CHAD STRADER v. ELIZABETH W. CHANDLER
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RENDERED: APRIL 25, 2003; 2:00 P.M.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Commonwealth Of Kentucky
Court of Appeals
NO. 2001-CA-002375-MR
CHAD STRADER
APPELLANT
APPEAL FROM JEFFERSON CIRCUIT COURT
HONORABLE THOMAS MCDONALD, JUDGE
ACTION NO. 98-CI-001917
v.
ELIZABETH W. CHANDLER
APPELLEE
OPINION
REVERSING AND REMANDING
** ** ** ** **
BEFORE:
BAKER, GUIDUGLI AND SCHRODER, JUDGES.
GUIDUGLI, JUDGE.
Chad Strader (hereinafter “Strader”) appeals
from an opinion and order entered by the Jefferson Circuit Court
on September 21, 2001, granting summary judgment to Elizabeth W.
Chandler.1
We reverse and remand.
This is a second appeal before this Court addressing
an order of the Jefferson Circuit Court that granted summary
1
Although Elizabeth W. Chandler is the named defendant, she is occasionally
called Gail W. Chandler in certain documents filed on her behalf. We will
simply use her last name Chandler to identify her in this appeal.
judgment to Chandler.
Chandler is the director of St. Patrick’s
Halfway House, a halfway house operated by Dismas Charities,
Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky.
The first summary judgment was
appealed by Strader and resulted in an opinion vacating and
remanding entered by this Court on June 16, 2000.
In that
appeal, this Court set forth the following facts and issues:
This is an appeal from a summary
judgment entered in favor of a halfway house
in an action by an inmate claiming that
certain personal property was wrongfully
kept by the halfway house when he was
transferred therefrom. As appellant’s
action was brought within the statute of
limitations and there exist material
questions of fact, summary judgment was
improperly entered. Accordingly, the
judgment is vacated and the matter is
remanded for further proceedings.
In March of 1997, appellant, Chad
Strader, was a resident of St. Patrick’s
Halfway House (“St. Patrick’s”), a workrelease facility operated by Dismas
Charities in Louisville. Because of
disciplinary violations, Strader was
terminated from the St. Patrick’s program
and transferred to the Marion Adjustment
Center (“Marion”) on March 12, 1997.
Strader claims that while at St. Patrick’s
he was working on a patent for a fire
suppression system and that employees of St.
Patrick’s were aware of this. Strader
maintains that at the time he was
transferred from St. Patrick’s, he had two
posters and a ledger which contained
information regarding his proposed patent.
Prior to being transported to Marion,
Strader was lodged at the Jefferson County
Jail for approximately two weeks. Upon
arriving at Marion on March 26, 1997,
Strader discovered that the two posters and
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the ledger were missing from his personal
belongings. On April 8, 1998, Strader filed
the pro se action herein against Elizabeth
Chandler, Director of St. Patrick’s (real
party in interest), claiming that St.
Patrick’s failed “to adequately store and
secure Plaintiff’s personal property.” In a
subsequent pleading filed by Strader
captioned “Response”, Strader alleged:
Defendants in this cause of action
saw that this plaintiff was
destined to make a very large sum
of money from this mechanism and
sought this fortuitous opportunity
to deny him of his project and
thereby keep it for themselves.
All the staff there at Dismas
Charities knew of this project
upon which the plaintiff had been
continuously working on; and that
he was preparing to cash in on
this project, and all to [sic]
suddenly he is transferred and
without his blue prints for his
fire suppression mechanism. The
defendants were acting under color
of state law and did willfully
deprive him of that device which
he planned to patent, so that they
could benefit from said fire
mechanism.
On September 3, 1998, upon motion of
Chandler, the trial court entered summary
judgment in favor of Chandler. This appeal
by Strader followed.
The trial court did not give a reason
for entering summary judgment, but we shall
presume it was because the action was barred
by the one-year statute of limitation in KRS
413.140(1), as argued by Chandler in her
motion for summary judgment.
