Court Opinion

ID: 9673637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:15:45.678771+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:23.306028
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
{dissenting). When this case of Keenan came up for discussion on March 2d, following oral submission that day, the writer suggested that the bootless nature of stalemated Myers v. Genesee County Auditor, 375 Mich 1 (signed and released the day before submission of Keenan) called for an order to rehear Myers, on motion of the Court, prior to resumption of more divisive writing for Keenan. The suggestion was followed up, during the April *66session, by a formal motion for entry of such an order. A majority of the Justices did not agree, however, and so trifarious Myers confronts the Court as some yet unknown majority tries now to find some recordable reason for some result of Keenan’s case.
It is high time that the profession be informed as to how and why these occasional aberrations of the Court do occur. When two or more discordant opinions for one case are proposed, a minority and sometimes a majority of our members have no idea, and can get no information, respecting the signature intention of other members of the Court. The Court by long tradition proceeds to play—on opinion day— a sort of showdown poker game. No one knows, as the separate opinions are passed around our conference table for signature, what cause or principle is due to prevail and what cause or principle is due to fail. And when the respective signatures are totted up and the signed opinions are sent in to the clerk, those opinions regularly (Myers is an example) leave members of the profession wondering whether they or members of the Court have become lightheaded. As for the result, it stands, inexorable as death and taxes, unless a rehearing is ordered.
Look at Myers. Of the Court’s participating membership  two Justices (O’Hara and T. M. Kavanagh) voted for extension of the Williams rule  of non-immunity “to all political subdivisions,” not including, however, “The State, its departments, commissions, boards, institutions, arms, or agencies.” No other Justice supported that. Two more Justices (Souris and Adams), finding themselves unable to “subscribe his [Justice O’Hara’s] opinion because of the different views we take of the recent *67decisions of this Court herein cited,” joined “in the result reached by Justice O’Hara,” saying that the “result” was “to overrule Lewis v. Genesee County (1963), 370 Mich 110.” No other Justice supported that. Two more Justices (Dethmers and Kelly) dissented unreservedly. The seventh participant was the writer. He concurred in the result, that only, of Justice O’Hara’s opinion. That result-— there could be no other result of the mountain’s mighty groan in labor—was vacation of a summary judgment entered for the defendant county and remand of the case “for further proceedings.”3
For want of concurrence of more than two Justices on any controlling point of law, Myers decided the above result only. As said in Huron Land Co. v. Davison, 131 Mich 86, 88, of Wait v. Baldwin, 60 Mich 622:
“Two Justices concurred in the result only, but whether they questioned this point or some other is not shown. Such opinions are not conclusive, unless the opinions show in what points the justices concur, and on what they dissent. It is evident that upon some points of the opinion the justices were evenly divided. We do not, therefore, feel bound by this language of the opinion.”; 
and later in Groening v. McCambridge, 282 Mich 135, 140, of Wright v. Wright,  99 Mich 170 (23 LRA 196):
“This language is not authority because it was concurred in by only two Justices and not by a ma*68jority of the Court. Buhler v. Trombly, 139 Mich 557, 568; Westbrook v. Elder, 264 Mich 138.”
The true rule, which I, at least, mean to follow, appears in 20 Am Jur 2d, Courts, § 195, pp 530, 531:
“A decision by an equally divided court does not establish a precedent required to be followed under the stare decisis doctrine. And where the members of the court unanimously or by majority vote reach a decision but cannot, even by a majority, agree on the reasoning therefor, no point of law is established by the decision and it cannot be a precedent covered by the stare decisis rule.”
Myers should be reheard, rewritten, and decided anew prior to decision of the present case. Since that is stubbornly out of the question now, I allude in support of affirmance to two events of significance which have occurred since Myers was decided and the present case was submitted. Both point up the developing need for prospective effect of a rule of law the judiciary has decided to make effective in the place and stead of an existing and concededly settled rule of law; the situation being one where a specific litigant or class of litigants has relied upon the former rule as such litigant or class has gone about its pertinent legal affairs,6 or, of equal consequence, has relied upon a correspondingly settled rule of law as such litigant or class has gone about prosecuting or defending its rights in our trial courts.
The first of these events was the enactment, and effect as of July 1, 1965, of PA 1964, No 170 (CL *691948, § 691.1401 et seq. [Stat Ann 1965 Cum Supp § 3.996(101) et seg.]). The title of the act reads:
“An act to make uniform the liability of municipal corporations, political subdivisions, and the State, its agencies and departments, when engaged in a governmental function, for injuries to property and persons caused by negligence; to define and limit such liability; to define and limit the liability of the State when engaged in a proprietary function; to authorize the purchase of liability insurance to protect against loss arising .out of such liability; to provide for defending certain claims made against public officers and paying damages sought or awarded against them; and to repeal certain acts and parts of acts.”
The second is the United States Supreme Court’s opinion of Linkletter v. Walker (June 7, 1965), 381 US 618 (85 S Ct 1731, 14 L ed 2d 601), removing all doubt that it is eminently better, when a decision to overrule is agreed upon, that such overrulement be' made effective prospectively.
Williams v. City of Detroit, 364 Mich 231, accomplished much that all of us may have overlooked since decision thereof in 1961. That case literally drove the legislature to act with respect to the injustice of unlimited and unrestricted governmental immunity from tort liability, and thus was Dean Allan F. Smith’s moving plea for legislative action fulfilled at long last. That plea, written in 1949 (48 Mich L Eev 41), was quoted at length in Williams, siopra, at 284, 285. Dean Smith’s conclusion is quoted again for emphasis of the postulate that, the legislature having acted comprehensively in this field of State policy and State lawmaking, both Myers and Keenan should be governed by the law as it stood prior to the effective date of said Act No 170:
“Adequate reformation can be achieved only by legislation. Legislation, like an efficient incinerator, *70can destroy completely the effect of the decisions which now perpetuate the doctrine of immunity. It must be legislation which will shift the basic approach to the problem; instead of having a general governmental immunity with certain exceptions, a general governmental responsibility with limited exceptions is needed. Those exceptions are to he determined not by reference to an outmoded dogma that ‘The king can do no wrong,’ but by reference to social interests which will be served by granting immunity.”
Since the Court is unwilling to reconsider our valueless writings for the Myers Case, prior to decision of this case, I vote to affirm the circuit court’s judgment of no cause as entered in favor of the defendant county of Midland.

 (December 10, 1965) : The Myers Case has not as yet been tried. It remains pending in the Genesee circuit and is open to rehearing here without affecting any vested right or action taken in relianee upon our act of vacating the mentioned summary judgment.

 See quotation and comment (Williams v. City of Detroit, 364 Mich at 280, 281, 282) of and with respect to the paper Justice Adams, then Attorney General of Michigan, wrote in 1960 for the Michigan School Board Journal. The subject was insurance against tort liability of governmental units, whether public funds could be expended to acquire it, and the necessity for reliance upon the immunity defense (Michigan School Board Journal [vol 6, Nos 7, 8] September and October, 1960).