Court Opinion

ID: 9732542
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:24:30.915053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:56.078260
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.
(concurring). I have signed the opinion of the Court because I agree that the Court of Appeals "applied an erroneous standard of review to the factual determinations of the trial court when it stated that 'although this court hears divorce cases de novo, it will not substitute its judgment for that of the trial court . . . unless convinced that it would have reached a different result.’ The 'would have reached a different result’ inquiry, in our view, invites a substitution of judgment by the reviewing court.”1_
*807I also agree that "the factual findings of a trial court in a divorce case2are to be reviewed for clear error. A finding is clearly erroneous if the appellate court, on all the evidence, is left with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.”3 I further agree that if the trial court’s "account of the evidence is plausible in light of the record viewed in its entirety, the court of appeals may not reverse it even though convinced that had it been sitting as the trier of fact, it would have weighed the evidence differently,” Anderson v Bessemer City, 470 US 564, 574; 105 S Ct 1504; 84 L Ed 2d 518 (1985), or, as expressed by the Court of Appeals in the instant case, even though the Court of Appeals "would have reached a different result had we occupied the position of the lower court.”4
It has been observed that Anderson "adds confusion to the issue what constitutes a 'clearly erroneous’ fact finding.”5
1 write separately to add that in explaining in Anderson the meaning of the clearly erroneous standard, the United States Supreme Court elaborated on, but did not withdraw, the "definite and firm conviction” formulation set forth in United States v United States Gypsum Co, 333 US 364; 68 S Ct 525; 92 L Ed 746 (1948), adopted by this Court in Tuttle v State Hwy Dep’t, 397 Mich 44, 46; 243 NW2d 244 (1976). The Court in Anderson, supra, p 573, said that "certain general principles governing the exercise of the appellate court’s power to overturn findings of a district court may be de*808rived from” the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, and that
[t]he foremost of these principles, as the Fourth Circuit itself recognized, is that "[a] finding is 'clearly erroneous’ when although there is evidence to support it, the reviewing court on the entire evidence is leñ with the deñnite and ñrm conviction that a mistake has been committed” United States v United States Gypsum Co, 333 US 364, 395; 68 S Ct 525; 92 L Ed 746 (1948). [Emphasis added. Id., p 573.]
It may be helpful to keep in mind, in applying the Anderson elaboration, that the "foremost” principle is expressed in the formulation set forth in United States Gypsum.

 Ante, p 805.

 As in most every other case.

 Ante, p 805.

 Unpublished opinion per curiam of the Court of Appeals, decided January 13,1988 (Docket No. 98716).

 Note: Constitutional fact review: An essential exception to Anderson v Bessemer, 62 Ind L J 1209, 1228 (1987).