Talking to that "Man" behind the curtain. 

Some have asked me what methods do I employ in preparing this blog.

Time.  It takes time, but not all of my time and much less than you might imagine since I take advantage of many of the resources and materials prepared by others and simply convert, consolidate, and co-opt many useful sources of information available on the net.

System.

The AOC pages are my primary sources:

  • MINUTES:  The minutes are prepared monthly for the Supreme Court and weekly for the Court of Appeals (these links are to pages where the minutes are indexed by year and month).

    The minutes are multiple page ADOBE ™ documents listing the decisions, orders, etc. from the respective appellate court with HOT LINKS to the published and non published decisions in full text and which are maintained at and by the AOC.

    • The Supreme Court minutes are posted the third Thursday of each month when the SCOKY is in session and following their "court week". 
      • The published and not to be published decisions are numbered sequentially from month to month for the entire year, starting anew the next calendar year.
      • Each numbered decision lists for each case, the name, action number, ruling (vacate, affirm, etc), the author of the opinion (if not a memorandum opinion), the dissenterts, the county of the original decision (unless from Workers Comp), and most importantly a HOT LINK to the actual decision which is maintained at the AOC in PDF format.
        • Other matters listed in the SCOKY Minutes include:
        • MDR's (Motions for Discretionary Review) grants and denials
        • Petitions for Rehearings – grants and denials
        • Court Orders
        • Motions to transfer rulings
        • Attorney/Judicial Disciplinary Matters (many with HOT LINKS to the order)
    • The Court of Appeals Minutes are posted each Friday.
      • A sequential numbering system is used with links to the full-text of the decisions.
      • Orders (without hot links) re: petitions for rehearing, dismissals, corrections, etc.
    • WHAT DO I DO?

      I try to post a link within a week to the minutes, and to make matters a little more useful I post a short synopsis (copied text from the actual decision) to give the reader some insight into the PUBLISHED cases, to include a link directly to the full text decision.

      I also do a "Tort Report" for the nonpublished decisions addressing civil issues on insurance, torts, procedure, etc.  Workers Comp and Family law decisions can be located elsewhere at other sites:

      • WORKERS COMPENSATION LAW UPDATES, I RECOMMEND YOU GO TO THE COMP ED WEB SITE AT http://www.comped.net/.
      • FAMILY LAW UPDATES, I RECOMMEND YOU GO TO Diana Skaggs' Divorce Law Journal at http://www.divorcelawjournal.com
  • ARGUMENT CALENDARS:  The Argument calendars are posted by year and month at the AOC with the links to the respective months posted/updated when the argument calendars are finalized and set.  Although all the links may be HOT, not all calendars are final and many for the future are blank.
    • Links
    • The calendars list the dates, times, locations, and case information (name, county, counsel, issues) for each scheduled argument.  No links to the case information or the underlying order/opinion etc.
    • SCOKY's arguments are available for real time web watching.
      However, they are not yet saved for furture watching, and you must watch the calendar for the time.  Due to broadcasting/streaming delay, the start times are a few minutes off for the net observers.
    • I tried capturing these for a while and cleaning them up a little but it was too hard to set up the time and schedule to "capture" them.  I am thinking of simply asking for the DVD of each argument that I think would be interestings and post some selectively, but I am dependent upon AOC releasing them.  This might even be useful for selected COA arguments. Click here for some samples, I tried back in 2009.
    • BRIEFS!
      Appellate briefs for SCOKY are posted at the Northern Kentucky University, Salmon P. Chase College of Law ( Click here).   Although, it looks as if COA briefs are posted also, I have not been successful in my searches for them.  Any help would be appreciated.
    • WHAT DO I DO?

      I try and post a link to the actual calendar with a short summary of the calendar extracted for ease of review listing dates and times, location, case name and ISSUES.

This is enough for one post.  More later addressing the "Monthly Summaries" of Published Decisions by SCOKY and COA (which can be a month or so after the minutes which is why I do the brief but borrowed synopsis of the published decisions), extracts of "Causes of Action" and "Standards of Review" culled from various decisions, Press Releases, etc.

For the moment, I have leaned away from too much opinions of my own on these pages, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

Again, I hope all of you have enjoyed this service and have found it useful in your practice.

Michael L. Stevens
Attorney at Law
Isaacs and Isaacs, PSC
900 Cherokee Road
Louisville, KY 40204

(502)458-1000