Court Opinion

ID: 9855876
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:32:43.7668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:14.504495
License: Public Domain

Taylor, J.
(dissenting). We granted leave to determine whether there is a right to a jury trial under the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act. The majority, eschewing the Court of Appeals constitutional analysis, finds there is such a right, notwithstanding the fact that the act does not mention any such right. I disagree, as explained below, and would affirm the circuit court’s order striking plaintiff’s jury demand.1
*555I
The Whistleblowers’ Protection Act states that “[a] court” is to render judgment. MCL 15.364; MSA 17.428(4). While I agree with the majority that judgment is rendered after a decision from a factfinder, and that the act is silent regarding before whom such a case is to be tried, I do not find this can be construed to give a right to a jury. Primarily this is because the Legislature, when it gives a specific right to a jury trial, states it plainly in the statute. The failure to mention the right to a jury here means that there is no right to a jury given in the act.
In analyzing the question at hand, there are, in my view, two groups of statutes that can facilitate analysis when used as parallels to the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act. The first is where the Legislature refers to a court rendering judgment, and elsewhere expressly provides for a jury trial. See, e.g., MCL 128.156; MSA 8.146 (the “court shall . . . render judgment for the sum specified in the certificate signed by [the] jury”); MCL 426.12; MSA 18.222 (“the court or jury who shall try [suits under this act] or make an assessment of damages therein . . . shall. . . find the sum due the plaintiff . . . and the court shall render judgment in accordance with such finding”); MCL 570.447; MSA 26.387 (“the court shall render judgment ... for all costs incurred in such said suit and for all damages which he may have sustained ... to be assessed by the court or a jury, the same as in personal actions”); and MCL 73.17; MSA 5.1445 (“If judgment is not rendered ... on account of errors of law or defects in the proceedings and if the appeal is not dismissed, the parties may proceed to trial by jury”).
*556The second group of statutes simply states that a jury may hear a case. See, e.g., MCL 600.2922(6); MSA 27A.2922(6) (“in every action under this section the court or jury may award damages as the court or jury shall consider fair and equitable” [emphasis added]); MCL 436.22(4); MSA 18.993(4) (“in an action pursuant to this section, the plaintiff shall have the right to recover actual damages ... in each case in which the court or jury determines” [emphasis added]); MCL 600.2916(1); MSA 27A.2916(1) (“[t]he amount of damages shall be determined by a jury as in other cases, or by the court in case a jury is waived by the parties” [emphasis added]); MCL 570.362; MSA 18.292 (in all suits prosecuted under the provisions of this act, the court or jury who shall try the same); MCL 462.259; MSA 22.1263(259) (a railroad company is not liable if it proves to the satisfaction of the court or jury); MCL 426.12; MSA 18.222 (in all suits prosecuted under the provisions of this act, the court or jury who shall try the same); and MCL 750.539h(c); MSA 28.807(8)(c) (any party to a conversation upon which eavesdropping is practiced shall be entitled to civil remedies including punitive damages as determined by the court or by a jury).
Importantly, in contrast with all these statutes, the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act is conspicuously silent in not offering in any form the option of a jury trial. The central issue in this case is what significance this Court should give to this silence.
The proper performance of our judicial duties requires us, I believe, to give meaning to the silence. Indeed, exposition of this elementary rule of statutory construction can be found in a recent opinion of this Court where Chief Justice Mallett stated it well:
*557Courts cannot assume that the Legislature inadvertently omitted from one statute the language that it placed in another statute, and then, on the basis of that assumption, apply what is not there. In the instant case, the Legislature chose not to include such language, as it had on other occasions .... [T]his Court may not do on its own accord what the Legislature has seen fit not to do. [Farrington v Total Petroleum, Inc, 442 Mich 201, 210; 501 NW2d 76 (1993). (Citations omitted.)]
Thus, the Legislature’s failure to mention that a jury may hear or award damages in a Whistleblowers’ Protection Act lawsuit should be given its obvious meaning: The Legislature did not intend for there to be jury trials of Whistleblowers’ Protection Act lawsuits.
The majority’s holding runs afoul of the limitation on this Court’s power recognized in Farrington, i.e., this Court may not do on its own what the Legislature has seen fit not to do.2
Under the majority’s analysis, whenever the Legislature creates a new cause of action and allows a party to recover actual damages, without expressly indicating that a court is to award the damages, an intent to provide a jury trial will be found. This is a commonsense-defying approach, which effectively says, unless the Legislature says no, we can infer that it said yes. I know of no authorization for such a puzzling approach to interpreting statutes. The rule regarding statutes has always been and should continue to be: The Legislature must enact a measure for it to be stat*558utory law.3 Without such a rule, statutes can be construed to say whatever courts want said whether the Legislature wanted it or not, to say nothing of the executive who might have vetoed the measure had it been known it would be construed in such a way. This is a usurpation of the Legislature’s and the Governor’s constitutionally granted powers that should not be engaged in by this Court.
The difficulty that the majority has in justifying its conclusion is seen first in its questionable reading of Friend v Dunks, 37 Mich 25 (1877),4 for the proposition that a right to a jury can be found in a statute even though the statute does not expressly mention such a right. In my view, mine as they might, the gold the majority seeks from this case just is not there. First, there is no indication that whether a jury was available was even at issue in the case. Without such an indication, anything said was dicta. Moreover, absent explanation from the Court that makes it clear that the Court was using the silence of the Legislature to give the Court license to speak for it, one should be inclined to the more likely view that the jury right purportedly found in the statute instead traces to another source, perhaps even the constitution of that era.5 Not to do so is to indulge in the historically difficult-to-defend notion that our constitutionally conservative nineteenth century predecessors on this *559bench were uncharacteristically engaged in creative expansions of their own powers that, while unfortunately too familiar to late twentieth century readers of the law, were all but unheard of a century ago.
