Source: https://michiganlawyerblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 18:24:27+00:00

Document:
As prosecutions go, the one against Arthur Muniz was a slam dunk for the Wayne County prosecutor’s office.
Muniz was charged with shooting Gutierrez, his old girlfriend’s new boyfriend, once in the arm and once in the head.
Muniz admitted he was at the crime scene with a gun but said that someone else — Muniz didn’t know who — fired the shots that injured Gutierrez.
Gutierrez fingered Muniz as the shooter. So did another witness who was in the car with Gutierrez. A Detroit cop said Gutierrez, while bleeding from his wounds, identified Muniz as the shooter.
Muniz’s own mother took the stand and said her son called her after the shooting and confessed.
The jury found Muniz guilty of assault with intent to murder, felon in possession of a firearm and felony firearm.
The jury apparently placed no credence in his claim, elicited by the prosecutor on cross-examination, that everyone but him was lying under oath.
Huh? Wait a minute. Under People v. Buckey, 424 Mich. 1 (1985), prosecutors can’t ask defendants to comment on the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses.
Defense counsel should have objected.
And maybe he would have had he been awake.
While the prosecutor was cross-examining Mr. Muniz, I glanced at defense table and was surprised to see that Mr. Muniz’[s] defense attorney [was] sleeping[.] … It was apparent to me that Mr. Muniz’[s] attorney was actually sleeping through a portion of his client’s testimony.
Muniz said his convictions should be overturned because counsel slept during some of the trial.
And then there’s that matter of defense counsel’s arrest for possession of cocaine three weeks before Muniz signed on as a client.
Muniz also claimed counsel was using cocaine during the trial. Muniz argued that drug use would explain counsel’s allegedly crummy direct examination of the defense’s private investigator, and would also explain the many alleged defense errors that ticked-off the trial judge.
Muniz offered no evidence that counsel was actually using drugs during trial. Moreover, counsel was licensed to practice trial although his license was later suspended.
The Michigan appellate courts turned down Muniz’s motion for new trial based on ineffective assistance of counsel.
He fared no better with his habeas petition in the U.S. District Court.
At the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Muniz argued that when counsel sleeps during a client’s trial, prejudice should be presumed under United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648 (1984).
But Judge Eugene Siler said sleeping counsel cases decided under Cronic focus on how long counsel was asleep. The cases that bring habeas relief are those in which the attorney sleeps for substantial portions of the trial.
In denying relief, Siler told Muniz, in effect, that his attorney just took a short nap.
Nothing presumptively prejudicial about that.
Muniz’s attorney was asleep for an undetermined portion of a single cross-examination. The record shows that Muniz’s attorney was not asleep for the entire cross since he objected near the end of the questioning. This is especially significant, given that the total cross-examination was fairly short, spanning only 26 pages of trial transcript.
Muniz did no better under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).
Under Strickland, wrote Siler, a habeas petitioner must show that counsel’s performance was deficient, and the deficiency prejudiced the petitioner’s case.
[B]y putting forward the affidavit of a juror who witnessed Muniz’s attorney sleeping Muniz has made a sufficient showing that the standard of conduct by his attorney fell below the objective standard of reasonableness.
There is no suggestion in the government’s brief, nor could there be, that Muniz’s attorney fell asleep at trial because in his “reasonable professional judgment” it was the best course of action.
But showing prejudice is quite another matter.
There was a mountain of evidence against Muniz. There was only Muniz’s conjecture, but no evidence, that counsel used drugs during trial and screwed up as a result.
And besides, defense counsel didn’t sleep away most of the trial, he just took a short cat nap.
The case is Muniz v. Smith.
In its final opinion of a topsy-turvy term, Duffy v. Dep’t of Natural Resources, the Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that a trail maintained by the Department of Natural Resources is not a “highway” under the Governmental Tort Immunity Act.
The trail in question is the Little Manistee Trail, which, according to the opinion, is a “trailway” no where near a highway. That distinction made a difference in the decision.
The Trail is properly classified as a “trailway” within the distinct meaning of that word in Michigan’s statutory law, and this “trailway”– which is miles away from any highway — is not within the scope of the highway exception because it is not a “trailway . . . on the highway.” Id. Furthermore, because the Legislature determined that only trailways on the highway are deemed highways, and because this Trail therefore is clearly not a highway, we refuse plaintiff’s invitation to avoid the statute and make the Trail into a highway by calling it a road. In summary, all roads, forest roads, trails, trailways, and highways in this case lead to the conclusion that plaintiff’s claim is barred by governmental immunity.
Justice Stephen J. Markman wrote the majority opinion, joined by the usual suspects. The decision seems somewhat narrow to this situation, leaving the door open for a “trailway” alongside a highway.
covered structures. But it did not.
important to give effect to this essential limiting clause, no matter how inartfully worded.
In a dissent, Justice Marilyn Kelly argued the Trail should be considered a road because it is used by the public as one.
As poet James Whitcomb Riley is said to have remarked, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” Riley’s quip is apropos to this case: when I see a thoroughfare that looks like a road and has signage like a road and is used by the public as a road, I call that thoroughfare a road.
And that, according to MSC public information officer Marcia McBrien, is it for the weekend.
In the second-to-last Michigan Supreme Court decision of the term, the court has found that a first party no-fault plaintiff must show verifiable and objective medical evidence that an experimental procedure is effective in order to prevail.
In Krohn v. Home-Owners Insurance Co., the plaintiff went to Portugal for experimental spinal surgery after suffering catastrophic injuries in an auto accident . The surgery wasn’t FDA approved and wasn’t available in the U.S. He was warned by his doctor that the surgery was dangerous, experimental and likely wouldn’t be covered by insurance.
