Given the news of Justice McAnulty’s passing, I’m finding this afternoon to be a pretty melancholy one, and it is more difficult than I expected to plug along on my typical Rendition-week reading and posting. There are simply too many reminders that the Kentucky Court of Justice lost an outstanding jurist and an even better human being. Frankly, my heart’s too heavy right now to pull out the Rosetta Stone and try to figure out which of the unsigned Opinions of the Court came from Justice McAnulty . . . primarily because there have to be a finite number of those remaining, and the thought that one of them must be the last one he produced is something that I just don’t want to think about.

Persons far more eloquent than I am will eulogize Justice McAnulty in the coming days. All I can add is that I enjoyed every single interaction that I ever had with him . . . from listening to his wry Court-of-Appeals updates to the telephone call I received from him after I sent his Assistant an email to see if I could obtain the text of a speech he gave in Western Kentucky in which he sparked a state-wide conversation about judicial selection. [It was no surprise to learn that Justice McAnulty spoke from bullet points, but it was a shock that he took ten or fifteen minutes of his time to give me a full run-down on his thoughts and what he’d said. My original plan was to type up my furiously-scribbled notes of that conversation on SCOKYBLOG, but I never did. To be perfectly honest, the conversation was such a shot in the arm to me personally that didn’t want to share it with everyone.] I viewed a videotape recently of an Oral Argument that I had before the Court in June, and I discovered that I was so in love with the sound of my own booming and rapid voice that Justice McAnulty was forced to repeat the word “Counsel?” a couple of times before I yielded the floor to his question (which was a proverbial softball, and one that I proceeded to foul tip). I’m sure he’s forgiven me. This afternoon, I’m just saddened that I won’t have any other opportunities to practice in front of him.

At its August 2007 Court Conference Week, the SCOKY granted discretionary review to fifteen (15) cases. Click on the hyperlinks in the case names for the Court of Appeals’s Opinions in each.

Cheyenne Resources, Inc., et al. v. Elk Horn Coal Corporation (2006-SC-0721-DG)

Pennington v. Commonwealth (2006-SC-0861-DG)

Bianchi v. City of Harlan (2006-SC-0895-DG)

Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government v. City of Prospect (2006-SC-0903-DG)

Childers Oil Co., Inc. v. Adkins, et al. (2007-SC-0032-DG)

Cameron v. Cameron (2007-SC-0105-DG)

Commonwealth v. Stone (2007-SC-0107-DG)

Rose v. Commonwealth (2007-SC-0123-DG)

Commonwealth v. McCombs (2007-SC-0127-DG)

Bedingfield v. Commonwealth (2007-SC-0128-DG)

Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government v. Molly Malone’s (2007-SC-0315-DG)

Strange v. Commonwealth (2007-SC-0328-DG)

Coffman v. Rankin (2007-SC-0348-DGE)

James v. DeVashier (2007-SC-00365-DG)

Jewish Hospital Healthcare Services, Inc. v. Brewster (2007-SC-0366-DG)

Encompass Insurance Co. v. Kugland (2007-SC-0370-DG)

It its August renditions, the SCOKY resolved a total of 9 discretionary-review cases (7 in 5 separate Opinions and another 2 by Orders dismissing), leaving it with a monthly “DR-grant deficit” of 6 cases. For the year, the SCOKY’s cumulative “DR-grant deficit” stands at 38 cases.

At its June, 2007 Court Conference, the SCOKY granted discretionary review to 7 cases, which are listed below (along with links to the COA’s opinion, where available):

Holt v. Commonwealth (2006-SC-0391-DG)

Triple Crown Subdivision Homeowners Association, Inc. v. Oberst (2006-SC-0934-DG)

Early v. Oldham County Board of Education (No Opinion Rendered by COA; Case Dismissed by Order)(2007-SC-0008-DG)

Reinhardt v. Mudd (2007-SC-0201-DG)

Justice v. Hall (2007-SC-0215-DG)

Porterfield v. Renaker (2007-SC-0223-DG)

Jenkins v. Commonwealth (2007-SC-0248-DG)

Moore Pontiac, Buick, GMC, Inc. v. Scott (2007-SC-0282-DG)

In its June renditions, the Court resolved 6 DR cases (all by Opinion) leaving it with its smallest-to-date monthly “DR-grant-deficit” of just a single case. For the year, the SCOKY’s cumulative “DR-deficit” stands at 32 cases. Historically, the SCOKY has made a substantial dent in its DR-cases in the August renditions. (Six weeks of writing time uninterrupted by a momentum killing “reading week” followed by a Court Conference week allows the Court to really “crank” out opinions.). As such, we’ll have to check in and see what the numbers look like in August.