Further, the majority claims Lorillard v Pons, 434 US 575; 98 S Ct 866; 55 L Ed 2d 40 (1978), supports its reading of a right to a jury trial into the act. Lorillard provides no such support. As explained in Feltner v Columbia Pictures Television, Inc, 523 US 340; 118 S Ct 1279; 140 L Ed 2d 438 (1998), the Lorillard holding was expressly premised on the fact that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act made explicit reference to another statute that had been uniformly interpreted to provide for a jury trial. Although the majority traces the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act to the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Employment Practices Act, it nevertheless concedes, ante, p 547, that the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act does not contain an explicit statement stating that Civil Rights Act procedures should be followed in actions brought under the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act. Thus, Lorillard does not support the majority’s position.
Rather than Lorillard, the majority should review Feltner. In Feltner, a plaintiff brought a civil action for damages under the Copyright Act. The defendant filed a jury demand. The Supreme Court held that the language of the statute did not grant a right to a jury trial because the statute did not mention the right to a jury trial or to juries at all. Indeed, the Court distinguished Lorillard on the basis that the Copyright Act did not make explicit reference to another statute. It held that the language of the statute did not grant a *560right to a jury trial. A similar analysis should be applied in the case at bar.6
The majority also bases its finding of a jury right in the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act to the fact that the act uses language similar to the cra and the fepa where both the CRA and the fepa contain a right to a jury trial. The majority’s analysis is flawed. First, as the majority acknowledges, the fepa expressly allowed for a jury trial. Ante, p 548. In contrast, the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act does not expressly contain such a right. Further, in contrast with the fepa, the cra does not contain an express mention of a right to a jury trial. Rather, the right to a jury trial under the CRA is premised on Const 1963, art 1, § 14, not express language in the CRA. See King v General Motors Corp, 136 Mich App 301, 308-309; 356 NW2d 626 (1984). The fact that the Court of Appeals held that a constitutional right to a jury exists in CRA actions is irrelevant to the question whether there is a nonconstitutional right to a jury under the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act.
n
Having determined that a right to a jury trial is not available under the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act, there is no need to determine whether a jury trial is available when a plaintiff sues a governmental defendant. However, if it was necessary to reach the issue, I would be inclined, consistent with the Court *561of Appeals dissent, to apply the following analysis of the United States Supreme Court:
[I]f Congress waives the Government’s immunity from suit . . . the plaintiff has a right to a trial by jury only where that right is one of the “terms of [the Government’s] consent to be sued.” [Lehman v Nakshian, 453 US 156, 160; 101 S Ct 2698; 69 L Ed 2d 548 (1981).]
Even under the majority’s analysis, “There is no express provision in the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act specifying whether an action brought under it is to be tried before a jury or before a judge sitting without a jury,” ante, p 535, it simply cannot be said that the Legislature consented to let a jury decide Whistleblowers’ Protection Act lawsuits filed against governmental entities.7 I note that the majority has not even attempted to distinguish the logic of Lehman.
m
Having determined that the Legislature has not provided that Whistleblowers’ Protection Act actions are triable by a jury, it is necessary to reach the issue *562whether Const 1963, art 1, § 14, “The right of trial by jury shall remain,” requires a jury trial for Whistleblowers’ Protection Act lawsuits.
This Court has previously recognized that there was no common-law right to be free from being fired for reporting an employer’s violations of law such as is recognized under the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act. Dudewicz v Norris Schmid, Inc, 443 Mich 68, 78; 503 NW2d 645 (1993). Given this fact, art 1, § 14 does not provide a basis for finding that a right to a jury trial exists under the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act. This is because a right that did not exist before the adoption of the constitution cannot be retained by this constitutional provision.8 The following statement made regarding a predecessor of art 1, § 14 is applicable:
[I]t is a different proceeding altogether from any which was known to our jurisprudence in 1850. It is a new proceeding, and therefore if a jury trial cannot be had in it, that method of trial is not cut off, but is simply not given. There is nothing in the Constitution which renders it necessary to provide for jury trial in new cases. The constitutional provision is, “the right of trial by jury shall remain," by which we are to understand merely that it is retained for cases in which it existed before. [State Tax-Law Cases, 54 Mich 350, 363; 20 NW 493 (1884) (emphasis in original).]
Given the fact that there was no common-law analogue of a Whistleblowers’ Protection Act action, there could not have been a right to try such a nonexistent cause of action in front of a jury when art 1, § 14 was adopted in 1963. Therefore, art 1, § 14 did *563not retain a right that did not then exist. In my judgment, the Court of Appeals majority clearly erred when it ruled to the contrary.
CONCLUSION
Because the statute does not provide for a jury trial and art 1, § 14 does not require a jury trial, I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and affirm that of the trial court.
Weaver, J., concurred with Taylor, J.

