Court Opinion

ID: 9518562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:55:58.965887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:29:34.802139
License: Public Domain

Dethmers, C. J.
Ira D. Jenkins was, for 15 years, employed as a sand molder, successively by the several industrial companies which are parties plaintiff or defendant in this case. The employment exposed him to a sandy, dusty atmosphere. He filed a claim for workmen’s compensation, naming plaintiff *211foundry company, hereinafter called Trellsite, as his employer. It was his last employer. He claimed a disability resulting from dust exposure and described its nature as silicosis, pneumoconiosis and other lung injuries.
The bearing referee denied benefits after finding that Jenkins bad not received a personal injury arising out of and in the course of bis employment with Trellsite. An appeal to the board resulted in reversal, a finding of lung fibrosis which bad developed from exposure to causes and conditions characteristic of and peculiar to the business of Trellsite, and an award of compensation at $36 per week until further order but not to exceed a total of $10,500. Within the period allowed for seeking an appeal to the Supreme Court, Jenkins, Trellsite, and its insurer, plaintiff insurance company, agreed on a redemption of liability by payment of a lump sum of $7,473. It was approved by the workmen’s compensation department and payment was made by plaintiff insurance company.
This is an apportionment proceeding against Jenkins’ prior employers, who, with their insurers, are the defendants herein. The bearing referee entered an apportionment order requiring the several defendants to pay plaintiffs shares of the payment plaintiffs bad made to Jenkins in such proportions as in the statute provided. CL 1948, § 417.9 (Stat Ann 1960 Rev § 17.228). On appeal the board reversed, bolding the apportionment provision of the statute unconstitutional and citing, in support, Benton Harbor Malleable Industries v. General Motors Corporation, 358 Mich 684. Thinking some clarification of the decision in that ease desirable, we allowed appeal here in the instant case.
In Benton Harbor Malleable we held that the last employer, after making a lump-sum settlement as to workmen’s compensation with deceased employee’s *212dependent before determination of liability by tbe appeal board, was not entitled to contribution from a prior employer wbicb had not bad actual notice of tbe bearing on compensation, under tbe above-cited apportionment provision of tbe statute wbicb requires no notice of that bearing to prior employers. We said that to bold otherwise would effect a denial of due process to defendant, a prior employer, in violation of Federal and State Constitutions. 
Plaintiffs seek to distinguish that case from tbe case at bar on tbe ground that here tbe redemption of liability agreement was not entered into until tbe appeal board bad determined plaintiffs’ liability to Jenkins and no opportunity for escape therefrom remained to plaintiffs other than an appeal to tbe .Supreme Court, which they insist, under our previout decisions, would have been futile. This distinction is not only idle but beside tbe point. Had an •award for claimant and against bis last employer .been made by tbe appeal board and affirmed by this Court in either case, it would have been conclusive against that employer only, and not at all as against prior employers who bad received no notice of and taken no part in tbe bearing on compensation.
Plaintiffs stress that at tbe apportionment bearing they did not content themselves with introduction of tbe record of tbe original proceedings to establish liability, but also introduced medical and other testimony for that purpose. They point to this and tbe fact that tbe bearing referee, while taking tbe position that plaintiffs thus bad made a prima facie case, held that defendants might offer rebuttal testimony. All this, say plaintiffs, combined to afford defendants due process. In this connection plaintiffs direct attention to tbe language in our per curiam opinion (p 691) on motion for rehearing in Benton Harbor *213Malleable, in which, we say that our preceding opinion in that ease “may not be read as holding the apportionment statute unconstitutional except as to the application sought herein.” Plaintiffs make no mention, however, of the immediately succeeding language that, “there being in this case neither statutory requirement of notice, nor actual notice voluntarily served on the former employer as to the hearing on compensation, the deficiencies of the apportionment statute as sought to be applied here by the last employer are such as to require the disposition above.” That language alone would be conclusive of the matter at bar, requiring affirmance, because here, also, there was no actual notice served on the prior employers as to the hearing on compensation.
The claimed distinctions between the 2 cases are without relevant significance and in nowise persuasive of a different result.
