Court Opinion

ID: 9700657
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:40:32.657466+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:12.920722
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(dissenting). In this case we divide 3 ways again. One wing of the Court, citing Minarik v. State Highway Commissioner, 336 Mich 209, pursues what Roscoe Pound has called “The Decadence of Equity” (5 Columbia L Rev 20) and votes to oust these plaintiffs from the halls of equity.1 Another wing of the Court refers exclusively to Penix v. City of St. Johns, 354 Mich 259, 263 and stands for affirmance upon certain “reservations” pivoting around the controversial and presently irrelevant doctrine of governmental immunity (of Penix, more later). I stand for denial of defendant’s motion to *496dismiss and for hearing, in necessary part at least, of the merits of the case such plaintiffs have pleaded.
It is unfortunate that we cannot, by majority vote in this case, order affirmance without filing of opinions, thus confessing disability of agreement upon any opinion of precedentary value. However, the Constitution having directed otherwise (Const 1908, art 7, § 7), the following opinion for reversal is recorded.
Turning first to Minarik. That case, noose-restrictive of equity and wholly unsupported by reasoning or authority, is another casually errant decision which — until thoughtful re-examination thereof is made by more than 1 or 2 judges — will continue to provide an easily abused instrument of official power. As the highway department proceeds to construct that which ultimately takes or adversely affects nearby private property, let those whose trust is placed in the apparent fairness of pending negotiations learn quickly that equity’s jurisdictional door, theretofore graciously open for injunctive relief,2 closes like a beartrap as soon as the departmental structure *497or structures are completed beyond effective restraint.
Yes it is true, Minarik applied as here, that Michigan courts of equity have no jurisdiction to abate what originally they might have enjoined, the suit being against a State officer. When that officer succeeds in getting his dam of natural flowage completed in or along the highway right-of-way, then in a quick wink of Michigan’s jurisdictional eye the vestments of exemption—-from the ordinary processes of equity-—are cast upon him. Ecclesiastes  notwithstanding, the jurisdictional race is after all to the litigatory swift. Let, then, all heed this free advice: Head for the courthouse with a petition for injunction whenever that State officer so much as hints by word or act that his threatened or pending project may hinder or hurt the ordinary enjoyment of your property rights. Delay, even for a few days, may and probably will make mockery of equity’s presumably faithful maxim, “never a wrong without a remedy.”
Minarik twists and wrests, from a statute governing mandamus proceedings only,4 legislative intent that courts of equity shall not issue mandatory injunctions against State officers. From there Minarik tortures equity’s mandatory injunction into law’s writ of mandamus, and concludes from such premises that equity has no jurisdiction, by decree for abatement or other decretal means of enforcement, to relieve the actually injured owner from a continuing trespass on his property by the State highway department.
To hold thus is to sanction, in a court of equity at that, the taking of private property without pay*498ment of just compensation. That the defendant commissioner’s act is, on the face of this dismissed bill, just such taking is attested by Grand Rapids Booming Co. v. Jarvis, 30 Mich 308, 321:
“That the flowing of lands against the owner’s consent, and without compensation, is a taking of his property in violation of that provision of our Constitution, and that of most of all the American States, which prohibits the taking of property without compensation, is a proposition which seems to me so self-evident as hardly to admit of illustration by any example which can be made clearer, and which therefore can hardly need the support of authorities.”
When courts of equity by final decree order the abatement of a continuing trespass or the abatement of a nuisance, they do not thereby issue mandatory injunctions, much less writs of mandamus. The mandatory injunction is an interlocutory instrument which is temporarily directed to the offending party in rare cases; whereas the decree of abatement may or may not order the defendant to take affirmative action “and is in no proper sense an injunction of any kind.”5 Such a decree adjudicates the plaintiff’s right to relief and may employ the limitless instrumentalities of equity to constrain her will including, in a proper case (say where the decree cannot for some reason be enforced by order directed to the defendant in personam), an order authorizing the plaintiff or some officer of the court to enter upon *499the defendant’s property for the purpose of removing obstructions and restoring original conditions.
To say that this decretal practice, known as it is only to equity, is barred by a statute which exclusively limits issuance of the common-law writ of mandamus, is to distort simple words, simply expressed and simply purposed. Mandamus is “essentially and exclusively a common-law remedy unknown to the equity practice” (55 CJS, Mandamus, § 2, p 17). We must assume that the legislature, in enactment of the “judicature act of 1915,” regarded the remedy accordingly. No doubt on that score is left when the act as a whole is carefully considered.
It will be noted that the restriction in question, against issuance of writs of mandamus in circuit, appeared then and appears now in separate chapters of the act (CL 1948, §§ 606.1, 636.3 [Stat Ann §§ 27.542, 27.2230]). It will be noted, too, that the chapter 6 restriction appears in section 1, relating exclusively to the jurisdiction of circuit courts proper, and that nothing like it — even by strained inference — appears in subsequent section 4 (CL 1948, § 606.4 [Stat Ann 1959 Cum Supp § 27.545]). The latter is the general grant-of jurisdiction and authority to our “circuit courts in chancery.” Added to all this we find no restriction, anywhere in the act, of equity’s historic power of abatement, whether the iniquitous defendant be a State officer or otherwise. So much for the question of legislative intent.
