Opinion ID: 1815361
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the lesniak decision

Text: The survey of contemporaneous legal authority in the preceding section was an effort to ascertain whether in general there was a particular interpretation given the phrase appeals ... tried de novo. The answer was indecisive and ambiguous. But there is an important answer from another perspective. In the months just preceding the adoption of the constitutional provision at issue, this Court had occasion to consider the meaning of an appeal to be tried de novo under the Fair Employment Practices Act. Lesniak v FEPC, 364 Mich 495; 111 NW2d 790 (1961). Because efforts to discern a common understanding of the phrase, appeals ... tried de novo, have proven futile, and because the framers of the CRC amendment expressly modeled CRC appeal procedures on those found in the FEPA, Lesniak provides an especially reliable guidepost, and thus deserves special prominence in this analysis. We believe this inquiry, then, is of particular significance. Excerpts from the Constitutional Convention debates disclose that the CRC amendment's proponent intended to provide for the same kind of judicial review which was then available from final decisions of the FEPC. Delegate Higgs stated: The background of this particular sentence is actually a digest of [MCL 423.308] MSA section 17.458(8), a part of the Michigan state fair employment practices act.... I think, in view of the experience that the state has had  which to my understanding has been satisfactory and approved by the people working with this commission  that this practice has been satisfactory and that this, in effect, will give greater significance and meaning to this particular article. ... I think it is most significant that we pay as much attention to details as possible, and this is what led me to read and examine the Michigan fair employment practices act.... So that you will all understand just what is meant by the words in this sentence, this actually is a digest of about 3 or 4 times the language that appears in the section cited. [2 Official Record, Constitutional Convention 1961, p 3118.][ [5] ] Because Lesniak was decided several months before the amendment was introduced, we can assume that the delegates intended to model appeals from CRC decisions on the kind of appeal available from FEPC decisions, as decided in Lesniak. The Fair Employment Practices Commission was created in the Fair Employment Practices Act. 1955 PA 251, MCL 423.301 et seq.; MSA 17.458(1) et seq. [6] The language in dispute in the case at bar appears to have been drawn directly from the appeal provisions of the FEPA: Any complainant, intervener or respondent claiming to be aggrieved by a final order of the commission, including a refusal to issue a complaint, may appeal to the circuit court of the State of Michigan within any county wherein the unfair employment practice, which is the subject of the commission's order, was committed, or wherein any respondent required in the order to cease and desist from an unfair employment practice, or to take other affirmative action, resides or transacts business and such appeal shall be tried de novo before said circuit court. [MCL 423.308; MSA 17.458(8). Emphasis added. Repealed by 1976 PA 453.] Other subsections of the same statute 1) required the FEPC to file with the court a transcript of the hearing before it, 2) empowered the circuit court to enforce, modify, and set aside in whole or in part the FEPC'S order, 3) limited the issues on appeal to those which had been heard by the FEPC, unless there were reasonable grounds for having failed to raise them before the FEPC, and 4) allowed the circuit court to remand the case to the FEPC in order to gather additional evidence. MCL 423.308; MSA 17.458(8). Another section preserved the right to a jury trial in the proceeding before the circuit court. MCL 423.10; MSA 17.458(10). In Lesniak, as in this case, the agency dismissed a complaint of employment discrimination because its investigation failed to produce sufficient grounds to sustain the complaint. The plaintiff was granted a new evidentiary hearing in the circuit court without regard to the record compiled before the FEPC. On appeal, we analyzed all the requirements in the statute in order to determine whether the scope of appeal intended was quite narrow or quite broad, requiring a hearing on the record or an entirely new evidentiary hearing. We recognized that the language appeals shall be tried de novo could reveal an intention on the part of the legislature that a wholly new proceeding, with the authorization of new issues, new testimony, and a new record, and entirely new and possibly different findings of fact, were provided for. Lesniak, supra, 502. However, we concluded that the remainder of the subsections refuted this intent. The remaining subsections requiring the filing of transcripts of the record before the FEPC, limiting the remedies which could be granted by the circuit court, limiting the issues to those heard by the FEPC, and providing for remitting the case to the FEPC for further testimony, were entirely inconsistent with the view of the construction of the words `shall be tried de novo before said circuit court' as sought by plaintiff-appellee. Id., 502-503. We also found these subsections completely at odds with a later provision purporting to guarantee a jury trial in such appeals. Id. Faced with these ambiguities, we observed: To set up such an elaborate machinery to perform a specific administrative and quasi-judicial function, and then to provide for trial de novo and a hearing and finding of fact before a jury in circuit court, builds an irreconcilable contradiction into the framework of the statute. The de novo trial provisions and the jury trial provisions of the appeal sections are in direct conflict with both the balance of the appeal sections of the statute and the purpose, structure and form of the main portions of the statute itself. [ Id., 504.] We ultimately construed the statute as requiring an appeal in the nature of certiorari where the circuit court would review for legal error or arbitrary action the findings of fact and decisions of the fair employment practices commission. Id., 505-506. The fact that this decision was reached in part to avoid an interpretation which would unconstitutionally delegate factfinding functions of an agency to the courts does not detract from the remainder of this Court's analysis. We recognize that the inclusion of the tried de novo language in art 5, § 29, eliminates any question of the constitutionality of the appeal procedure from decisions of the CRC. Yet we find very persuasive the analysis in Lesniak that an appeal to be tried de novo does not require an entirely new evidentiary trial.