Court Opinion

ID: 9691027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:02:31.172507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:09.229117
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). The plaintiff township, by its bill, seeks injunctive relief on strength of 2 separate yet consistent theories of equity jurisdiction. The first is that the zoning ordinance considered in Mr. Justice Smith’s opinion validly restricts gravel removal operations, on and from the lands of defendants, and that equity should therefore aid in restraint of such operations. The second is that the testimonial record sustains allegation of the township that the mentioned operations constitute “ a very real and active public nuisance” equity should abate. I prefer to sustain the chancellor’s decree solely on latter ground and refer in support to the evidentiary facts Mr. Justice Smith has care^ fully assembled in his opinion.
My caution, in refraining from support of this ordinance as applied to defendants’ asserted right of use of their lands, may indeed be due to an excess of concern over the implications of zoning the depths distinguished from zoning the surface. Such concern is, nevertheless, sustained by respected authority we have followed (Village of Terrace Park v. Errett (CCA 6), 12 F2d 240; City of North Muskegon v. Miller, 249 Mich 52, 57-59), wherein stress is laid upon the importance of “not destroying or withholding the right to secure oil, gravel, or mineral from one’s property, through zoning ordinances, unless *311some very serious consequences will follow therefrom.”
I concur, then, in affirmance on ground that an averred and enjoinable public nuisance has been tes-timonially established.
Dethmers, C.J., and Sharpe, and Kelly, JJ., concurred with Black, J.
Voelker, J., took no part in the decision of this case.