The slip opinions posted here are the latest electronic versions available from the Michigan Court of Appeals. Updates are posted as received from the courts. Consult the advance sheets and bound volumes of the official reports for final revisions and proper pagination. The court must accept as true all well-pleaded facts. We disagree with plaintiff's reading of the statutory exception.
Statutory interpretation is a question of law reviewed de novo on appeal.
The overriding goal guiding judicial interpretation of statutes is to discover and give effect to legislative intent. The starting place for the search for intent is the language used in the statute. Unless defined in the statute, every word or phrase should be accorded its plain and ordinary meaning, taking into account the context in which the words are used. It is this belief in common consensus, in commonly accepted meanings, that in turn underlies judicial confidence in the dictionary as a source of meaning. However, because even the most common word can have a number of meanings, a court must also consider the context in which it appears in order to determine which of these ordinary meanings it carries in the statute under scrutiny.