Court Opinion

ID: 9680455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:32:03.013973+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:28.713807
License: Public Domain

STEPHENSON, Justice,
dissenting.
It is with some trepidation that I disagree with such a scholarly opinion. However, I am firmly convinced that the major premise of the majority opinion is faulty. I would feel more comfortable with an opinion based on inherent power of the courts, although I would have serious reservations about that.
First I find it incredible that there would be an “equal protection” or “discrimination against female” argument. Of course, KRS 406.081 is constitutional. By its terms the statute pertains to the negative type blood test, which was the accepted blood test at the time of adoption of the Uniform Paternity Act. This blood test could conclusively establish that the individual was not the father, otherwise the result would be inconclusive with a possibility that the individual could be the father. Obviously the mother would have no interest in a blood test that had as its only value a showing that the man could not be the father. Here, of course, the controversy is over a newer, more sophisticated blood test, that does more than show a negative result, but can show a positive result. The equal protection argument is ridiculous. The simple answer is that the statute authorized the negative test by its explicit terms, and there is no statutory mandate for the more sophisticated test.
The holding that KRS 406.081 and CR 35.01, which the majority finds saves the constitutionality of KRS 406.081, are not inconsistent really baffles me!
*663In reading CR 35.01, I cannot find by inference or otherwise that the rule authorizes a court to order this newer blood test. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia opinion in Beach is cited for authority that “the characteristics of one’s blood ... are part of one’s physical condition,” in order to bring this test within CR 35.01 (the same as FRCP 35(a) construed by the Circuit Court of Appeals). This is pure sophistry. The opinion demonstrates how an appellate court can decide what it wishes to do and then fashion a reason, no matter how farfetched.
There simply is no authority in the Rules or the Statutes to authorize a court to order this blood test.
The majority opinion treats this subject as a matter of discovery. Even looking at this proposition as discovery, I do not find any literature or cases suggesting the right to order discovery as an inherent right of the court.
A further difficulty is presented by the earlier cases that hold although the action is “civil in nature, it has a criminal aspect.” White v. Com. ex rel. Feck, Ky., 299 S.W.2d 618 (1957). Little v. Streater cited in the majority opinion also supports the proposition that although the proceedings may be characterized as civil, such proceedings have quasi-criminal overtones. Thus I believe there are many serious obstacles to the concept of inherent power of a court to order the blood test.
Accordingly, I dissent.