KRS 446.080

Liberal construction -- Statutes not retroactive -- Common usage -- Technical terms

Applied in 296 court decisions — leading case Firestone Textile Co. Division v. Meadows (1983)

Most recently applied in B.L. v. Schuhmann (May 2019)

Effective: October 1, 1942 History: Recodified 1942 Ky

How often courts cite this section

citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) All statutes of this state shall be liberally construed with a view to promote their objects and carry out the intent of the legislature, and the rule that statutes in derogation of the common law are to be strictly construed shall not apply to the statutes of this state.

(2) There shall be no difference in the construction of civil, penal and criminal statutes.

(3) No statute shall be construed to be retroactive, unless expressly so declared.

(4) All words and phrases shall be construed according to the common and approved usage of language, but technical words and phrases, and such others as may have acquired a peculiar and appropriate meaning in the law, shall be construed according to such meaning.

Official source: Kentucky General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Kentucky statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.