Court Opinion

ID: 9742638
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:17:18.535651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:34.348202
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). This case, considering our continuant failure to screen appeals coming here, has wasted a good deal of our tightly budgeted time. It is but another “prime example of the kind of ease which ought not to be here on appeal” (Chief Justice Dethmers in Grossbart v. Gilbert, 364 Mich 96, 97) and our triplet opinions thereof will determine nothing of constitutional or other value except that no reversible error has been made to appear.
If statistical information furnished us in 1959 by the joint committee on Michigan procedural revision  remains average-constant or nearly so, this Court is definitely winning, the race to being the first court of last resort in the United States which carries or attempts carrying an annual burden of 400 or more calendar causes requiring preparation and publication of formal opinions with stated “reasons.” The honor is no honor. Too, it is all so unnecessary (see comment in American Eutectic Welding Alloys Sales Co. v. Grier, 363 Mich 175, 178, 179). It connotes mass production as well as slow production of poorly inspected judicial work and tends more and more toward the meagerly concealed “swapping [of] wliat may be the erroneous decision of a trial *680judge for what may well be the equally erroneous decision of 1 appellate judge.” For amplification from the pens of Chief Justices Vanderbilt and Dethmers, see the American Alloys Case, supra.
We should affirm — summarily—for 2 reasons. The first is that the 1953 determination of the county civil service commission, upholding Mrs. Crowe’s discharge for stated cause, became res judicata of the validity and propriety of such discharge.* The second is that the constitutional question Mrs. Crowe would have us consider, by means of her present action for back pay instituted before the defendant board of county auditors January 3, 1957, arrives “not so shaped by the record and by the proceedings below” as to bring it “before this Court as leanly and as sharply as judicial judgment” imperatively requires. (Quotation from Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s concurring opinion of United States v. Congress of Industrial Organizations, 335 US 106, 126 [68 S Ct 1349, 92 L ed 1849]; adopted in Hodge v. Pontiac Township Board, 363 Mich 544, 545, 546.)† Such constitutional question is stated by Mrs. Crowe’s counsel as follows:
*681“Did the form of oath required by the Wayne county board of supervisors violate the ‘due process clause’ guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, in that:
“(a) It did not contain the elements of knowledge and intent.
“ (b) It was vague and indefinite; failed to provide proper standards; and abridged freedom of speech, thought, and associations.
“(c) The resolution enabling the oath fails to provide lawful and proper standards and is invalid as vague and uncertain.”
First: A discharged county employee, having unsuccessfully sought reinstatement by the county civil service commission in accordance with section 16 of PA 1941, No 370 (CL 1948, § 38.416 [Stat Ann 1961 Eev § 5.1191(16)]), has his remedy of review of the commission’s determination by certiorari, which remedy is exclusive (In re Fredericks, 285 Mich 262 (125 ALR 259); Bischoff v. County of Wayne, 320 Mich 376; In re Mosby, 360 Mich 186; Lesniak v. Fair Employment Practices Comm., 364 Mich 495). He may not, then or years later, obtain review of such determination by filing a claim for back salary with the board of county auditors and by appealing to the circuit court under present sections 2, 3, and 4 of PA 1909, No 94 (CL 1948, §§ 46.72-46.74 [Stat Ann 1961 Eev §§ 5.522-5.524]). Section 4 provides that such an appeal, once it is docketed in circuit, becomes “an action in which the claimant shall be plaintiff and the particular county defendant” ; that the “statement or return of the proceedings” shall “be equivalent to a declaration in such action,” to which “the defendant may file its plea thereto within 20 days after such appeal is taken”, and that the action “shall be heard, tried and determined as an original cause, and the practice in the. *682circuit court shall be followed in all such matters, except where the contrary is herein expressed.”
Such is an action at law, as this Court said unequivocally in Kaminski v. Wayne Board of Auditors, 287 Mich 62,* and an appeal from judgment entered upon authority of section 6 of the same act (CL 1948, § 46.76 [Stat Ann 1961 Rev § 5.526]) cannot enter our law portals with those twin ladies of equity— laches and acquiescence — on each arm thereof. “Laches, within the term of the statute of limitations is no defense at law [citing cases].” Cardozo, J., writing for the court in United States v. Mach, 295 US 480, 489 (55 S Ct 813, 79 L ed 1559). Thus, if Mrs. Crowe had a righteous cause for reimbursement of back salary when in 1957 her claim was filed with the county board of auditors, and if such cause was not then barred by statutory limitation, it would be good now whether or no the result offend the foregoing defensive principles of equity.
So much for the nature of the present lawsuit. It cannot serve as a vehicle for review of that which was determined and adjudicated by the county civil service commission in 1953.
Second: The “dubious” nature of presentation of the quoted constitutional question becomes apparent upon comparison of the administrative record made in 1953, before the county civil service commission, with the trial record made in 1961 before Judge Borchard in circuit. Mrs. Crowe sought to review her discharge by the county treasurer during the days of 1952-1956 when “McCarthyism” separated many citizens — even once-friendly neighbors — into *683grimly suspicious cults. What she actually sought was consideration by the commission of her claim that the oath she would not take was begotten of such “ism” and that the county treasurer had employed it politically to get her political job as Wayne county’s no-quarter war between Republicans and Democrats continued its bitter and never-ending way. Her letter to the commission, by which she claimed and received statutory appeal and hearing from such discharge, presented fully her testified “idea” of review and the real fact-basis on which she would have us decide that the commission violated her above stated Federal rights. The letter follows, complete:
“Wayne County Civil Service Commission 2200 Cadillac Tower Detroit 26, Michigan

