Court Opinion

ID: 9720591
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:37:01.783388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:19.741812
License: Public Domain

Per Curiam.
Refer to Thompson v. Enz (1967), 379 Mich 667.
Upon second review we are confronted hy two intervenient facts of significant importance. One *106has been established persuasively by testimony and exhibits taken and received since our opinions on first appeal were released and our subsequent order of April 3, 1968 was entered (for a copy of that order, see the appendix hereof). The other consists of enactment pendente of specific amendments of the Inland Lakes and Streams Act of 1965, No 291, effected by PA 1968, No 7.
The evidentiary fact to which allusion is made consists of controlling proof that the defendants, having first obtained formal approval by all locally concerned governmental agencies and tacit at least approval by the Conservation Department (now Department of Natural Resources) of their “Sunrise Shores” project,1 proceeded to invest so much in that project prior to commencement of this declaratory action and issuance of the circuit court’s injunction as to render it inequitable now to forbid completion thereof.
To demonstrate this precisely, attention is drawn to the plat of Sunrise Shores appearing on page 676 of our 379th report. Overhead photographs received in evidence upon remand disclose beyond dispute that the defendants, prior to request for and issuance of the circuit court’s injunction, had completed most of the excavation required for construction of the canals, all being designated as “channel”. At very least some 4,000 lineal feet of these canals were excavated to a depth suitable for small craft navigation. Nearly all the rest has been partly excavated. The partly excavated portions only, *107plus the remaining fastland between lots 13 and 76, need only be dug to intended navigational depth in order to connect Gun Lake with defendants’ planned artificial waterway. All this was done with the knowledge of plaintiffs, defendants having met with their respective representatives beforehand in effort to work out whatever objections were voiced at the time. These facts make out a clear case for application of the equitable rule presently quoted.
The project criticized by the individual plaintiffs and by the plaintiff Department of Conservation should have been challenged by complaint for injunction at very inception of dredging by defendants, all such plaintiffs having been given precedently complete notice of defendants’ purchase of their riparian tract and of their plat-approved plan of its development. In that connection we agree, now that we have a factual record of testimony and comprehensive factual findings, that the project would have been enjoinable originally as an unreasonable use had the issue been framed and tried promptly rather than subjected to the utterly amazing folly of motion and counter-motion for summary judgment and inevitable appeal; such practice being contrary to the perfectly understandable rule this Court has admonished so many times since release of the equity action of Culy v. Upham (1903), 135 Mich 131, 135.
Equity’s applicable rule is both sound and mature. It is really one of estoppel by conduct; a rule which the Court has applied on numerous occasions as may be seen upon examination of Morrison v. Queen City Electric Light & Power Co. (1914), 181 Mich 624, 628, 629, citing Michigan decisions to Morrison’s time.2
*108The Court observed in Morrison that “He [the plaintiff’s predecessor in title] stood by and saw valuable improvements made, and neither he nor his grantees can now obtain relief in equity to aid in their destruction.” The observation was made regarding the defendant’s waterhead heightened dam of the Boardman River, and the consequent overflowing of a part of the plaintiff’s upstream property. The rule quoted below was applied. We believe it applicable here.
“A general rule is laid down in 11 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law (2d Ed.), p 428, and quoted in the opinion of this court in Sheffield Car Co. v. Hydraulic Co. [1912], 171 Mich 423, 450 (137 N.W. 305), where Mr. Justice Stone has reviewed some of the Michigan cases on the subject of estoppel:
“ ‘It may be stated as a general rule that if a person having a right, and seeing another person about to commit, or in the course of committing, an act infringing upon that right, stands by in such a manner as really to induce the person committing the act, and who might otherwise have abstained from it, to believe that he assents to its being committed, he cannot afterwards be heard to complain of the act. This, it has been said, is the proper sense of the term “acquiescence,” which, in that sense, may be defined as acquiescence under such circumstances as that assent may be reasonably inferred from it, and is no more than an instance of the law of estoppel by words or conduct.’ ”
The mentioned amendments of 1968, referring first to new §§ 18 and 19, pertinently require that, before any dredging designed to extend or enlarge any artificial canal, channel, lake or “similar waterway” (“where the purpose is ultimate connection with an existing navigable stream” or lake) is *109undertaken, the person desiring so to proceed shall apply to the Department of Conservation for a permit authorizing the intended dredging. New § 20 provides for notice of the pendency of such an application and for a public hearing thereof upon written request. Then § 21 provides, for application in part to this case:
