Opinion ID: 843020
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: hobbs and brown were wrongly decided and poorly reasoned

Text: The simple fact is that Hobbs and Brown were wrong because they were built on an argument that governmental immunity notice statutes are unconstitutional or at least sometimes unconstitutional if the government was not prejudiced. This reasoning has no claim to being defensible constitutional theory and is not rescued by musings to the effect that the justices `look askance' at devices such as notice requirements, Hobbs, 398 Mich. at 96, 247 N.W.2d 754, quoting Carver, 390 Mich. at 99, 211 N.W.2d 24, or the pronouncement that other reasons that could supply a rational basis were not to be considered because in the Court's eyes the only legitimate purpose of the notice provisions was to protect from actual prejudice. Hobbs, 398 Mich. at 96, 247 N.W.2d 754. Perceiving the error of the majority, Justice Riley explained in her dissent in Brown that this notice statute is social legislation that is constitutional because it has a rational basis. She stated: I note that [w]hen scrutinizing economic and social legislation, this Court applies the rational basis standard of review. Downriver Plaza Group v. Southgate, 444 Mich. 656, 666, 513 N.W.2d 807 (1994). The only inquiry, then, is whether this social legislation creating a 120-day notice requirement has a rational basis. This particular legislation passes the minimal rational basis test, and the Court in Hobbs was without authority to require a showing of prejudice in each and every case. Notice provisions rationally and reasonably provide the state with the opportunity to investigate and evaluate a claim. [452 Mich. at 370, 550 N.W.2d 215.] Because the statute was constitutional, no saving construction was necessary or allowed. Thus, the engrafting of the prejudice requirement onto the statute was entirely indefensible. Further, in the search for a legitimate purpose for notice provisions, the holding in Ridgeway v. Escanaba, 154 Mich. 68, 72-73, 117 N.W. 550 (1908), is also instructive. It was there that this Court gave a full-throated statement of the purpose it discerned: We must say that the legislature intended to give to defendants in such cases some protection against unjust raids upon their treasuries by unscrupulous prosecution of trumped-up, exaggerated, and stale claims, by requiring a claimant to give definite information to the city or village against whom it is asserted, at a time when the matter is fresh, conditions unchanged, and witnesses thereto and to the accident within reach. It is a just law, necessary to the protection of the taxpayer, who bears the burden of unjust judgments. It requires only ordinary knowledge and diligence on the part of the injured and his counsel, and there is no reason for relieving them from the requirements of this statute that would not be applicable to any other statute of limitation. It is also useful to consider as possible legislative reasons for the notice statute the purposes discussed in the consolidated cases of Lisee v. Secretary of State and Howell v. Lazaruk, 388 Mich. 32, 199 N.W.2d 188 (1972). In those cases, while the majority suggested that the purpose of the notice statute was to afford an opportunity to investigate a claim and to determine the possible liability of the MVACF, Justices Brennan and Black dissented in part, pointing out additional reasons, beyond those mentioned by the majority, for requiring notice. These included allowing time for creating reserves for the Fund, reducing the uncertainty of the extent of future demands, or even to force the claimant to an early choice regarding how to proceed. Because these apply in the context of the MVACF, they could also have been in the minds of the Legislature at the time MCL 691.1404 was enacted. These likely or even possible reasons cited above must be considered as supplying the rational basis that assures constitutionality, because, as Justice Cavanagh pointed out in Brown, supra at 362, 550 N.W.2d 215, reciting the venerable rule in such matters, it is our duty in rational basis cases to find constitutionality if `any state of facts either known or which could reasonably be assumed affords support' for the statute. (Citation omitted.) It is the case then that there is unquestionably now, and there was then, a rational basis for finding, even as Justice Riley did earlier, a rational basis for this statute and the distinctions it draws. Moreover, common sense counsels that inasmuch as the Legislature is not even required to provide a defective highway exception to governmental immunity, it surely has the authority to allow such suits only upon compliance with rational notice limits. As this Court stated in Moulter : It being optional with the legislature whether it would confer upon persons injured a right of action therefor or leave them remediless, it could attach to the right conferred any limitations it chose. [155 Mich. at 168-169, 118 N.W. 919.] In sum, Moulter and the other cases previously cited were decided in accordance with the constitution. The notice provision passes constitutional muster. We reject the hybrid constitutionality of the sort Carver, Hobbs, and Brown engrafted onto our law. [9] In reading an actual prejudice requirement into the statute, this Court not only usurped the Legislature's power but simultaneously made legislative amendment to make what the Legislature wanted-a notice provision with no prejudice requirement-impossible. Hobbs and Brown are remarkable in the annals of judicial usurpation of legislative power because they not only seized the Legislature's amendment powers, [10] but also made any reversing amendment by the Legislature impossible. Nothing can be saved from Hobbs and Brown because the analysis they employ is deeply flawed. [11] Accordingly, we must next consider if considerations of stare decisis should cause us to retain this poorly reasoned precedent.