Court Opinion

ID: 9687056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:15:06.117062+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:23.996446
License: Public Domain

Connor, J.
(dissenting). I dissent.
I would hold with regard to both defendant Asch and defendant Shifford that the trial court’s summary disposition was inappropriate. Accepting plaintiffs’ allegations as true and construing them most favorably to plaintiffs, I believe it is possible that factual development could provide a basis for recovery.
Asch and Shifford allegedly required young children to cross and then walk down a busy road with fast-moving traffic, required the children to wait close to the road, and failed to obey the traffic regulations designed to make drivers in the area more alert to the presence of schoolchildren. This behavior could be viewed by a factfinder as being so reckless as to demonstrate a substantial lack of concern for whether an injury would result. It is also possible that factual development would show that neither the driver of the car nor the children were negligent, and that the only cause of the children’s injuries was the gross negligence of Asch or Shifford. By deciding that the action of the driver of the car was the intervening, superseding, proximate cause, I believe both the trial court and the majority fail to construe the allegations most favorably to plaintiffs. If we accept plaintiffs’ allegations, then a collision was not only foreseeable but inevitable.
Moreover, I do not agree with the majority’s interpretation of the statute. The law of causation has always recognized that injuries can, and often do, have many causes. When the Legislature added the language at issue to the statute, it eliminated *395governmental immunity previously extended to grossly negligent government employees by the courts. I cannot agree that it was the Legislature’s intent to let grossly negligent public employees off the hook if, merely by happenstance, someone else was also at fault. See Hickey v Zezulka (On Resubmission), 439 Mich 408; 487 NW2d 106 (1992) (a jailer can be found liable for a prisoner’s suicide). A literal interpretation ought not to be given to a statute where it would produce an absurd result inconsistent with the purpose of the statute. See People v Bewersdorf, 438 Mich 55, 68; 475 NW2d 231 (1991).
I would reverse.