Ky. Ct. of Appeals Tosses Out $164,000 Judgment

It is fundamental that a plaintiff cannot have two bites of (at?) the apple. Meaning that if you file a claim in a lawsuit and lose, you cannot refile the same or essentially identical claim later.  Nor can you hold one claim in reserve while you pursue very similar claims.  The plaintiff in Smith v. Housing Authority of Middlesborough learned this lesson today when the Ky. Court of Appeals tossed out a $164,000 verdict that had previously gone in his favor.  In a nutshell, Smith was discharged by the Housing Authority and sued.  He initially claimed that the Housing Authority had terminated him in violation of the Ky. Whistleblower Act.  That claim was dismissed as untimely.  Smith then filed a wrongful termination claim under common law.  The trial court refused the Housing Authority's request to dismiss the suit on the grounds that the second claim was essentially a disguised version of the first claim.  The trial court allowed the case to go to the jury, which awarded Smith $164,000.  Today the Ky. COA held the trial court committed an error and the case should have been dismissed before it ever went to the jury for the reasons initially argued by the Housing Authority.  Unfortunately, the decision is unpublished, which means it cannot be cited to a Kentucky state court.