We disavow, however, the urged interpretation of the initial opinion of this Court and its per curiam on motion for rehearing in Benton Harbor Malleable, to the effect that the apportionment provision of the statute meets the tests of constitutionality when actual notice of the hearing on compensation has been served upon prior employers or they have participated in such hearing or been accorded the opportunity, at the apportionment- hearing, to contest liability. The last employer’s right to contribution springs from that statutory provision alone. If its application according to its plain terms be unconstitutional, there remains no legal or valid basis for the right.
We are, of course, aware of the instances in which, while holding a statutory or ordinance provision violative of constitutional due process requirements as sought to be applied to the particular facts and circumstances of the case then at bar, we have indicated its possible validity in general under other factual *214situations. Typical are zoning cases. In Moreland v. Armstrong, 297 Mich. 32, and in many others we have said that each zoning case must be determined on its own facts and circumstances. See, also, Senefsky v. City of Huntington Woods, 307 Mich 728 (149 ALR 1433). And so, in Pringle v. Shevnock, 309 Mich 179, this Court held a zoning ordinance arbitrary as applied to the property in question, but said that we were not called upon to decide whether it was arbitrary or reasonable as to other property in the same zone. But cases of that tenor involve questions of substantive, never procedural due process. The concept of procedural due process was deeply rooted in American jurisprudence from an early day, but that of substantive due process appeared in the cases at about the middle of the 19th century. See 3 Willoughby on the Constitution of the United States (2d ed), pp 1681-1706. In the latter field, particularly in those cases relating to exercise of the police power as affecting property or other substantive rights, reasonableness was made the test of validity. City of North Muskegon v. Miller, 249 Mich 52; Pere Marquette R. Co. v. Muskegon Township Board, 298 Mich 31. Naturally, a statutory provision affecting private substantive rights in the interests of the general welfare might be reasonable and hence valid in its application to certain circumstances and the reverse as applied to others. The test of reasonableness has not, however, been applied to the right of procedural due-process. It is absolute. Statutory enactments authorizing proceedings for taking life, liberty, or property without providing for procedural due process therein cannot stand under constitutional exactments. As applied to the instant case, the apportionment provision of the statute, in failing to provide for notice of hearing on compensation to prior employers, is unconstitutional, leaving no *215legal basis for a right of apportionment or contribution, regardless of whether notice is or is not served on former employers in a given case. The fact that .such notice was not given in this case is, therefore, of no controlling consequence. This conclusion, we think, follows inescapably from the following authorities with which we are in accord.
In Rassner v. Federal Collateral Society, Inc., 299 Mich 206, this Court held a statute unconstitutional on the ground that it was violative of due process requirements because it permitted pawnbrokers, in certain circumstances and proceedings, to be deprived of possession of pawned articles without notice or hearing. We quote from the syllabi in that case the following:
“No one, consistent with constitutional safeguards, can be deprived of possession of property without reasonable notice and an opportunity to be heard.” (Syllabus 3.)
“The constitutionality of a statute must rest upon the provisions of the statute itself and not upon the grace or favor of a court in giving the notice and affording the opportunity for hearing not provided for by the statute.” (Syllabus 5.)
“When courts are considering the constitutionality of a statute, they should take into consideration the things which the statute permits, and not what action an administrative officer may or may not take to supply omissions.” (Syllabus 7.)
In Wuchter v. Pizzutti, 276 US 13 (48 S Ct 259, 72 L ed 446, 57 ALR 1230), it was urged that defendants had been given actual notice of a proceeding in ample time to permit them to appear and defend. The supreme court of the United States said (P 24) :
“But it is said that the defendant here had actual notice by service out of New Jersey in Pennsyl*216vania. He did not, however, appear in the canse and such notice was not required by the statute. Not having been directed by the statute it cannot, therefore, supply constitutional validity to the statute or to service under it.”