Let us test Minarik’s anomaly further. I assume from their writing that my veteran Brothers would affirm the jurisdiction of equity had these plaintiffs moved immediately for injunctive aid when the highway commissioner started work on highway US-223 adjacent to their farm. But suppose, as will sometimes occur in the best regulated of judicial families, that the chancellor in such instance should fail to enjoin pendente until it becomes too late for *500restraint distinguished from abatement. Would it not follow from the reasoning of my Brothers that equity’s jurisdiction over the case, already firmly attached, is automatically excised when the State officer’s previously restrainable act becomes “accompli’”! Is the jurisdiction thus not subject to severance by acts beyond control of a plaintiff who, rightfully and on time, has entered equity’s portals ? My short answer is that Minarik offends equity without shred of warrant.
Each step, taken through the years toward encystment of equity jurisdiction, inexorably forces another in the same direction. Compare Minarik again. There the plaintiffs received — at least — the benefit of judicial consideration of “considerable testimony” taken at hearing of the highway commissioner’s motion to dismiss, and so this Court was able to fortify its decree (p 212) with a finding of inability “to determine where the real cause for the flooding lies.” Here no testimony was taken, and here there is no like opportunity for appraisal of the general equity of the case. So Minarik, with its testimony and consideration of testimony, becomes authority for dismissal where no testimony has been taken or considered. ■ Such is the error of compounded error. I will have no part therein.
There may, indeed, be a mandamusable duty to perform, yet in equity that duty may be unenforceable. On the other hand, equity may find good reason for compulsion when the seeker of mandamus would meet with purely legal and altogether valid obstacles. One proceeding is not to be confused with the other, and no statute barring issuance of “a writ of mandamus against any State officer” may properly be read as a restriction of equity’s historic jurisdiction. I say, then, that if the legislature wishes the State highway commissioner immunized in equity from the otherwise abatable consequences of any tort or un*501lawful appropriation he may commit in the course of his work, doubtless the legislature will say so. Until then we should refrain from that which really is “judicial legislation.”
The fundamental error here is that of determining jurisdiction from the prayer for relief rather than the charging part of plaintiffs’ bill. As we said in Herpolsheimer v. A. B. Herpolsheimer Realty Co., 344 Mich 657, 665, 666 (followed on this point in Carlson v. Williams, 348 Mich 165, 168):
“The premises of a bill in equity — not its prayer —are determinative of the substance thereof (Berg v. Berg, 336 Mich 284; McCoy v. Continental Insurance Co., 326 Mich 261; Ranian v. Pokorney, 198 Mich 567; 30 CJS, Equity, § 210, p 667), and this is but another way of saying that relief within scope of the bill is the final responsibility of the chancellor and that the prayer aids rather than dictates equity’s decretal beneficence.”
No one knows what, if any, relief the chancellor might grant upon this bill should the case go to hearing on the merits. That would be up to him, depending on the showing made and judicial determination of the best way to accomplish equity’s constant and ultimate aim. We do know that' these plaintiffs as against defendant’s motion to dismiss have stated a case cognizable in equity and that a decree of abatement is neither a writ of mandamus nor a mandatory injunction. So ends, or should end, today’s inquiry.
My elder Brothers hold that the conditions of which these plaintiffs complain may be remedied by proceedings under the drain code. Just how such conclusion may be drawn from the face of this taken-as-true bill of complaint is not explained. Do my Brothers know something about the surface conditions in this particular part of Lenawee county’s *502Palmyra township — not shown in this record— which would justify a proceeding under the drain law? No matter what a hearing of the merits might establish, it is clear that they are determined presently to relieve the highway fund from the consequences of a trespass we under this bill must assume the highway department has committed and continues to commit against these plaintiffs. Property taxation of such plaintiffs (and others “benefited”), is to shoulder the corrective burden if it is to be shouldered at all. Yes, proceeding on and beyond Minarik, let us turn these plaintiffs from equity’s door without so much as having taken a half-hour’s testimony to ascertain whether they are or are not entitled to some relief on account of their held-for-true charges.
I would overrule Minarik and reverse the present order with remand for hearing of the merits and entry of such decree as equity may be advised — when she is fully and properly advised. As for Penix it need only be said that no statute stood before us, in that law case, for determination of its applicability or inapplicability. All members of the Court agreed that, for want of allegation of a proprietary function out of which the plaintiff’s claim for compensatory damages arose, the defendant municipality was by extant bench law definitely immune from liability to such plaintiff. Here we have an exclusive question of equity jurisdiction to abate what on the face of plaintiffs’ bill is a continuing trespass. Penix grew in another field, the natural sod of which cannot be turned judicially until and unless a 5-furrow gang plow is hammered out in our quarters.