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In addressing the statute of limitation issue, this
Court determined that Strader’s complaint was based upon
conversion and theft and thus, the five-year statute of
limitation found in KRS 413.120(5) was applicable.
Specifically, this Court stated:
In the instant case, although he [Strader]
is accusing the employees of St. Patrick’s
of taking his property, Strader does not
know who is presently in possession of the
property. Further, St. Patrick’s had a
legal right to possession of his property
while he was a resident there. Thus, if an
employee of St. Patrick’s took his property,
it was, for purposes of the statute of
limitation, conversion, not theft.
Accordingly, the five-year limitation period
in KRS 413.120(5) applies and Strader’s
action was brought well within the statutory
period.
However, after having determined that the trial court
improperly granted summary judgment based upon its use of the
improper statute of limitation, the Court of Appeals then
proceeded to address the issue of summary judgment relative to
the existence of genuine issues of material fact.
On this
issue, the Court’s opinion held:
Thus, in considering the evidence in the
light most favorable to Strader, we must
assume that St. Patrick’s was in possession
of the property in question when Strader was
transferred and that Strader did not get the
property back when he was transferred.
Although there is no direct proof that
someone from St. Patrick’s actually took
Strader’s property, there is evidence that
St. Patrick’s failed to return said property
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to him upon transfer. Accordingly, we
believe there exists a genuine issue of
material fact on the claim of conversion so
as to overcome the motion for summary
judgment.
For the reasons stated above, the
judgment of the Jefferson Circuit Court is
vacated and the matter is remanded to the
trial court for further proceedings.
Based upon the opinion vacating and remanding, this
mater was returned to the Jefferson Circuit Court for further
proceedings.
Both parties proceeded with discovery, including
Chandler taking Strader’s deposition on April 3 and 4, 2001.
Following the completion of discovery and the trial court’s
orders concerning completion of all pre-trial matters, the case
was set for trial.
However, prior to the commencement of trial,
Chandler filed another motion for summary judgment.
Initially
the trial court denied the motion on August 3, 2001, finding
that “there are genuine issues of material facts remaining in
this action.”
However, on September 21, 2001, the court sua
sponte reconsidered the motion for summary judgment and entered
an order granting Chandler’s motion and dismissed Strader’s
complaint with prejudice.
This appeal followed.
The order granting Chandler summary judgment, in
relevant part, stated:
This matter is before the Court on the
motion of the Defendant, Elizabeth W.
Chandler, for summary judgment regarding a
release form signed by the Plaintiff thereby
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allowing the institution to dispose of the
Plaintiff’s personal property.
After careful review of the record,
submitted memorandum and applicable case
law, the Court grants the Defendant’s motion
for summary judgment.
BACKGROUND SUMMARY
This is an inmate pro se action
involving the return of personal property or
$500,000 in damages to the Plaintiff. The
Plaintiff, is a former resident of the
Dismas-St. Patrick’s facility, which is a
work release facility located in Louisville,
Kentucky. As a resident of Dismas-St.
Patrick’s, the Plaintiff was asked to sign a
release allowing for the destruction of his
personal property if not retrieved by him or
an authorized representative within seven
(7) days from being removed from the
facility.
On March 12, 1997, the Plaintiff was
discharged from the Dismas-St. Patrick’s due
to a violation and ultimately sent to Marion
Adjustment Center in St. Mary, Kentucky.
Upon his arrival on March 27, 1997, the
Plaintiff underwent an inventory of his
personal property and allegedly discovered
the two mail tubes and a ledger were
missing.
OPINION
. . .
The Court in Cline v. Allis-Chalmers
Corporation, Ky.App., 690 S.W.2d 764, 766
(1985), stated “in general, a person who has
the opportunity to read a contract, but does
not do so and signs the agreement, is bound
to the contract terms unless there was some
fraud in the process of obtaining his
signature.” Here, there is no evidence of
fraud nor that the Plaintiff contests the
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fact that he signed, read and understood
this release agreement. As a result, there
exists no genuine issues of material fact
and the Defendant, Elizabeth W. Chandler, is
entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
The release in question was signed by Strader on
September 4, 1996, and signed at the same time he executed a
document entitled Consent to Disclosure of Information.
