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777 S.W.2d 912

Smith v. Isaacs

Kentucky Supreme Court

Decided October 19, 1989

Kentucky Supreme Court · decided 1989-10-19

Relies on White v. Winchester Land Development Corp. · Morgan v. O'NEIL

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1989-10-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently March 2017 · most notably Calvert Investments, Inc. v. Louisville & Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District (1991), McCollum v. Garrett (1994)

2 federal appellate · 11 state decisions

1301989199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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WINTERSHEIMER, Justice,

¶1dissenting.

¶2I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion because even under the notice pleading rules the complaint does not state a cause against the individual defendant, and consequently, the circuit court’s dismissal of the individual was correct.

¶3Smith pleads that negligence in the execution of corporate duties creates a cause of action against a corporate officer in his individual capacity. The corporate shield of statutory law protects individuals from responsibility in the management of a corporation in the absence of extraordinary circumstances which are specific and unusual. White v. Winchester Land Development Corp., Ky.App., 584 S.W.2d 56 (1979); Morgan v. O’Neil, Ky., 652 S.W.2d 83 (1983). No extraordinary circumstances have been pled. Smith did not state a cause of action against Shields individually with the bare allegation that he was negligent in the conduct of his corporate management responsibilities. Smith must do more than assert the bare allegations that Shields was careless, reckless and negligent in the operation, management and supervision of the corporation in order to state a cause of action against the defendant individually.

¶4Notice pleading has been the rule in Kentucky for over 45 years. The proper application of CR 8.01 does not require a claimant to set out all details of the facts upon which he relies, but only those that are sufficient to give the defendant fair notice of the claim and its basis. A pleading which merely suggests that the party have a right of action is insufficient and does not provide the fair notice of a primary right of the claimant or the wrong of the defendant. The complaint here does not conform to the standards of the civil rule. See Bertelsman and Philipps Vol. 6 Kentucky Practice Rules of Civil Procedure pp. 145-146, discussing Civil Rule 8.01.

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