Opinion ID: 839448
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: just compensation as a term of art

Text: In Silver Creek, a majority of justices held that the Constitution's term just compensation was a legal term of art that only those learned in the law could have understood when the Michigan Constitution was adopted in 1963. [12] I dissented from that holding because it wrongly limited the analysis of the term just compensation to the understanding of those learned in the law, even though the constitutions throughout Michigan's history left the determination of just compensation to other freeholders (landowners). [13] The majority's constitutional analysis in this case reveals the flaws inherent in an analysis limited to the understanding of those learned in the law. The majority, sticking to the learned in the law form of analysis, looks only to past cases interpreting the just compensation provision of the Michigan Constitution. The majority holds that, because this Court had not interpreted just compensation with regard to general effects damages, a person sophisticated in the law in 1963 would not have understood just compensation to include general effects damages. The majority then reasons that, because a person sophisticated in the law in 1963 would not have understood just compensation to include general effects damages, the Constitution's term just compensation does not include such damages. Thus, the majority concludes that the provision in MCL 213.70(2) precluding general-effects damages does not conflict with the Constitution and the statute is constitutional. I find the majority's reasoning to be deeply flawed because the majority only looks for a pre-1963 case on point, and when it finds that there is no case on point, it ignores the plain language of the Constitution and marginalizes other cases interpreting just compensation. In my Silver Creek dissent, I noted the long-established condemnation rule that `[j]ust compensation' has long been readily and reasonably understood to be that amount of money that puts the property owner whose property is taken in as good, but not better, a financial position after the taking as the property owner enjoyed before the taking. [14] In the instant case, the majority disregards this rule because this Court had never specifically used it with regard to general effects damages. However, common sense dictates that if compensation for the general effects damages would serve to place the landowner in the position he or she was in before the taking, then general effects damages would be includable in just compensation. But the majority's legal term of art analysis only looks to the understanding of those learned in the law. It does not look to the common understanding of the people who ratified the Constitution. Rather than adhere to the majority's legal term of art analysis of just compensation, this Court should return to Michigan's longstanding rule for interpreting the Michigan Constitution, as described by Justice Cooley, under which [t]he interpretation that should be given [the Constitution] is that which reasonable minds, the great mass of the people themselves, would give it. . . . [T]he intent to be arrived at is that of the people, and it is not to be supposed that they have looked for any dark or abstruse meaning in the words employed, but rather that they have accepted them in the sense most obvious to the common understanding . . . . [ [15] ] As I stated in my partial dissent in Silver Creek, 468 Mich. at 383, 663 N.W.2d 436, this Court should not engage in a method of constitutional construction that unnecessarily sidesteps the long-established primary rule of constitutional construction. Accordingly, I continue to dissent from the majority's legal term of art analysis of just compensation.