Court Opinion

ID: 9685575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:49:19.814745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:07.895016
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
This is a suit in equity; not an action for mandamus (as in Brae Burn, Inc., v. City of Bloomfield Hills [1957], 350 Mich 425). Its purpose is that of having declared invalid the application to plaintiff’s platted lots of a township zoning ordinance classifying those lots as B-l (single family residence). The defendants concede that such a restrictive classification cannot validly be applied to the lots. This means that the plaintiff was and now is entitled to the relief sought by him. Such relief is the adjudged right to use his property as he pleases subject only to other presumptively valid provisions of the same ordinance and, of course, such other laws and ordinances as may regulate its use.
It is said however that the circuit court’s judgment, and the affirming judgment of the Court of Appeals (15 Mich App 132), go too far in that they *500constitute a “judicial invasion of legislative power.” The point made is that the judgment of the circuit court affirmatively authorizes R-3 distinguished from R-l construction on plaintiff’s lots without, as we gather, permitting the township time to amend its ordinance so as to zone in some intermediately restrictive way the area which includes the aforesaid lots.
An ample answer is that no amendatory ordinance has been adopted. Nor has the defendant township requested time for enactment of such an amendment and for invocation of leave to augment the record under GCR 1963, 865.1(5), so as to make such an enacted amendment a part of the record. In these circumstances we perceive nothing wrong, constitutionally or otherwise, with the criticized portion of the circuit court’s judgment. It reads:
“It is further ordered and adjudged that the defendants, township of Bedford, a municipal corporation, and Aldrick Bellaire, supervisor of the township of Bedford, be and each of them is further permanently enjoined from interfering with plaintiff’s erection of apartment dwellings on the property in question in accordance with plaintiff’s exhibit number 4,- referred to in the court’s opinion on page 9, and in accordance with the R-3 zoning classification of the township of Bedford.”
We agree, then, with the conclusion reached by Division 1 (15 Mich App 132, 136, 137):
“Generally, the courts will not issue injunctive orders restraining future action by municipal zoning authorities with respect to rezoning after judicial determination of unconstitutionality of a particular provision as applied to a specific parcel of land. Christine Building Company v. City of Troy (1962), 367 Mich 508 (where ‘under the present record’ the refusal of the trial court to set minimum *501lot sizes was affirmed); Roll v. City of Troy (1963), 370 Mich 94.
“A review of the cases indicates, however, that snch injunctions have been permitted in certain circumstances. Industrial Land Company v. Birmingham (1956), 346 Mich 667; Long v. City of Highland Park (1950), 329 Mich 146; Redford Moving & Storage Company v. City of Detroit (1953), 336 Mich 702; Dequindre Development Company v. Charter Township of Warren (1960), 359 Mich 634; Lacy v. City of Warren (1967), 7 Mich App 105.”
Affirmed. Costs of all courts to plaintiff-appellee.
Dethmers, Kelly, T. M. Kavanagh, and Adams, JJ., concurred with Black, J.