Beveridge v. Baer, 59 SD 563 (241 NW 727, 84 ALR 189), held unconstitutional a statute giving a reviewing board power to increase individual assessments without notice to the taxpayer as constituting a denial of due process. The court said (pp 571, 572) :
“There is 1 other question presented by this record. What is the effect of the fact that, before the increase was made, notice was actually given to the plaintiff and an opportunity of being heard upon the merits of the proposed increase was actually afforded the plaintiff? These facts do not go to the constitutionality of the law itself, because in determining whether or not the law is unconstitutional we look,' not to what has- actually been done under the law, but what the law authorizes to be done under its provisions. See Minneapolis Brewing Co. v. McGillivray (CC SD), 104 F 258; State v. Miller, 146 Iowa 521 (124 NW 167); City of Beatrice v. Wright, 72 Neb 689 (101 NW 1039); Matter of Ellard, 62 Misc 374 (114 NYS 827); Meade v. Dane County, 155 Wis 632 (145 NW 239); State v. Stark County, 14 ND 368 (103 NW 913).
“ ‘The law authorizing the proceedings must require notice or it will be unconstitutional. It is not enough that a person may by chance have notice, or that he may, as a matter of favor or courtesy, have a hearing.’ 12 CJ. Constitutional Law, § 1006, p 1229. and cases cited.
“The law itself, therefore, being unconstitutional, insofar as it purported to vest this power to increase individual assessments without prescribing notice, was in fact no law.” ' " ' "
*217We think these quotations properly state the law. Either the apportionment provision of the statute is or is not constitutional. We hold that it is not because it provides for imposition of liability on prior employers without notice or opportunity for them to resist the claim at the original hearing’ where, subject to rights of appeal, validity of the claim is conclusively determined. The right, if it exists under the statute, of prior employers to quibble with the last employer at the hearing on apportionment as to their relative shares of the liability, if any, is not a complete or satisfactory substitute for the right to contest claimant’s claim in the first instance. Determination of claimant’s right to an award in proceedings of which the prior employers are not required to be served with notice cannot be made binding on them, even by statute, so long as the due process provisions of the Constitutions are part of the fundamental law of the State and Nation. 
We take noté of Mr. Justice Edwards’ opinion that due process is accorded prior employers by permitting them at the hearing on apportionment to raise any defénse which was open to the last employer at the original hearing on compensation or which would have been open there to prior employers had they participated in that hearing. This, it seems to us, reads into the statute language which the legislature did not place there. The statute does not confer such right upon the prior employers. In fact, the statute, by express terms limits the apportionment proceeding to determination of whether the “disease was contracted while such employee was in the employment of a prior employer” and, if so, to apportionment among the several employers of the previously determined liability on the basis of “the *218time such employee was employed in the service of such employers.” It leaves no room for defenses by prior employers resting on any other basis or grounds. Grand Rapids Lumber Co. v. Blair, 190 Mich 518, and Currier Lumber Co. v. Van Every, 312 Mich 375, are inapt. Blair was an action at law by the compensation-paying employer against the third-party tortfeasor. The action being predicated on defendant’s common-law liability to the injured employee, as to which the statute conferred the right to proceed upon the employer in place of the injured employee, the defendant tortfeasor lost nothing by change in plaintiffs, retaining all his rights to defend against the action on the usual grounds such as freedom from negligence, the contributory negligence of the injured party,'et cetera. It took no reading of anything into a statute to leave those common-law rights and defenses to defendant. In Van Every, plaintiff, as principal contractor, paid compensation to the injured employee of defendant, plaintiff’s subcontractor, who was not subject to the workmen’s compensation act. Plaintiff sued defendant as indemnitor, in an action at law. The latter’s liability to plaintiff was held to rest on contract. Properly enough, it was held that defendant, as indemnitor, could raise, as a defense to the action, the proposition that the plaintiff had not incurred liability for any obligation for which defendant had agreed to indemnify plaintiff. Such is not the situation in a proceeding to apportion a liability already determined in a previous action. Furthermore, in the law actions in Blair and Van Every, the defendants were not, as in this apportionment proceeding, brought in with at least 2 strikes against them before the identical judicatory which, without previous notice to them or hearing, already had determined the validity of the employee’s claim to be apportioned among them. This, too, smacks of statutory *219failure to insure employers the due process inherent in the right to be secure against judicial imposition of liability without prior notice or hearing.
Affirmed.
Carr, Kelly, Black, and Kavanagh, JJ., concurred with Dethmers, C. J.