How do judges of the Supreme Court of Kentucky reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Kentucky / Joined 1969 / Served to 1979

Pleas Elgin Reed

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Pleas Elgin Reed was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1921–1994
Tenure: 1969–1979 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

University of Kentucky

Judicial Record

In our data, Reed authored 35 published opinions for the court (1976–1979), plus 2 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Caudill v. Maloney's Discount Stores (133 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 20 of these were attributed to Reed by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1977	Caudill v. Maloney's Discount Stores	560 S.W.2d 15	133
1979	Louisville Trust Co. v. Johns-Manville Products Corp.	580 S.W.2d 497	113
1979	Ohio Casualty Insurance Co. v. Stanfield	581 S.W.2d 555	82
1977	Luttrell v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	554 S.W.2d 75	76
1979	Kentucky Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co. v. Cook	590 S.W.2d 875	58
1978	Transport Motor Express, Inc. v. Finn	574 S.W.2d 277	56
1978	Whorton v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	570 S.W.2d 627	48
1978	Hook v. Hook	563 S.W.2d 716	30
1977	Fite & Warmath Const. Co., Inc. v. Mys Corp.	559 S.W.2d 729	29
1979	Gallman v. Commonwealth	578 S.W.2d 47	27
1978	Ratliff v. Commonwealth	567 S.W.2d 307	24
1979	City of Owensboro v. McCormick	581 S.W.2d 3	18
1978	Thomas v. Commonwealth	567 S.W.2d 299	16
1979	Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc. v. Bloyd· Dissent†	586 S.W.2d 19	15
1976	Commonwealth ex rel. Stephens v. South Central Bell Telephone Co.· Concurrence†	545 S.W.2d 927	15

Showing the 15 most-cited of 41 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of Kentucky reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Pleas Elgin Reed on?: Pleas Elgin Reed was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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10 years on the Supreme Court of Kentucky. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).