COAKY Holds Trial Court Jumped the Gun in Granting DV After Plaintiff’s Opening Statement

In an opinion (https://opinions.kycourts.net/coa/2014-CA-001050.pdf) issued in late July, the Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed a trial court’s grant of the defendant’s motion for directed verdict (MDV) that was made immediately after the opening statement by plaintiff’s counsel. In Harrington v. Argotte, 2014-CA-1050, the Court, in an opinion by Judge Jeff Taylor, noted that a directed verdict (DV) is seldom proper without presentation of at least some evidence. Since the Court did not feel that plaintiff’s counsel had made an admission that was “unequivocally fatal” to her claim, it held that the trial court should not have granted the defendant’s MDV without permitting some evidence to be presented. The Court noted that CR 50.01 governing DVs seems to contemplate that a motion for DV will be made at the close of the opponent’s evidence.

Note: The foregoing post includes commentary reprinted from the forthcoming 2016 supplement to 7 Philipps & Kramer, Rules of Civil Procedure Annotated, 6th ed. (Kentucky Practice Series), by David V. Kramer, with permission of the author and publisher. Copyright (c) 2015 Thomson Reuters. For more information about this publication click here.

David Kramer is a Partner in the law firm of Dressman Benzinger LaVelle psc, with offices in Cincinnati, Ohio, Crestview Hills, Kentucky, and Louisville, Kentucky.