Gentlemen:

“This letter is in the form of an appeal to the civil service commission appeals board for a hearing on my being fired today from my job with the county treasurer’s office, for refusal to sign the ‘Loyalty Oath.’
“The oath signed formerly about ‘force and violence’ apparently is not strong enough to strip civil service protection from people who have been active in the union, pro-labor, strongly liberal, who agree with many things the Communist party agrees with, who have been ‘New-Deal Democrats’ and outspoken for peace and civil rights, and against thought-control.
“By the yardstick of Senator McCarthy and his type, a ‘subversive.’
“ ‘I am not a Communist’ can mean anyone and everyone, even you gentlemen, if the present hysteria' increases and fear and intimidation become more' rampant, which will happen unless the fear present; now is effaced and a courageous stand on principle, is made.
*684“The anti-democratic forces in onr country, as-far as their Michigan activity is concerned, are out to McCarthyize Wayne county, the labor and Democratic party stronghold in the State of Michigan, as a prelude to the 1954 senatorial and 1956 presidential elections. Honest Republicans are ashamed, but the reactionary elements know that the way for them to concretize a victory here is through the jobs they can make for their adherents. Twenty years of' a Democratic Wayne county is quite a hurdle for them with civil service job protection. A stretchable-loyalty oath is just the thing. But a study of history shows oaths and other forms of intimidation peculiar to their historical era were defeated and progress-came about despite them. A sense of decency, inherent in the American people, will lick this period of assininity and it will pass.
“Please inform me when and where I may have a hearing.”
To undertake present decision of the stated constitutional question would require a theorist’s choice between consideration thereof on the basis of the 1953 record made before the county civil service commission or the 1961 record made in circuit before-Judge Borchard. We cannot do this. Neither can we incestuously marry such records to determine whether this plaintiff, on strength of the stated constitutional issue, should have a monetary judgment against Wayne county. Our procedural rules are not as yet of such loose and easy virtue.
I vote to affirm.
Adams, J., took no part in the decision of this case.

 See full discussion and citation of authority to the point that “decisions of administrative boards have a finality and are not open to collateral attack,” and “are thenceforth res judicata”, in Lumberman’s Mutual Casualty Co. v. Bissell, 220 Mich 352, 354, 355, 363 (28 ALR 874); followed in Besonen v. Campbell, 243 Mich 209, 212; Wisconsin Michigan Power Co. v. General Casualty & Surety Co., 252 Mich 331, 335 (76 ALR 1); Fidelity & Casualty Co. of New York Co. v. Schoolcraft County Road Commissioners, 267 Mich 193, 197; Michigan Boiler & Sheet Iron Works v. Dressler, 286 Mich 502, 510; and see general treatment of administrative determinations as being res judicata in 42 Am Jur, Public Administrative Law, § 161, pp 519-523.

 See opinion of Mr. Justice Talbot Smith in People v. Dungey, 356 Mich 686, 696, quoting Aircraft & Diesel Equipment Corp. v. Hirsch, 331 US 752, 763 (67 S Ct 1493, 91 L ed 1796) ; also Smith v. Curran, 267 Mich 413, 418 (94 ALR 766), the opinion of which concludes:
“Aside from the fact that the present controversy is disposed of on the question of signatures and the rule that constitutionality of an aet will not be passed upon where a ease may be otherwise decided, the effect of a ruling on validity has such far-reaching possibilities that we think it should not be made except upon full presentation of facts and law.”

 “This is a proceeding at law, and notwithstanding appellants’ -contention to the contrary, we are of the opinion that plaintiff’s right to recover is not impaired by laches. Plaintiff’s delay of approximately 3 years in pressing his claim is decidedly short of the period of the statute of limitations by whieh it would be barred.” (KaminsM, p 67.)