Court Opinion

ID: 9721477
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:00:18.688942+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:26.187467
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring specially). In Morgan v McDermott, 382 Mich 333, 356 (1969), Justice Adams wrote succinctly for our 1969 majority:
“The condition of liability is compliance with the 60-day notice requirement. Until it has been fulfilled, there is no liability.”
His opinion for that majority concludes flatly (p 360):
“The 60-day notice requirement is a condition ‘to any liability * # * for damages sustained by any person # * * either to his person or property, by reason of any defective county road, bridge or culvert.’ ”
Now my Brother, ignoring his opinion of Morgan, writes for today’s majority (ante at p 623):
“Contrary to the legislature’s intention to place victims of negligent conduct on equal footing, the notice requirement acts as a special statute of limitations which arbitrarily bars the actions of the victims of governmental negligence after only 60 days.”
*625I suggest with utmost deference that Morgan’s error should be acknowledged manfully and then publicly buried. Does not the Court owe such a duty to Michigan’s trial bench and Bar?
In Morgan Justice Dethmers and I, dissenting, concluded as the Court now does for these cases of Reich et al., namely, that our there considered 60-day notice statute (MCLA 224.21; MSA 9.121), “providing liability as well as right of suit, sets forth a short—very short—time limitation against the liability which accrues when the duty imposed thereby is breached.” (P 378.) Reiterating this for direct application to the instant cases, I concur in the result ordered by our current majority.