Kentucky Court Report - SCOKY & COAKY

BLOG UPDATE: Some information on how we (I) do things behind the curtains of the Court Report

Talking to that "Man" behind the curtain. 

Some have asked me what methods do I employ in preparing this blog.

Time.  It takes time, but not all of my time and much less than you might imagine since I take advantage of many of the resources and materials prepared by others and simply convert, consolidate, and co-opt many useful sources of information available on the net.

System.

The AOC pages are my primary sources:

• MINUTES:  The minutes are prepared monthly for the Supreme Court and weekly for the Court of Appeals (these links are to pages where the minutes are indexed by year and month).
  
  The minutes are multiple page ADOBE (tm) documents listing the decisions, orders, etc. from the respective appellate court with HOT LINKS to the published and non published decisions in full text and which are maintained at and by the AOC.
  
  • The Supreme Court minutes are posted the third Thursday of each month when the SCOKY is in session and following their "court week". 
    
    • The published and not to be published decisions are numbered sequentially from month to month for the entire year, starting anew the next calendar year.
    • Each numbered decision lists for each case, the name, action number, ruling (vacate, affirm, etc), the author of the opinion (if not a memorandum opinion), the dissenterts, the county of the original decision (unless from Workers Comp), and most importantly a HOT LINK to the actual decision which is maintained at the AOC in PDF format.
      • Other matters listed in the SCOKY Minutes include:
      • MDR's (Motions for Discretionary Review) grants and denials
      • Petitions for Rehearings - grants and denials
      • Court Orders
      • Motions to transfer rulings
      • Attorney/Judicial Disciplinary Matters (many with HOT LINKS to the order)
  • The Court of Appeals Minutes are posted each Friday.
    • A sequential numbering system is used with links to the full-text of the decisions.
    • Orders (without hot links) re: petitions for rehearing, dismissals, corrections, etc.
  • WHAT DO I DO?
    
    I try to post a link within a week to the minutes, and to make matters a little more useful I post a short synopsis (copied text from the actual decision) to give the reader some insight into the PUBLISHED cases, to include a link directly to the full text decision.
    
    I also do a "Tort Report" for the nonpublished decisions addressing civil issues on insurance, torts, procedure, etc.  Workers Comp and Family law decisions can be located elsewhere at other sites:
    • WORKERS COMPENSATION LAW UPDATES, I RECOMMEND YOU GO TO THE COMP ED WEB SITE AT http://www.comped.net/.
    • FAMILY LAW UPDATES, I RECOMMEND YOU GO TO Diana Skaggs' Divorce Law Journal at http://www.divorcelawjournal.com
• ARGUMENT CALENDARS:  The Argument calendars are posted by year and month at the AOC with the links to the respective months posted/updated when the argument calendars are finalized and set.  Although all the links may be HOT, not all calendars are final and many for the future are blank.
  
  
  • Links
    • SCOKY
    • COA
      
  • The calendars list the dates, times, locations, and case information (name, county, counsel, issues) for each scheduled argument.  No links to the case information or the underlying order/opinion etc.
  • SCOKY's arguments are available for real time web watching.
    However, they are not yet saved for furture watching, and you must watch the calendar for the time.  Due to broadcasting/streaming delay, the start times are a few minutes off for the net observers.
  • I tried capturing these for a while and cleaning them up a little but it was too hard to set up the time and schedule to "capture" them.  I am thinking of simply asking for the DVD of each argument that I think would be interestings and post some selectively, but I am dependent upon AOC releasing them.  This might even be useful for selected COA arguments. Click here for some samples, I tried back in 2009.
    
    
  • BRIEFS!
    Appellate briefs for SCOKY are posted at the Northern Kentucky University, Salmon P. Chase College of Law ( Click here).   Although, it looks as if COA briefs are posted also, I have not been successful in my searches for them.  Any help would be appreciated.
  • WHAT DO I DO?
    
    I try and post a link to the actual calendar with a short summary of the calendar extracted for ease of review listing dates and times, location, case name and ISSUES.

This is enough for one post.  More later addressing the "Monthly Summaries" of Published Decisions by SCOKY and COA (which can be a month or so after the minutes which is why I do the brief but borrowed synopsis of the published decisions), extracts of "Causes of Action" and "Standards of Review" culled from various decisions, Press Releases, etc.

For the moment, I have leaned away from too much opinions of my own on these pages, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

Again, I hope all of you have enjoyed this service and have found it useful in your practice.

Michael L. Stevens
Attorney at Law
Isaacs and Isaacs, PSC
900 Cherokee Road
Louisville, KY 40204

(502)458-1000

Almost current! Kentucky Court Report now up to date on Minutes, Summaries and Argument calendars

Good news!  I played a little catch-up this week and now am current on Minutes of both the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, as well as their argument calendars. 

I am also as current with the Monthly Summaries from COA and SCOKY as currently posted (but note they take a few months to get prepared and published at the AOC).

I hope you enjoy this blog.  It is hard to do, and harder to keep current.

SCOKY Minutes Update

As some may have noticed, I have been less than timely and complete in digesting/summarizing/reporting on the SCOKY Minutes each monty.  March, April and May are now due to be posted.