“Sec. 21. If the department finds that the project will not injure the public trust or interest, including fish and game habitat, that the project conforms to the requirements of laws for sanitation, and that no material injury to the rights of any riparian owners on any body of water affected will result, the department shall issue a permit authorizing the enlargement of the waterway affected. The department may impose such further conditions in the permit that it finds reasonably necessary to protect public health, safety, welfare, trust and interest, and to protect private rights and property.”
First: A few months after our cited opinions of 1967 were released the legislature enacted PA 1968, No 7, amending PA 1965, No 291. Act No 7, however, was late by nearly four years after the equitable jurisdiction of the circuit court had been invoked by these plaintiffs, properly as four of us held when the action was here on review of grant by the Court of Appeals of defendants’ motion for summary judgment (reversing the trial court’s grant of plaintiffs’ corresponding motion for hasty judgment). At that time there was no adequate remedy at law, or effective policy at law. That such a policy was enacted and implemented during pendency of the action did not oust the court of jurisdiction previously and duly invoked. It did call upon the courts to aid in the enforcement of that policy whenever equity’s maxims would permit such aid. We look to performance of such aid, *110believing that it is due from this seated Court of equity.
Second: That equity may shape her relief “according to the situation as it may present itself when the time for decree arrives” was definitely settled with the handing down of Herpolsheimer v. A. B. Herpolsheimer Realty Co. (1956), 344 Mich 657, 665 and L’Hommedieu v. Smith (1958), 351 Mich 223, 229. For the general rule, see 27 Am Jur 2d, Equity, p 818 (citing L’Hommedieu among other authorities):
“§ 249 — Granting of relief as of time of decree or close of trial.
“While equitable jurisdiction is generally to be determined with reference to the situation existing at the time the suit is filed, the relief to be accorded by the decree is governed by the conditions which are shown to exist at the time of making thereof, and not by the circumstances attending the inception of the litigation. In making up the final decree in an equity suit the judge may rightly consider matters arising after suit was brought. Therefore, as a general rule, equity will administer such relief as the nature, rights, facts, and exigencies of the case demand at the close of the trial or at the time of the making of the decree.” (Italics by text writer.)
Counsel will prepare and submit to this Court for settlement a decretal judgment providing (among other things desired by counsel and approved by the Court):
(1) For approval of Judge Robinson’s findings of fact as made on remand, but with declaration of decision not to apply them on account of estoppel of plaintiffs, the Conservation Department as well, to enjoin or seek to enjoin that which might once have been enjoinable.
*111(2) For vacation of Judge Robinson’s judgment of August 22, 1969, to permit entry here of a new judgment.
(3) For confirmation as firm precedent of the “reasonable use” rule which Chief Justice T. M. Kavanagh wrote for this case when it was here in 1967, whenever it is shown without intervening equity or equities that the rule should be applied according to its tenor and purpose.
(4) For issuance to the defendants by the plaintiff Department of a § 21 (of said Act No 7) permit authorizing the completion of defendants’ mentioned project, in which the Department may “impose such further conditions in the permit that it finds reasonably necessary to protect public health, safety, welfare, trust and interest, and to protect private rights and property.”
(5) For retention of jurisdiction of the cause by this Court for the purpose of securing prompt performance of the foregoing and for the determinative settlement of possible disputes that may arise either from the conditions imposed in the permit to be issued, or from the defendants’ performance thereof.
T. M. Kavanagh, C. J., and Black, Adams, Swainson and Williams, JJ., concurred.
APPENDIX
(Order of remand with instructions issued April 3, 1968)
On order of the Court, the motion by defendants and appellees for an order amending and clarifying the order previously entered by this Court on December 4, 1967, is considered. It is hereby Ordered that the case be remanded to the trial court *112for rehearing in accordance with the instructions contained in the opinion of Justice Kavanagh in 379 Mich 667.
O’Hara, J., dissenting.
Dethmers, C. J., abstained.

 November 20, 1963 the in-charge officers of the Department wrote defendants as follows:
“We have examined the preliminary plans of
SUNSET SHORES
Yankee Springs Township
Barry County
and can see no reason for the final plans not being accepted, when submitted through the regular channels.”

 For subsequent eases in which Morrison’s doctrine of estoppel was applied, see Holcomb v. Alpena Power Co. (1917), 198 Mich 165, *108169, 170 and Kiowiatkowski v. Duluth-Superior Dredging Co. (1918), 201 Mich 251, 257.