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.