Court Opinion

ID: 9710904
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:20:01.873213+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:00.993470
License: Public Domain

Fitzgerald, J.
(dissenting). The majority of the Court of Appeals panel below correctly disposed of this matter. We would deny leave to appeal.
The purpose here at issue of Const 1963, art 4, § 24 is to assure fair notice of a statute’s purpose and effect. In Advisory Opinion re Constitutionality of 1972 PA 294, 389 Mich 441, 465; 208 NW2d 469 (1973), this Court said:
"An act may include all matters germane to its object. It may include all those provisions which directly relate to, carry out and implement the principal object. As a review of the cases will show, the purpose of this constitutional limitation is to insure that both the legislators and the public have proper notice of legislative content and to prevent deceit and subterfuge.”
In People v Milton, 393 Mich 234, 241; 224 NW2d 266 (1974), the Court said:
"When passing new legislation, the Legislature is free either to enact an entirely new and independent act or amend any act to which the subject of the new legislation is 'germane, auxiliary or incidental’.
"Not infrequently there will be a number of existing acts to which the new legislation would be germane, auxiliary or incidental. The legislative choice will not be held invalid merely because an alternative location *197for the new legislation might appear to some more appropriate.” (Footnote omitted.)
The object of 1972 PA 105 was to prohibit possession by inmates of defined contraband. That object is not only germane to the general purpose of 1909 PA 17, which was to prohibit the trafficking of such contraband in prisons, but is absolutely necessary to that purpose.
Coleman, J., concurred with Fitzgerald, J.