explaining that a university medical center performed the same functions as a private hospital but retained governmental immunity due to its teaching mission
How later courts described this case
- explaining that a university medical center performed the same functions as a private hospital but retained governmental immunity due to its teaching mission
- “[w]e will find waiver only where stated ‘by the most express language or by such overwhelming implications from the text as [will] leave no room for any other reasonable construction.”
- “If immunity exists, it is not lost or diminished or affected in any manner by the purchase of liability insurance or the establishment of an indemnity fund . . . directed or authorized by statute.”
- As to ‘‘whether the University of Kentucky is entitled to immunity'from cláims óf medical riegligence at its medical center [the Supreme Court-said] we have no reluctance to answer in the affirmative.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
STEPHENS, Chief Justice,
concurring.
While I concur with the majority, I would go further and revisit the two-pronged test we adopted in Kentucky Center for the Arts v. Berns, Ky., 801 S.W.2d 327 (1991), as I believe it went too far and usurped a function squarely within the discretion of the legislature. Section 231 of Kentucky’s Constitution specifically states: “The General Assembly may, by law, direct in what manner and in what courts suits may be brought against the Commonwealth.” By the very language of this section, sovereign immunity is retained for the Commonwealth until the General Assembly, by statute, expressly waives it.
*347 However, the test annunciated by this Court in Bems, supra, potentially affords operations established, funded, and owned by the Commonwealth no protection of sovereign immunity. This surely does not comport with the purpose the original drafters of our constitution had in mind. Thus, I would leave the determination of what entities should be afforded sovereign immunity where it properly belongs, with the General Assembly.