The reason is that to provide the complete digests for SCOKY as I do for COAKY requires me to spend a lot of time working through the posted pages of the minutes and decisions from SCOKY which uses a nonstandard Adobe PDF format.  The format used by COAKY causes me absolutely no problems when I load the page, copy OCR text, and move it to my Typepad blog posts.  EZ PZ one might say.

Not so with those from SCOKY.  I can't copy the minutes (which list the cases in a non-table format like COAKY) without distortions and hidden codes messing things up.  When I try to copy text in the SCOKY decisions, the formatting used in the opinion, for some reason, ends up with run-on paragraphs and sentences with the spaces between words gone. I have tried to save and optimize the pages using my own Acrobat program, but it just won't recognize it.

Thus, too much work.

My solution is to post that the minutes of SCOKY have been published with a link to the actual minutes which contain links to the decisions and orders contained therein. 

Sorry.  I have made this known the folks at AOC by emailing their tech folks, but no response and no changes.

BLOG: I have been in trial this past week, but resuming blogging today!

Please do not think I have been on a holiday this past week.  I was trying a motor vehicle case involving back surgery with defenses of disputed liability and causation (priors and claim of minor impact).  My client was awarded over $312,000.  Four days in trial, some issues with the technical equipment, but all is well that ends well.

Input requested on minutes format

Input requested regarding short digests of introductory paragraphs of published decisions added to the posts of the published minutes of the COA and SCOKY.

A few months ago, I thought it useful to copy and paste the opening paragraphs from each of the published decisions into my postings of the minutes.

Please let me know if a. appreciated and helpful or b. no big deal and I can quit doing it or c. do it just for the SC decisions.

The post links to the minutes which has the names, case nos. etc with links to the text of each decision (published and nonpublished).

If I do not get favorable input, I plan on cutting back this experiment.

Projected 2010 Changes to the Kentucky Court Report - No more individual posts of criminal law decisions. All else remains the same.

Planned format change beginning 2010.

I am going to stop providing individual posts to the criminal law decisions effective with those decisions published in 2010.  I will continue to making the following posts:

• Links to the minutes for the COA and SC which will contain links to the full text of the published decisions (civil and criminal cases)
• Short digest of the published decisions (civil only) in each posting of the minutes
• Monthly case summaries of the COA and SC
• Monthly argument calendars for COA and SC
• Monthly postings of the discretionary review grants for the SCOKY
• Videos of any SC arguments that I either 'rip' as made or am provided by counsel

The only thing that will be missing is the individual postings of published criminal law decisions (which will still be found in the COA and SC monthly summaries provided by AOC).

I hope you can live with this minor change.  It will cut my computer time in half!

I practice civil law exclusively now.  When I was an Army JAG I did criminal law but that was a long, long time ago.

And still the best bargain on the net.  Free.

BLOG UPDATE: Recent posts are dated

As you noted, I am currently behind on the posts.

The good news is that the Minutes, Argument Calendars, and Monthly Summaries are and have been current.

The bad news is the individual cases that have been published in those monthly summaries has been spotty.

The good news is that all the COA published decisions as contained in the monthly summaries have been posted individually and organized by topics of "COA Decisions 2009" and the subject matter of the decision.

The bad news is that I am only up to the end of February for SCOKY.  I promise to catch these up before I hit my 56th birthday!  (psst.... you will have to trust me on the date).

I have been a little spotty on the discretionary review grants (leaning towards the image from the minutes rather than the actual post of html text).

Now that I have confessed my sins and transgressions, I ask not for forgiveness but suggestions on how to improve this blog. 

Please feel free to post constructive criticism and ideas (in good taste and within PG-13 guidelines).

And please let me know if the short openings listed on the minutes with links to the pubished decisions only in our postings to the minutes is helpful.  I usually get the minutes out within days, and thought the short note from the court's first paragraph would be useful as we/you/I wait for the monthly summaries.

Thanks to all.

Michael L. Stevens

You can email me at this blawg by clicking on the link at the top of the left-hand column.

Published Decisions - Will try and update and post them separately

When we/I began relying solely upon the monthly published decision summaries of the appellate courts (SCOKY and COA), we not only quit digesting the published decisions but also quit posting them individually as posts.

I believe I have figured out how to copy and paste the decisions from the summaries and link to the full text.

Again, no promises.

Please note as of January 1, 2009, all digested decisions are those from the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals monthly summaries unless otherwise indicated.  Thus, I will not be posting an attribution link for each post.

I am also going to "date" the posts to the date of the decision rather than  the date of the post for ease of use in locating same.

BLOG UPDATE: Digests of published decisions

Effective immediately and unless otherwise noted, all summaries and digests of published decisions of the Supreme Court of Kentucky and the Court of Appeals of Kentucky will be from the published summaries found at the AOC web site.  If these are individual digested or contain editorial remarks, such will be noted.

BLOG UPDATE -- SCOKY December 2008 summaries not yet posted at AOC

I have been asked when will we post the summaries of the published decisions of the Supreme Court of Kentucky for Dec. 2008?

Answer:  When they are posted on line, then we will post them.

The COA has already posted their monthly summaries of published decisions for Dec. 2008.

The SCOKY has not.