 Consider again Pomeroy’s fully proven premonition, written for preface nearly 80 years ago 1 Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence (5th ed), pp xxiv, xxv:
“There has not, of course, been any conscious intentional abrogation or rejection of equity on the part of the courts. The tendency, however, has plainly and steadily been towards the giving an undue prominence and superiority to purely legal rules, and the ignoring, forgetting, or suppression of equitable notions. The correctness of this conclusion cannot be questioned nor doubted; the consenting testimony of able lawyers who have practiced under both systems corroborates it; and no one can study the current series of State reports without perceiving and acknowledging its truth. In short, the principles, doctrines, and rules of equity are certainly disappearing from the municipal law of a large number of the States, and this deterioration will go on until it is checked either by a legislative enactment, or by a general revival of the study of equity throughout the ranks of the legal profession.” s .

 “As is said in Cooper v. Alden, Harr Ch (Mich) 72, 91, the court of chancery ‘has undoubted jurisdiction to interfere, by injunction, where pubiie officers are proceeding illegally or improperly, under a claim of right to do any act to the injury of the rights of others;’ and it has been exercised in many cases, under a great variety of eireumstances, and against State officers as well as those of inferior grade. Palmer v. Rich, 12 Mich 414; Ryan v. Brown, 18 Mich 196; Kinyon v. Duchene, 21 Mich 498; Merrill v. Humphrey, 24 Mich 170; Clement v. Everest, 29 Mich 19; Bristol v. Johnson, 34 Mich 123; Marquette, H. & O. R. Co. v. City of Marquette, 35 Mich 504; Flint & P. M. R. Co. v. Auditor General, 41 Mich 635; Folkerts v. Power, 42 Mich 283.” Upjohn v. Richland Township, 46 Mich 542, 545.
“It has always been settled that the owner of realty is entitled to the aid of equity to prevent permanent and continually recurring injuries to the enjoyment of his property. To deprive him of such enjoyment is to deprive him of the property itself, wholly or to the extent of the mischief. Neither can it be allowable for wrongdoers to rely on their own wrong to change or lessen his means of redress. When they do mischief, it is their own fault if they render a stringent remedy necessary, and they, and not the party injured, must take the consequences. If the remedy is difficult, it is made so by their conduct.” Koopman v. Blodgett, 70 Mich 610, 618, 619 (14 Am St Rep 527).

 “No eireuit court shall have jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus against any State officer.” CL 1948, § 636.3 (Stat Ann §27.2230).

 Pomeroy, starting his topie “Mandatory Injunctions”, tells us:
“This term, in strictness, is confined to interlocutory or preliminary injunctions. Where, on the final hearing in a ease of nuisance, or interference with easements, or continued trespass analogous to nui.sanee, the relief is granted compelling the defendant to remove his obstructions or erections, and to restore the plaintiff to his original condition,, and thereby, to end the wrong,, the remedy is in fact an .ordinary decree for an abatement, and is in no proper sense an injunction of any hind.” 4 Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence (5th ed), § 1359, p 970.