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Jones v. Lathram6/21/2002
TO BE PUBLISHED
OPINION AFFIRMING
In an opinion rendered November 9, 2000, we affirmed the entry of summary judgment in this case by the Graves Circuit Court. By order entered March 13, 2002, our decision was vacated. The Kentucky Supreme Court has remanded the case for our reconsideration in light of its recent decision in Yanero v. Davis, Ky., 65 S.W.3d 510 (2001). We have followed that directive, and once again, we affirm.
In the early morning of June 11, 1993, the appellee, Scott Lathram, a Kentucky State Trooper, received what he perceived to be an emergency call for assistance from a fellow trooper. In responding to the emergency, Trooper Lathram activated his cruiser's blue lights and siren. As Trooper Lathram entered what he described as a "blind" intersection, his cruiser collided with a truck driven by Jones's decedent, Stephen Camp. Tragically, Camp died as a result of injuries sustained in the accident. This action was filed against the Commonwealth, the Justice Cabinet, the Department of State Police, and Trooper Lathram, individually.
Concluding that an action could not be maintained against the Department of State Police, the Justice Cabinet, or the Commonwealth, the trial court dismissed these parties. We affirmed that decision in Jones v. Department of State Police, Justice Cabinet, Commonwealth of Kentucky, (94-CA-2210-MR, Rendered March 22, 1996). Following the decision of the Kentucky Supreme Court in Franklin County, Kentucky v. Malone, Ky., 957 S.W.2d 195 (1997), the trial court entered summary judgment in favor of Trooper Lathram.
The parties have stipulated that Trooper Lathram was responding to a call from another officer for assistance when the accident occurred. Jones acknowledges in her brief that the trooper was operating his vehicle within the scope of his employment and pursuant to his duties as a Kentucky State Police Officer. Nevertheless, Jones argues that the trial court erred by concluding that Trooper Lathram was immune from suit. She contends that a jury should be permitted to determine whether Lathram was negligent in his operation of his cruiser as to the manner in which he entered the intersection; if so, she maintains that he should be held personally liable.
In support of her position, Jones relies upon the factually similar case of Speck v. Bowling, Ky. App., 892 S.W.2d 309 (1995). In Speck, we considered whether a state trooper, responding in his cruiser to a burglary, could be held liable for simple negligence. The court determined that he was not engaged in a discretionary governmental function at the time his cruiser collided with the victim's vehicle and thus that he was not entitled to assert a qualified official immunity: . . . we hold Speck's actions were ministerial and that, as he was not engaged in a discretionary governmental function at the time he collided with the appellee, he is not entitled to assert a qualified immunity. Id. at 311-312.
Two years after the Speck decision, the Supreme Court again addressed the individual liability of a state trooper performing a ministerial act within the scope of his employment.
In Franklin County v. Malone, supra, the state trooper was accused of having negligently searched an arrestee, who subsequently committed suicide by using a knife that the trooper had failed to discover. The Supreme Court concluded that the routine search was one of the trooper's ministerial duties and, consequently, that the trooper could not be shielded from liability by the common-law doctrine of official immunity. However, the court concluded that the trooper was entitled to assert the state's sovereign immunity.
In addre
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