After a three-week hiatus stemming from a combination of technology problems (inability to access the admin page in order to post new content after the SCOKYBLOG site moved to a new server) and a rapid surge in workload occasioned by a surge of a different type, i.e., the kind referred to by our Commander-in-Chief and that resulted in my law partner’s receipt of deployment orders from the Marine Corps reserves, SCOKYBLOG’s EiC is back in the proverbial saddle. With any luck at all, we’ll be able to catch up on more than a month of activity in the next week or so.

Listed below are the ten cases to which the SCOKY granted discretionary review in April. The hyperlink on the name will take you to the Opinion rendered by the Court of Appeals.

Sprint Communications Company, LP v. Leggett (2005-SC-1203-DG)

Sommers v. Commonwealth (2006-SC-0529-DG)

Morgan v. Scott (2006-SC-0693-DG)

Scott v. Moore Pontiac, Buick, GMC, Inc. (2006-SC-0701-DG)

Sebastian-Voor Properties, LLC v. LFUCG (2006-SC-0732-DG)

Henry v. Commonwealth (2006-SC-0767-DG)

Commonwealth v. Black (2006-SC-0781-DG)

Horvath v. Horvath (2006-SC-0837-DG)

Williams v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. (2006-SC-0856-DG)

TruServ Corp. v. Flegles, Inc. (2007-SC-00155-DG)

In its Autry v. Western Kentucky University / WKU Student Life Foundation v. Autry Opinion, the SCOKY took care of two cases in which it had previously granted DR. Ten (10) granted minus two (2) resolved leaves a net increase of eight (8) DR cases. Added to the previous “DR-deficit” for 2007, the SCOKY’s “DR-deficit” currently stands at twenty-six (26) cases.

In response to a question that was emailed backchannel, SCOKYBLOG’s running tally of “new DR grants vs. resolved old DR grants” does not take into account those cases in which the Court grants DR, vacates the opinion below, and remands for one reason or another (a/k/a “GVR” or “grant, vacate, and remand”) in a single Order. That’s a judgment call on our part that a GVR is different in substance from a DG case.

The SCOKY granted discretionary review to 11 cases in February. As usual, SCOKYBLOG has provided links to the Opinions below when available.

Com., Cabinet for Health and Family Services v. EPI Corporation (2006-SC-0348-DG)

Com., Transportation Cabinet, Department of Highways v. Shannon D. Sexton, et al. (2006-SC-0454-DG)

Flegles, Inc. v. Truserv Corporation (2006-SC—0471-DG)

Stanley K. Spees v. Kentucky Legal Aid, et al. (2006-SC-0506-DG)

Eric Quintana [‘eight-year-olds, Dude!’] v. Commonwealth of Kentucky (2006-SC-0629-DG)

David Ray Burton v. CSX Transportation, Inc. (2006-SC-0695-DG)

Gary Lee Brooks, Jr. v. Commonwealth of Kentucky (2006-SC-0709-DG)

Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Deborah Miller Allen (2006-SC-0723-DG)

Brian Bottom and Melissa Bottom v. Commonwealth of Kentucky (2006-C-0823-DG)

American General Home Equity, Inc. v. Teresa Kestel (2006-SC-0830-DG)

Marcus Jerome Lawrence v. Commonwealth of Kentucky (2006-SC-0877-DG)

By granting DR in 11 cases, and disposing of 5 cases in which the Court had previously granted DR (3 by Opinion, 1 by dismissing the appeal, 1 by vacating the Order granting DR), the SCOKY incurred a “net-DR-deficit” of 6 cases this month. Added to January’s “net-DR-deficit” of 5 (6 grants, 1 Opinion), the SCOKY’s overall “net-DR-deficit” stands at 11.

At its January Court Conference Week, the SCOKY granted Motions for Discretionary Review in six cases. For easy access, links are provided below to the Court of Appeals’s opinion in the five cases where a written opinion was rendered:

Alice South Hume, et al v. Franklin Couty [sic] Fiscal Court, et al.

Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Amanda R. Gaddie (no published opinion in this expedited habeas corpus appeal)

Christie Richardson v. Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government

Christopher M. Pennington v. Heather R. Marcum (f/k/a Miles)

Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Bobby A. Jones

Christopher Earl Nail v. Commonwealth of Kentucky