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Kentucky Comair Widows Push for Change in Loss of Consortium Law.

Sarah King Fortney: When Comair Flight 5191 fell from the sky, it took a life of great potential in my husband, C.W. Fortney. C.W. was a father, a husband, a son, a friend and my hero. My life, as I knew it, was taken from me that August morning, never to return. My reason for being here today goes deeper and is far greater than a desire to be compensated for the loss of my husband. I am here to request that our government recognize marriage as something more than a series of bank deposits. Insisting that the loss of a loved one can be compensated exclusively by that person’s earning potential trivializes the very form of emotional attachment that we claim marriage represents. The State of Kentucky currently restricts damages in wrongful death and negligence cases such as mine to lost wages. Our current law says that you're only worth as much as your paycheck. Make no mistake, that's what it says. By limiting damages in cases such as these, our state is putting a clear and direct price tag on human emotions and human life. Opponents of this bill will tell you that this is tort issue, that this is about frivolous lawsuits. They have lost their focus on families. This is a deliberate attempt on behalf of the Republican Senate leadership to confuse family values with greed. Don’t fall for it. In the chamber behind me, our elected representatives are debating the definition of marriage. They’re publicly stating their opinion that marriage is the bedrock of society and defending the sanctity of marriage to further their own political agenda. How can they on the one hand, glorify marriage as our most sacred institution while simultaneously denouncing the emotions on which that foundation is built? That is the height of hypocrisy. Forty-six other states in our union have recognized the issue in front of you today, with no ill effect on their local economy. However, by remaining the smallest of minorities, Kentucky is turning its back on its citizens and providing a safe haven for inept and negligent businesses to thrive, a place where marriage certificates mean nothing more than tax breaks. Let me say this: I'm not a lawyer. I'm not being advised by my lawyer on this issue. I am a widow. I am a single parent. I'm an advocate for anyone suffering because they were robbed of their spouse due to ineptitude and/or negligence. Should that ever happen to you or your family. Should you ever be forced into that corner. Should you ever feel the pain that I've felt, I can only hope you won't be subjected to the same slap in the face from our government that I have. Kathy Ryan: When someone fails to adhere to a baseline standard of care, or sells a dangerous product, or creates a dangerous environment, or behaves in a in a reckless or criminal way and such behavior causes the death of someone, surely we can all agree, as we have agreed in the law for centuries, that the wrongdoer must be held accountable in some meaningful way to their innocent victim. We, if we are good parents, teach this basic principle of accountability to our children. Kentucky has long had a statute that says, "Either a wife or husband may recover damages against a third person for loss of consortium, resulting from a negligent or wrongful act of such person." The courts have interpreted the loss of consortium statute as applying only in cases of personal injury. So if your spouse is negligently injured, your spouse has a cause of action for his injury and you also have a cause of action for the damage you suffer as the result of no longer having a healthy husband. But such is not the case if, instead of suffering only injury, your spouse is instead negligently killed. All that we ask in House Bill 403 is fairness and justice through the reasonable and continued opportunity to hold wrongdoers accountable for all of the damage which they cause. Compensation of the deceased person's estate does not compensate a widow or widower for the destruction of their marriage - the unique hardships, pain and grief caused the surviving spouse by the undeserving death of their life partner. Passing HB 403 will not be a windfall for anyone. It will merely provide innocent citizens an opportunity, difficult as it is to exercise in practice, to force a wrongdoer to value marriage and family in our society. And it will avoid what are otherwise vastly unfair results for spouses of victims who happen not to be the primary wage-earner in a marriage. Those of us who have suffered the immediate death of our spouse have damages separate and distinct to us that do not include, nor overlap with, the loss of our spouses' "power to earn money," funeral expenses, or pain and suffering. Surely we can universally recognize that, as human beings, the best things in life mean little when you have no one with whom to share them. There is much more to the shared life that a marriage is, and we all know it. Jurors know it too, and their life experience guides them in balancing the results. Kentucky is far behind the trend in this area. We are one of only four states in the Union that has not recognized the right of a spouse to recover for the lost services, love and affection of a person wrongfully killed. Forty-six other states took this step long ago. It is past time for Kentucky to do the same. To that end, and only because I mistakenly thought that maybe, just maybe with the publicity of Comair 5191 and the second degree of separation effect that it had on many citizens of this commonwealth, that we could prevail over the powerful forces which would predictably oppose us. We thought that all we were doing was handing a golden opportunity to the legislature to fix a horrid, unjustifiable inconsistency in current case law. The House of Representatives understood this and overwhelmingly passed House Bill 403 on a vote of 93 in favor, only seven opposed. But in the Senate our efforts have been met with charges of greed and the response from Senate leadership that our bill does not fit into their tort reform agenda, therefore it will not be pushed onto the Senate floor for a vote. It is most unfortunate that we have been personally attacked in this way and have had to encounter a severe lack of empathy for human victims in favor of sympathy for commercial enterprise. It has, to say the least, been a disappointment to face people who don't seem capable of understanding what it means to have your world ended just because your husband had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has also been very hurtful to face people who have no understanding of the value of trial attorneys who, in my humble opinion, are some of the only remaining heroes of our society, willing to risk and invest personally in the causes of innocent victims who would otherwise be powerless to achieve any accountability for those who have negligently or criminally harmed them. House Bill 403 is about valuing humanity, as fostered in marriage and family, over the interests of commercial enterprise. We ask the Senate leadership to immediately reconsider its position and permit House Bill 403 to come to the Senate floor for a vote right away.

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