Williams v. Wilson

This case arrives in this Court in a peculiar procedural posture. Under a factual scenario clearly entitling the plaintifffAppellee to an instruction on punitive damages, the trial court ruled first that the language of KRS 411.184(l)(c) precluded such an instruction, then that KRS 411.184 was unconstitutional because it abolished the common law right to *270punitive damages. Having thus discarded KRS 411.184, the trial court instructed the jury in accordance with the common law standard established in Horton v. Union Light, Heat & Power Co., Ky., 690 S.W.2d 382, 389-90 (1985), viz : conduct…