational safety issues. Moreover, unlike the statutory schemes in Reker and the cases cited therein, KRS Chapter 338 contains an express provision that bars the creation of a new cause of action.
Rather than determining if KRS 446.070 has an effect given the limitations it contains,11 as we did in Reker, the task here is determining whether KRS 338.021(2) contains an outright bar on a new cause of action. Given the clarity of the language in that statute, denying Appellants’ cause of action here should be a simple matter. Unfortunately, the majority opinion has engaged in a rather gymnastic chain of reasoning to find the existence of a cause of action, in contradiction of the clear language KRS 338.021(2).
The majority opinion’s reliance on Ellis v. Chase Communications, Inc.12 is also misplaced. Ellis specifically held that an employer “must owe a duty to an employee *51under a theory of liability independent of OSHA, as OSHA [itself] does not create a private right of action.”13 As further noted by the Ellis Court, “[t]he Act itself explicitly states that it is not intended to affect the civil standard of liability.”14 Like in Ellis, Baize owed no duty independent duty to Hargis. And KRS 446.070 does not create an independent duty; it merely provides for enforcement of a breach of an existing statutory duty other than one contained in KOSHA. Yet under the majority’s interpretation, KRS 338.031(1)(b) provides the duty that KRS 446.070 allegedly gives effect to. Lest the majority forgets, KRS 338.031(l)(b) is a part of KOSHA; any duty it supposedly creates is not independent of KOSHA. But even if the holding of Ellis could be perverted to support the majority opinion, the federal court’s interpretation of OSHA is not binding on this Court in our construction of KOSHA, and a reading of the exclusion clearly shows an intention by the Legislature to preclude this type of action.
For the above reasons, I dissent and would affirm the Court of Appeals.
JOHNSTONE, J., joins this dissenting opinion.

."An act relating to the safety and health of workers employed within the Commonwealth of Kentucky” was enacted in 1972. 1972 Ky. Acts ch. 251. This Act is commonly known as the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1972. The Act created the Kentucky Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, Id. § 6, and authorized it to promulgate and adopt "occupational safety and health rules, regulations, [and] standards.” Id. § 6(c). The promulgated rules, regulations, and standards are found at 803 KAR 2:010-:600 and are commonly referred to as the Kentucky Occupational Safety and Health Standards Act or by its acronym "KOSHA.” KOSHA was patterned after its federal counterpart, the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).

. KRS 338.021(2) (emphasis added).

. 803 KAR 2:050 § 1(3) ("Nothing in these administrative regulations shall be construed to supersede or in any manner affect any workmen’s compensation law or to enlarge or diminish or affect in any manner the common law or statutory rights, duties, or liabilities of employees, under any law with respect to injuries, diseases, or death of employees arising out of, or in the course of employment.”).

. KRS 338.03l(l)(b)("(l) Each employer:... (b) Shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this chapter.”).

. KRS 446.070 ("A person injured by the violation of any statute may recover from the Offender such damages as he sustained by reason of the violation, although a penalty or forfeiture is imposed for such violation.”).

. KRS 13A.120(l)(a) ("An administrative body may promulgate administrative regulations to implement a statute only when the act of the General Assembly creating or amending the statute specifically authorizes the promulgation of administrative regulations or administrative regulations are required by federal law, in which case administrative regulations shall be no more stringent than the federal law or regulations.”).

. City of Henderson v. Clayton, 57 S.W. 1, 2 (Ky.1900) ("From time immemorial, where a statutory duty for the protection of individuals had been violated, an action at common law might be maintained. The common-law rule referred to is thus stated in Com. Dig. tit. ‘Action upon Statutes': ‘In every case where a statute enacts or prohibits a thing for the benefit of a person, he shall have a remedy upon the same statute for the thing enacted for his advantage, or for the recompense of a wrong done to him contrary to the said law.’ Another common-law authority thus states the rule: ‘Whenever an act of parliament doth prohibit anything, the party grieved shall have an action, and the offender shall be punished at the king’s suit. It is written in the horn-book of the law that the public and a party particularly aggrieved may each have a distinct but concurrent remedy for an act which happens to be both a public and a private wrong.’ End. Interp. St. § 463. The same common-law rule is laid down in Bish. Non-cont. Law, § 133, and in Cooley, Torts, p. 658. It is also recognized in section 466, Ky. *50St.: 'A person injured by the violation of any statute may recover from the offender such damage as he may sustain by reason of the violation, although a penalty or forfeiture for such violation be thereby imposed.” ')•

. 100 S.W.3d 756, 762 (Ky.2003).

. Id. at 763 (citing Butcher v. Adams, 310 Ky. 205, 220 S.W.2d 398, 400 (1949)).

. Id.

. See Grzyb v. Evans, 700 S.W.2d 399, 401 (Ky.1985) ("Under KRS 446.070, a person injured by the violation of any statute may recover from the offender such damages as he sustained by reason of the violation. But this is limited to where the statute is penal in nature, or where by its terms the statute does not prescribe the remedy for its violation. Hackney v. Fordson Coal Co., 230 Ky. 362, 19 S.W.2d 989 (1929). Where the statute both declares the unlawful act and specifies the civil remedy available to the aggrieved party, the aggrieved party is limited to the remedy provided by the statute.” (emphasis added)).

.63 F.3d 473 (6th Cir.1995).

. Id. at 478.

. Id.