Court Opinion

ID: 9760914
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:22:55.51786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:18.414652
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the Majority Opinion with one exception: it does not go far enough in assessing the probative impact of the admissions by pleadings made by the appel-lee, Allied Building Components, Inc., in its prior law suit against David Carney, the owner and general contractor of the Mallard Crossing project. The Majority Opinion has treated the appellee’s pleadings in that lawsuit as an evidentiary admission, which it surely is, but has stopped short of labeling it a judicial admission which would conclude the issue for purposes of the present lawsuit. I disagree.
I share the Majority’s “reticence to apply the doctrine of judicial admissions,” and *382agree that “the judicial admission rule ‘should be applied with caution because of the variable nature of testimony and because of the ever present possibility of honest mistake.’ ” But, surely this is the situation, if any there be, where the concept of binding judicial admissions should apply.
In this case, in the prior lawsuit the appellee, Allied Building Components, Inc., alleges it was a corporation with a contract to provide “Material ... for use in the construction” to Carney for the project in question, separate and distinct from the corporation with whom Carney contracted to provide “labor.” Appellee sued Carney for breach of this contract. In the same Complaint, another corporation, Allied Building, Inc., also alleging it was a separate corporation, asserted a contract to provide labor for this same project, suing Carney for breach of this labor contract. In the Answer and Counterclaim filed by Carney, Carney denied the separateness of these corporations, and in Count I of his Counterclaim alleged these corporations “have acted as one single corporate entity in the facts, events, agreements, and contracts which are set forth in this counterclaim.” In reply to the counterclaim, the appellee and this separate corporation specifically “deny” this allegation.
These are formal pleadings admittedly pertaining to the same construction work which is the subject matter of the present litigation. While I have great reluctance to apply the concept of binding judicial admissions to facts stated in testimony given during the course of a trial or deposition because these words are not formal admissions and because testimony is rarely entirely certain, I have no difficulty in applying the doctrine of judicial admissions to a statement made formally in pleadings to state or deny a cause of action, whether in the same lawsuit or a separate lawsuit, related to the same work in progress.
A judicial admission is defined in Sutherland v. Davis, 286 Ky. 743, 151 S.W.2d 1021, 1024 (1941), as “a formal act done in the course of judicial proceedings which waives or dispenses with the necessity of producing evidence by the opponent and bars the party himself from disputing it.” The sole reason for having such a doctrine, binding and conclusive, is because the law should not permit a party that has made solemn representations to a court of law to suit its interests to change positions with respect to the same subject matter when it suits other interests. This principle has been routinely applied to changing one’s position in the same suit. It has been applied in two separate suits between the same parties in Center v. Stamper, Ky., 318 S.W.2d 853 (1958). And the same policy reasons which justify having a rule treating formal admissions in pleadings as conclusive and binding on a party in the same lawsuit, or in the second of two separate lawsuits between the same parties based on the same general subject matter, apply to binding a party to admissions the party has made in one lawsuit when that party is involved in a subsequent lawsuit with a different party but involving the same work.
In Bartman v. Derby Construction Company, Ky., 395 S.W.2d 360, 361 (1965), our Court held that testimony given by the plaintiff as to when she “sustained damage from appellee’s blasting” in one action was not conclusive in another action. But the issue in Bartman was whether testimony given by the plaintiff as a witness in the prior action should constitute a binding judicial admission, not (as here) whether a formal statement as to the operative facts made in pleadings by a party to sustain a claim in a prior lawsuit should preclude taking the opposite position with regard to the same essential facts in the pleadings in the next case. The difference is critical.
In Bartman, there was a substantial question as to whether there really was any “conflict between appellant’s prior testimony and her affidavits in the instant action.” Without attempting to address this problem the Court stated:
“Since the testimony relied upon by appellee to sustain its motion for summary judgment was not given in an action between these same parties nor in an action wherein appellant was even a party we conclude that it does not constitute a judicial admission....” Id. 395 S.W.2d at 361. [Emphasis added.]
*383Here the appellee was a party when the admission was made. Given the reasons of judicial policy underlying the concept of judicial admissions, the doctrine should apply in this case.