District Court, W.D. Kentucky — appointed by Ronald Reagan
J.P. Morgan Delaware v. Onyx Arabians II, Ltd.
District Court, W.D. Kentucky · 1993-04-28 · cited 1×
This case involves a dispute over two promissory notes issued by Onyx Arabians for the purchase of a share in an Arabian stallion and several mares under agreements governed by Kentucky law. J.P. Morgan Delaware, which received the notes by assignment after they had passed through intermediate holders, sought summary judgment as a holder in due course entitled to payment free of defenses, while Onyx raised affirmative defenses and counterclaims based on alleged breaches such as unavailability of the stallion and failure to repurchase one mare. The court held that Morgan was not a holder in due course because the notes, payable to order, lacked a required endorsement from the original payee, making Morgan a mere transferee subject to Onyx's claims and defenses under KRS 355.3-201 and 3-202. It further found that an oral agreement to repurchase one mare was enforceable as a consistent additional term not barred by the parol evidence rule, constituting a breach, while other alleged breaches regarding breeding rights were not supported. Accordingly, the court denied Morgan's motion for summary judgment and partially granted Onyx's motion.
business & regulatoryprocedure
Smallwood v. Jefferson County Government
District Court, W.D. Kentucky · 1991-01-10 · cited 3×
The case concerned whether Jefferson County, Kentucky, qualifies as a "person" under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which would permit it to be sued in federal court for alleged civil rights violations. The court held that counties are "persons" for § 1983 purposes and allowed the plaintiff's claim to proceed. Its reasoning began with inconclusive legislative history and ambiguous analogies under Kentucky law treating counties sometimes as arms of the state and sometimes as quasi-municipal corporations; it then followed Supreme Court guidance from Monell and Will that focuses on Eleventh Amendment status, under which federal precedents uniformly treat counties as separate from the state.
civil rightsprocedure
United States v. Jenkins
District Court, W.D. Kentucky · 1990-09-11 · cited 2×
This case involved defendants charged in a criminal matter who moved to suppress wiretap evidence obtained under a court-authorized intercept order, arguing that an FBI agent had listened to conversations without activating the recording device in violation of Title 18 U.S.C. §§ 2518(8)(a) and 2518(5), and seeking suppression under § 2518(10)(a). The court denied both the motion to suppress the unrecorded interceptions offered by the agent and the alternative request to suppress all derived evidence. It reasoned that precedents such as United States v. Daly and United States v. Clerkley establish that a failure to record does not constitute an "unlawfully intercepted" communication warranting suppression, as the recording requirement serves an evidentiary purpose rather than protecting privacy interests under the Fourth Amendment, and the agents' conduct satisfied the minimization requirement without deliberate or repeated violations.
criminal lawprocedure
Smallwood v. Jefferson County Government
District Court, W.D. Kentucky · 1990-09-04 · cited 135×
In this case, a former Jefferson County employee sued the county government, fiscal court, and judge executive, alleging sex discrimination and wrongful discharge under statutes including Title VII, the Equal Pay Act, Section 1983, Section 1985, and Civil RICO, claiming the defendants used an enterprise to engage in racketeering to suppress information about the discrimination. The court first consolidated all defendants into a single entity, Jefferson County, and then granted the defendants' motion for partial summary judgment on the Civil RICO claim. The core reasoning was that a county, as a quasi-municipal corporation, does not qualify as a 'person' under 18 U.S.C. Section 1961(3) because it lacks the capacity to form the mens rea required for the predicate criminal acts, making a RICO action impossible, while other remedies remain available. The decision applied the summary judgment standards from the 1986 Celotex trilogy and declined to expand the statutory definition of 'person.'
civil rightscriminal lawprocedurelabor & employment
Wyke v. Sea Nymph, Inc.
District Court, W.D. Kentucky · 1990-05-17
This case involves a products liability, breach of warranty, and negligence lawsuit brought by the family of Kenneth Ashe against boat manufacturers Sea Nymph, Inc., Outboard Marine Corporation, and Midas International Corporation following Ashe's death in a 1987 boating accident on Lake Cumberland, Kentucky. The defendants sought summary judgment, arguing that Ashe's contributory negligence barred recovery. The court granted the motion, holding that Ashe was contributorily negligent as a matter of law because he operated the boat at high speed in darkness using only a handheld spotlight on a debris-filled lake without wearing a life preserver, despite knowing the conditions and being unable to swim. The decision relied on Kentucky law, including precedent that failing to use a life preserver in obvious danger constitutes contributory negligence, and found no genuine issue of material fact for trial.
torts & liabilityprocedure
United States v. Pulley
District Court, W.D. Kentucky · 1990-02-09 · cited 1×
This case involved a hearing to determine whether defendant Pulley, who had been convicted by a jury on multiple counts of conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute cocaine, should be released on bond while appealing his conviction to the Sixth Circuit. The district court had already found that the defendant posed no flight risk or danger to the community and that the appeal was not for delay. The court denied the motion for bond, holding that none of the five issues raised for appeal—challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, jury instructions on a missing witness, the denial of a continuance for an unavailable witness, the presence of police officers in the courtroom, and the denial of a severance motion—presented a substantial question of law or fact likely to result in reversal or a new trial under 18 U.S.C. § 3143(b). The court reasoned that a substantial question must be a close or debatable one that would likely lead to reversal if successful, and none of the defendant's claims met that standard or were uncontrolled by precedent.
criminal lawprocedure