Court Opinion

ID: 9723073
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:01:47.016759+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:44.409361
License: Public Domain

Sullivan, J.
(dissenting). I dissent only from part i of the majority opinion which addresses the public building exception to governmental immunity, MCL 691.1406; MSA 3.996(106). I do not believe that the Legislature intended that the public building exception to governmental immunity be applied to facts such as those contained in this case. The Court in Reardon v Dep’t of Mental Health, 430 Mich 398, 415; 424 NW2d 248 (1988), clarified that the duty imposed by the public building exception, a narrow exception, "relates to dangers actually presented by the building itself.”
*625Some would limit a reading of Reardon to those cases in which an intervening third party acts to cause the injury. I read Reardon as saying much more. The Reardon Court traced the history of the public building exception, and concluded that the Legislature intended that exception to apply to cases presenting a fact situation similar to Williams v Detroit, 364 Mich 231; 111 NW2d 1 (1961), the case which precipitated the governmental immunity act. Reardon, supra, pp 408-409. Therefore, it would apply to an injury arising out of a dangerous or defective physical condition of the building itself. In Williams, the decedent was killed when he fell down an elevator shaft. The elevator was defective in that it had an opening which was not guarded or protected in any way and a space, about thirty inches wide, between the elevator floor and the side of the shaft. The condition of the building itself posed a danger to the decedent. However, in this case, as in the companion case to Reardon, Schafer v Ethridge, there is no evidence that the physical condition of the room itself posed a danger to the decedent.
As our Supreme Court said in Reardon, supra, p 417, "the Legislature intended to impose a duty to maintain safe public buildings, but not necessarily safety in public buildings.”
I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Claims against msu.