Kentucky Law Survey: Torts

This issue of the Survey of Kentucky tort law includes recent decisions on false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and products liability. The first case, Consolidated Sales Co. v. Malone, held that Kentucky's shoplifter detention statute authorized a personal search of suspected shoplifters by store personnel. In the second case, Eigelbach v. Watts, the Kentucky Supreme Court adhered to its longstanding rule that physical impact was essential to an action for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Finally, in the third decision, McMichael v. American Red Cross, the Court, utilizing the Restatement's “unavoidably unsafe” rationale, refused to impose strict liability in tort on a noncommerical blood bank which supplied contaminated blood to a transfusion patient.