The
following is a copy of the release signed by Strader:
CLOTHING RELEASE
I authorize Dismas Charities Staff to
release all my personal belongings to the
following person(s) in situations where I
cannot personally retrieve them. If not
retrieved in seven days, I authorize Dismas
Charities Staff to dispose of them. I
understand that my personal belongings will
not be released until I have returned all
property of Dismas Charities, Inc.
Chandler argued and the trial court agreed that this
document was a contract releasing Chandler of all liability and
duties and thus, summary judgment was proper in that there
existed no genuine issues of material fact.
Chandler pointed
out that, in Strader’s deposition, he admitted he signed the
release and did not take any action to recover his personal
belongings within the seven (7) day time-frame permitted under
the release.
Strader, on the other hand, claims the “Clothing
Release has many faults and does not hold the type of water that
[Chandler] portray(s) that it does.”
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Summary judgment is property “if the pleadings,
depositions, answers to interrogatories, stipulations, and
admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show
that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that
the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.
(CR 56.03).
In Paintsville Hospital Co. v. Rose, Ky., 683
S.W.2d 255 (1985), our Supreme Court held that for summary
judgment to be proper the movant must show that the adverse
party cannot prevail under any circumstances.
The Court has
also stated that “the proper function of summary judgment is to
terminate litigation when, as a matter of law, it appears that
it would be impossible for the respondent to produce evidence at
the trial warranting a judgment in his favor.
Steelvest v.
Scansteel Service Center, Inc., Ky., 807 S.W.2d 476, 480 (1991).
The standard of review on appeal of a summary judgment is
whether the trial court correctly found that there was no
genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving part
was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
Ky.App., 916 S.W.2d 774, 781 (1996).
Scifres v. Kraft,
There is no requirement
that the appellate court defer to the trial court since factual
findings are not at issue.
Goldsmith v. Allied Building
Components, Inc., Ky., 833 S.W.2d 378, 381 (1992).
“The record
must be viewed in a light most favorable to the party opposing
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the motion for summary judgment and all doubts are to be
resolved in his favor.”
Steelvest, supra, at 480.
While we do not comment as to the ultimate merits of
Strader’s complaint, we do believe that the trial court erred in
finding that no genuine issue of material fact exists as to the
signed release.
First, the obvious problem exists that the
release in bold caption is called a “Clothing Release.”
While
the release itself calls for all personal belongings, we believe
this document is ambiguous as to whether it relates only to
clothing or to all belongings.
Second, Strader was taken from
St. Patrick’s weeks before his belongings were inventoried and
sent to the next correctional facility.
Although it was
Strader’s breach of disciplinary rules which resulted in his
removal, he was not present when his personal belongings were
inventoried nor did he sign the inventory as is normal
procedure.
Third, he was not even aware of the inventory list
or the alleged missing items until well after seven (7) days had
passed since his last day at St. Patrick’s.
And finally, the
release was signed months prior to his removal from St.
Patrick’s and part of other administrative processing procedures
when he first arrived at the halfway house.
We believe these
issues to present factual issues that need to be resolved by the
trier of the facts and not appropriate for summary dismissal.
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Although the record contains Strader’s deposition, we
still believe the issuance of the present summary judgment was
premature, especially when given the basis for the judgment.
such, we reluctantly reverse the opinion and order of the
Jefferson Circuit Court granting summary judgment and remand
this matter to the trial court for further proceedings.
ALL CONCUR.
BRIEF FOR APPELLANT, PRO SE:
Chad Strader
Pineville, KY
BRIEF FOR APPELLEE:
Ian T. Ramsey
Louisville, KY
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