Court Opinion

ID: 9712765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:59:26.372658+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:14.281464
License: Public Domain

Talbot Smith, J.
(concurring). Once again we are confronted with an attempt to use the employment security act as a little labor relations act. The effort here, as in previous cases, is to use unemployment compensation as a disciplinary tool, to penalize an employee who breaks a company rule not only by firing him from his job, hut by pursuing him to his home and removing both him and his family from the benefits of unemployment compensation. The theory involves the idea that it is not enough that the employee be discharged for breaking a company rule. It goes further: It seeks to impose a penalty over and beyond the firing. We hold here, as we have held heretofore, that such was not the legislative intent. The entire matter is discussed in detail *399in Cassar v. Employment Security Commission, 343 Mich 380, Linski v. Employment Security Commission, 358 Mich 239, overruling Cassar, supra (Cassar was relied upon by the trial court, Linski then not having been decided), Bell v. Employment Security Commission, 359 Mich 649, and Jenkins v. Employment Security Commission, 364 Mich 379.
"We have never been impressed by the argument that a legislature legislates by keeping quiet. This theory, as our profession so well knows from its ■constant use, is that the legislature scans the advance sheets and old State reports to determine what we did right last term, or in the last year, or years, and what we did wrong. It then follows (we are still speaking of the theory) that legislative silence with respect to any holding indicates that we did right, in the legislature’s opinion, and hence for some unclear reason we are powerless to change that holding in the future should we be convinced of former error. I paid my respects to this doctrine in Sheppard v. Michigan National Bank, 348 Mich 577, 599, and indicated a lack of conviction with respect thereto. In plainer terms I held it was unjustified as a matter of fact and unsound as a matter of theory. Nevertheless, for those to whom the doctrine furnishes a staff of judicial reliance, I would observe that the case of Linski v. Employment Security Commission, supra, overruling Cassar, supra, has now been in the books since 1959. Legislatures have come and gone since that time without tampering with the holding. If the approval-by-silence doctrine has any validity, it would appear that they approved of what we there held. It would seem to follow that all of us, original majority and original dissenters alike, may now rely upon Linski and the cases which have followed it as establishing the law of the State with respect to this much-litigated issue of misconduct in unemployment compensation cases.
*400Subject to the above, we concur in reversal and remand.
Edwards, Kavanagh, and Souris, JJ., concurred with Talbot Smith, J.