Court Opinion

ID: 9729000
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:23:00.894823+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:54.479352
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Justice CUNNINGHAM.
I respectfully dissent from the most thoroughly researched and well-stated majority opinion. At the same time, I cannot join the concise and well-written dissenting opinion of Justice Minton.
In my opinion, the majority is correct in stating that the answer to question one should be “no.” However, I part ways on the second issue and believe that the answer to the second question should be an unequivocal “yes.” Once an intentional trespass is shown, the diminution in the property value should, in and of itself, be sufficient to award damages. I do not believe that actual harm — as the majority defines such harm — is required for damages to be awarded in intentional trespass. American Law of Property and the Rockwell case — both relied upon by the majority — seem to hold actual damage is required only in negligent trespass.
In fact, Rockwell states that liability is imposed for intentional trespass when there is an intrusion, even when it is harmless. Liability is imposed for negligent trespass only when there has been harm to the property. This suggests that no harm is required in intentional trespass, and that once that is established damages are computed.
If nominal damages are authorized for intentional trespass, then certainly actual damages should be.
Here, the totally innocent and complaining property owners have had their property invaded by unseen particles to the extent that the trespassing party has provided an independent water source. If the presence of this intrusion reduces the value of the property, then those landowners should be compensated.
The past Kentucky cases would indicate that a person subject to intentional tres*58pass is entitled to nominal damages only when other damages cannot be proven. They certainly infer that when other damages are proven they should be recoverable. I do not agree with the majority opinion that “in order to have a right of recovery of compensatory damages under Kentucky law, the property owner must show proof of actual harm or injury.” It doesn’t seem logical to allow someone to receive nominal damages — which are unspecific and nonexistent — and not afford compensatory damages which are real and discernible.
It seems critical to this writer not to become bogged down in semantics in debating the terms “harm” and “damages.” When this case is distilled to its simplest form, a clear and cogent need for judicial redress surfaces. There exists an innocent property owner. There is a willful and intentional trespasser upon that property. The trespass causes a change in the property. Because of that change, a free and willing buyer is reluctant to pay the same money as he or she would have paid without the change. There is harm. There is damage.
Neither should we be moved by the law’s aversion to compensating for a mere “stigma” upon real estate. The trespass here is real. It is not a stigma. It is neither imagined by the owner or the general public. The decrease in market value to that trespass is not irrational, fantastical, or rooted in emotion. The PCB’s may be unseen, but they are not without manifest results. Property buyers are as reasonable in their reluctance to purchase a potential need for future litigation as they would be of accepting a cloud upon the title.
I do not accept the prediction that such a holding would have “the potential of opening the proverbial floodgates of litigation.” Common experience of the industrial age has taught us that those entities capable of perpetuating such trespasses are also more than capable of taking care of themselves. Unless the diminution of the value of their property is recoverable in our courts upon a mere showing of intentional trespass, individual homeowners cannot.