Court Opinion

ID: 9728449
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:08:09.341668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:48.624706
License: Public Domain

Ryan, J.
(dissenting). The argument for excepting the operation of a publicly-owned hospital from the immunity provided governmental agencies in MCL 691.1407; MSA 3.996(107), was convincing to four Justices of this Court in Parker v *225Highland Park, 404 Mich 183; 273 NW2d 413 (1978), and thus has becomé the law.
Consequently, the only remaining question in this case is whether the 1978 change in the law of governmental immunity effected by Parker should be applied retroactively to benefit the instant plaintiffs who claim against the defendants for negligence alleged to have occurred in 1970.
From the Court’s affirmative answer to that question, I respectfully dissent and would apply Parker in a purely prospective fashion; that is, to causes of action accruing after December 27, 1978, the date of decision in that case.
I
Parker was decided almost six years after the acts and omissions for which the plaintiffs make complaint in these cases. For more than three-quarters of a century before Parker was decided, the courts of this state followed the settled rule that the operation of a public hospital was a governmental function and, as a result, such institutions were immune from tort liability. See Nicholson v Detroit, 129 Mich 246; 88 NW 695 (1902); Martinson v Alpena, 328 Mich 595; 44 NW2d 148 (1950); Schwartz v Detroit, 83 Mich App 590; 269 NW2d 237 (1978), rev’d 405 Mich 839 (1979).1
In Parker, recognizing that the Court was changing the meaning of "governmental function”, as that expression had historically been defined and applied to the operation of public hospitals in this state, Justice Fitzgerald said:
"In the past this Court did hold that the operation of *226a hospital was a governmental function. Nicholson v Detroit, 129 Mich 246; 88 NW 695 (1902); Martinson v Alpena, 328 Mich 595; 44 NW2d 148 (1950).
"We do not believe that because we once held the operation of a hospital to be a governmental function we must do so today. A comparison of the reasoning employed by this Court in Nicholson with that of Martinson shows that the meaning of the term 'governmental function’ has varied as the judiciary’s thinking on the nature of government has evolved.
"Nor do we believe that the Legislature intended that we must today hold the operation of a hospital to be a governmental function because we did so in 1902 and 1950.
"It is time we recognize that our case-law precedent, as it attempts to distinguish between a governmental and a proprietary function, is 'inherently unsound’.” 404 Mich 190-193. (Emphasis added.)
In similar recognition, Justice Moody, writing separately, said;
"It is held today that activity conducted in a general hospital operated by a municipality is not a governmental function for immunity purposes. This conclusion is predicated on the basis that the term 'governmental function’ is limited to those activities sui generis governmental — of essence to governing.” 404 Mich 199. (Emphasis added.)
Thus at the time of the incidents involved in this case, the law was well-settled that the operation of a publicly-owned hospital was a governmental function for which there existed immunity from tort liability. In addition to this Court’s adherence to that doctrine for three generations, the Legislature, just three months prior to the acts or omissions complained of in this case, reenacted the statute declaring governmental agencies to be *227immune from tort liability when engaged in the exercise and discharge of the governmental function, MCL 691.1407; MSA 3.996(107); a reenactment employing the language of art having the well-settled meanings announced and adopted by this Court in Nicholson and Martinson, and by the Court of Appeals in Schwartz, supra.
In light of that history, the defendant hospital authority was entitled to conclude in 1970, and indeed for the eight years thereafter until Parker was decided, that this Court and the Legislature meant what they had said about the immunity of public hospitals. Reliance by appellant, and those similarly situated, upon the immunity doctrine as historically applied was important, not alone as an abstract matter of assuring consistency and predictability in the law of torts and all that implies, but also as a matter of fairness to the taxpayers who own and fund this public hospital authority which was not insured for the liability to which this Court today retroactively exposes it.
In her separate opinion in Placek v Sterling Heights, 405 Mich 638, 683; 275 NW2d 511 (1979), Chief Justice Coleman persuasively advanced a number of reasons for the purely prospective application of the newborn doctrine of comparative negligence. Her views did not carry the day with a majority of the Justices. I subscribed to them, however, and assign the identical reasons for purely prospective overrulement in this case. A few of those reasons, as I perceive them to be particularly applicable to this case, can be summarized as follows:
—When the Court so clearly and concededly engages in the lawmaking process, the fiction that it is merely giving effect to the preexisting rights of the litigants, which were frustrated by the *228overruled law, is especially inapt. A more accurate assessment of judicial lawmaking recognizes that the Court is, instead, making new law. Accordingly, it ought to "legislate” with purely prospective effect as our sister branch, the Legislature, does.
—As a practical matter, retroactive application of the Parker doctrine will confer a cause of action upon an uncertain number of potential plaintiffs who, in this age of heightened sensitivity to medical malpractice, will unquestionably add a substantial burden to already overcrowded civil trial dockets.
—Perhaps most importantly, in extending the newly announced "Parker doctrine” retroactively to embrace a cause of action which accrued more than nine years ago by a pronouncement which concededly changed the law, the Court once again undermines this state’s badly damaged doctrine of stare decisis, of which the rule of purely prospective application is a logical corollary. Retroactive application of new law, especially that effecting significant change, depreciates the ends to which the doctrine of stare decisis is directed: stability, certainty, and fairness. In essence, these ends protect the basic and justified expectation that one may rely upon law as it exists at the time of reliance. By today’s action, then, we prove, among other things, that insurers, attorneys, the Legislature, governmental agencies, courts and the public, which will ultimately pay for today’s generosity, were unwise to rely upon our statements on the law of governmental immunity and hence should not rely upon our future pronouncements because we may change the law, retroactively, for a period of as much as a decade.
I also note in this regard that at a time when *229the cost of health care is soaring beyond the financial capacity of many, even to the extent of a national crisis calling for congressional action, this Court’s retroactive ruling imposes upon the taxpayers of this state the obligation to finance the cost of litigation and, in many cases, the jury awards for negligence claims accruing as long as a decade ago. Whether public hospital and medical care institutions had either the foresight or the lack of confidence in this Court to obtain insurance against such liability during the last decade, or whether, as is the case of the defendants at bar, such agencies are uninsured, in the last analysis the cost of the Court’s generosity today will ultimately be borne, as indeed it always is, by Michigan’s beleaguered taxpayers.
Purely prospective, or "Sunburst”,2 application of Parker would be judicial recognition of the case for what it is: judicial legislation thought by a majority of the Justices to be fairer and wiser than the old rule. Prospective application would preserve the integrity of and respect for our doctrine of stare decisis; treat all litigants heretofore concerned with this issue the same, without selective reward or disadvantage; afford public funding authorities the opportunity to prepare for the burden of ever-increasing medical malpractice litigation; and, not unimportantly, acknowledge the validity of the defendant’s claim in this case that there is a basic injustice in changing the rules of the game after the final whistle is blown.
1 recognize that during the last several months, *230in reliance upon Parker and without any majority statement of retroactive application, this Court has peremptorily reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals in some 17 cases3 in which our settled law acknowledging immunity was applied by that Court. We have returned those cases to the trial courts for consideration in the light of Parker. To have done so in those cases was error, since Parker made no statement as to its application, forward or backward. I decline to compound that error, however, by opting for retroactive application of the new doctrine because I believe such application to be unjust.
For the foregoing reasons I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals in these cases and declare the rule announced in Parker, supra, to be applicable to causes of action accruing on or after December 27, 1978, the date of decision in that case.
Coleman, C.J., concurred with Ryan, J.

