Court Opinion

ID: 9684899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:18:16.605631+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:01.016651
License: Public Domain

Fitzgerald, J.
(dissenting). We venture an answer to the question posed in the majority opinion which was phrased thus: It is not a question of why didn’t the legislature include the adjectives (adjacent and adjoining) in subparagraph (3) but why did they use them in subparagraph (2)?
Our answer is this: because they intended that the words in (2) be given an effect and intended certain clear definitions by their inclusion.
The majority, without elaboration, makes the statement that, “The terms adjacent and adjoining as used in this act are construed to mean having a common boundary.”
This writer believes that the proper construction of the term “adjacent and adjoining suburbs” is that the legislature had reference to two different kinds of suburbs: “adjacent suburbs” and “adjoining suburbs”, either being sanctioned, so long as the 10-mile limitation is adhered to.
,In the “common boundary” construction placed on the words by the majority, the term “adjacent and adjoining” is defined to mean “adjoining and adjoining”.
It is difficult to believe that the legislature joined conjunctively two terms meaning the identical thing with the word and, as the majority would have the reader believe.
Sutherland’s Statutory Construction, § 4705, states, “A statute should lie construed so that effect *600is given to all its provisions, so that no part will be inoperative and superfluous, void or insignificant.” Clearly, a construction which holds that “adjacent and adjoining” means “adjoining and adjoining” is a judicial determination that the word adjacent is superfluous.
In Stadle v. Township of Battle Creek (1956), 346 Mich 64, we find the statement, “In construing the statute, words and phrases are accepted in their ordinary sense.”
In a matter of first impression involving definition, we turn to Webster, New International Dictionary (3d ed), which furnishes as the first definition of “adjacent”, “1 a: not distant or far off: nearby but not touching”, presumptively stating these as the common usages of the word.
On the other hand, the same volume defines “adjoining” as: “touching or bounding at some point or on some line: near in space.”
Can it then be said that “adjacent and adjoining” mean “having a common boundary?” To say so is to repudiate clear dictionary definition and say that two similar words are better than one and that legislative intent is best effectuated by redundancy.
To the contrary, it is the writer’s opinion that “adjacent and adjoining suburbs” means two different kinds of Detroit suburbs: (1) those nearby but not touching; (2) those touching or bounding at some point or on some line.
The majority suggests a “seeming inconsistency” between subparagraphs 4f(2) and 4f(3) because the terms “adjacent and adjoining” are not reiterated in 4f(3). This objection vanishes, however, when it is remembered that words enacted in one section do not become inoperative merely by the fact of their nonrepetition in a later subparagraph of the same section.
*601Authority for a 10-mile operation of the DSR is found in both 4f(2) and 4f(3). It is in 4f(2) that we are told that this 10 miles encompasses both adjacent suburbs and adjoining suburbs and that no artificial restriction of contiguity or actual physical touching is to be imposed as is imposed by the majority opinion.
On the total record before us, no ground is presented which would have warranted granting the injunction prayed for and the judgment should be affirmed.