 Although the circuit court struck a jury demand filed by a plaintiff in the case at bar, it would also have been proper to strike a jury demand if it had been filed by defendant.

 The majority rejects my analysis, claiming the Legislature also knows how to make a case triable only by a judge. The majority, however, is able to cite only one statute which states that a court is to award damages, in stark contrast with the numerous statutes that I have cited. Moreover, while I have noted numerous statutes expressly allowing a jury, the majority has not cited a single statute forbidding a jury.

 See Const 1963, art 4, §§ 1 and 33.

 This is a tacit admission that this Court has not held, on a nonconstitutional basis, that a right to a jury trial exists for a cause of action in the last 120 years where no such right is contained in the express statutory language.

 It could be that there was a right to a jury trial in the case because Const 1850, art 6, § 27, which provided that the right to jury remain, just as Const 1963, art 1, § 14 does, required it. See part iii.

 It is the case that, on an alternate basis, the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Court held that the constitution required that a jury be provided. The Seventh Amendment, however, does not apply to the states, 47 Am Jur 2d, Jury, § 5, p 716, and therefore has no application to the case at bar.

 The majority states, “Nothing in the act suggests that the state is not to be treated the same as a business for purposes of the act’s protection of non-civil service employees like the plaintiff.” Ante, p 553. MCL 15.361(a); MSA 17.428(l)(a) provides that all state employees who are classified civil servants may not invoke the act. Hence, the majority’s reference to non-civil service employees. I take judicial notice that over ninety percent of state workers are classified civil servants who cannot invoke the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act against their employer, the state. Thus, contrary to the majority, id., pp 553-554, there is no significance to the fact that the Legislature chose to subject the state to suit in the circuit court rather than the Corut of Claims. Allowing those few state workers who are not classified civil servants to bring suit under the act in circuit court may have been merely an accommodation to allow suits to be heard in the county where the plaintiff resides or works rather than forcing such plaintiffs to try their case in Ingham County.

 As defendant Michigan State University aptly states in its brief: “The idea of retaining that which did not previously exist poses an ontological dilemma of the first order.”