 Schwartz is one of approximately 17 Court of Appeals decisions which were reversed by this Court upon peremptory order, citing Parker and giving it retroactive effect without saying so.

 Great Northern R Co v Sunburst Oil & Refining Co, 287 US 358, 365; 53 S Ct 145; 77 L Ed 360 (1932) (Cardozo, J.):
"The common law as administered by [a state’s] judges ascribes to the decisions of [its] highest court a power to bind * * * that is unextinguished, for intermediate transactions, by a decision overruling them.”

 Snow v Freeman, 405 Mich 837; Schwartz v Detroit, 405 Mich 839; Jackson v Sturgis, 405 Mich 839; Tauber v Highland Park General Hospital, 405 Mich 840; Colby v Wayne County General Hospital, 405 Mich 840; Thorpe v Wayne County General Hospital, 406 Mich 855; Poulos v Outer Drive Hospital, 406 Mich 855; Martin v River Dist Community Hospital Authority, 406 Mich 856; Mieksztyn v Sarragh, 406 Mich 856; Decker v Outer Drive Hospital, 406 Mich 857; Robb v Pontiac General Hospital, 406 Mich 858; Brown v Detroit, 406 Mich 859; Ricca v Hug, 406 Mich 860; Raines v City of Flint, 406 Mich 865; Thomas v Wyandotte General Hospital, 406 Mich 865; Montie v Wayne County General Hospital, 406 Mich 867; Warfield v Wyandotte, 406 Mich 904.