The no-fault insurer told the plaintiff it wouldn’t pay for the surgery, but would pay for tests to see if he was a candidate and therapy sessions after. After having the surgery, he sued the no-fault insurer for the cost of the surgery.
After the surgery, the plaintiff reported some improvement in his condition. The majority, in an opinion written by Justice Brian Zahra, said experimental procedures aren’t all excluded by coverage, but more is required than the plaintiff’s perceptions that it worked/will work.
We reject defendant’s position and conclude that experimental treatments are not necessarily barred from being compensable under the no-fault act. The ultimate question whether the surgical procedure at issue here is a covered expense under the no-fault act does not turn on its status as experimental. Rather, like all claims for allowable expenses, the question turns on whether the procedure was reasonably necessary for plaintiff’s care, recovery, or rehabilitation.
If a surgical procedure is experimental, an insured cannot establish its reasonable necessity under MCL 500.3107 unless expert testimony indicates that the surgery presents a reasonable chance that it will be efficacious in the injured person’s care, recovery, or rehabilitation.
MCL 500.3107(1)(a) does not require that medical treatment be shown to have gained general acceptance within the medical community. Rather, an insured must present objective and verifiable medical evidence that medical treatment is efficacious in an injured person’s care, recovery, or rehabilitation. If there is objective and verifiable evidence that an experimental surgical procedure is efficacious, the finder of fact can begin to make an informed decision in regard to whether the treatment was reasonably necessary by considering whatever factors were relevant in that case, which may include but are not limited to the severity and chronicity of the condition, the outcomes of any previous treatments, the likelihood that alternative treatments would be efficacious, a personal physician’s recommendation in conjunction with the a patient’s preference, and both the short-term and long-term risks and benefits. Absent objective evidence to establish that the experimental surgical procedure is at least efficacious, there would not exist a material question of fact about whether the medical treatment was reasonably necessary to the care recovery or rehabilitation of an insured.
The majority holds that in order for an expense related to an experimental surgical procedure to be “reasonably necessary,” a court must first determine as a matter of law that there is “objective and verifiable medical evidence establishing that [the experimental surgical procedure] is efficacious.” Further, the majority holds that plaintiff did not meet the “objective and verifiable medical evidence” standard because Dr. Lima’s research “was unsupported by any controlled studies, it was not subject to peer review, and the medical evidence was not debated in scholarly publications.” Thus, the majority’s new standards add language to the statute that is simply not there.
She also disputed the majority’s result under its own holding, stating that 40 of the 110 people who have had the surgery came from the doctor whose opinion the majority relied upon to dispute the “efficaciousness” of the procedure, the ironically named Dr. Hinderer.
Since it was decided in 2009, the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Shabahang has been used by the Court of Appeals to allow plaintiffs to fix several different types of defects in medical malpractice-specific pleadings.
But the court’s decision in Ligons v. Crittendon Hospital denied a plaintiff the opportunity to amend a defective affidavit of merit (AOM) and dismissing the case.
Writing for the majority, Justice Brian Zahra said the AOM isn’t a “pleading” under the court rules, so any rule allowing an amended “pleading” doesn’t apply.
Zahra also wrote that Bush doesn’t apply to AOMs either.
The Bush Court’s application of MCL 600.2301 to a medical malpractice NOI was rooted in the Legislature’s 2004 amendment of MCL 600.5856(c), the notice-tolling statute, and does not apply to AOMs. Unlike NOIs, which give notice to defendants, AOMs are meant to weed out frivolous cases before they are ever filed. Applying Bush beyond the scope of the 2004 amendment of MCL 600.5856(c) and NOIs to AOMs would be an unwarranted expansion of its focus on the notice-tolling statute, would free the opinion from its statutory moorings, would frustrate the purpose of the AOM requirement, and would create unnecessary conflict with existing caselaw, such as Kirkaldy, which Bush did not overrule. We therefore decline to apply the rationale of Bush beyond its limited statutory focus.
The majority said dismissal with prejudice is required in such circumstances.
Justice Michael Cavanagh dissented, arguing that the AOM in the case wasn’t defective because the statute doesn’t require specificity, and even if it was, the statutes don’t require that the case be dismissed with prejudice.
Nevertheless, assuming arguendo that the AOM in this case was deficient, I believe that MCL 600.23013 should apply to allow a cure of the alleged deficiency within the AOM. To begin with, applying MCL 600.2301 would not conflict with MCL 600.2912d, when the latter is read as a whole. Indeed, as recognized by Justice HATHAWAY, the AOM statute does not expressly provide a penalty for deficiencies within the contents of an AOM. And, notably, the allowances of additional time to file an AOM in MCL 600.2912d(2) and (3) do not explicitly preclude amending or disregarding defects within the contents of an AOM. Instead, those provisions merely provide a plaintiff additional time in which to file the initial AOM and, thus, do not address curing an arguably defective AOM. And while I continue to adhere to my position in Kirkaldy v Rim, 478 Mich 581, 586-587; 734 NW2d 201 (2007) (CAVANAGH, J., concurring), as Justice HATHAWAY suggests, allowing a defect within an AOM to be cured under MCL 600.2301 would simply provide an alternative remedy to that of Kirkaldy, in which the majority opined that the remedy for a successful challenge to a deficient AOM is dismissal without prejudice, id. at 586 (majority opinion). Accordingly, I believe that MCL 600.2301 should apply.
Justice Diane Hathaway also argued that the statute doesn’t require the specificity the majority is requiring.
One of the other two MSC decisions that are supposed to be out today, Driver v. Cardiovascular Clinic, will also deal with application of Bush v. Shabahang and Burton v. Reed City Hospital. Stay tuned.

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