Court Opinion

ID: 9685650
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:55:26.783571+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:08.965629
License: Public Domain

O’Hara, J.
(dissenting). I am in respectful disagreement with my colleagues.
In Oakwood Hospital v. State Tax Commission (1965), 374 Mich 524, the Michigan Supreme Court construed the following exemptive language in the general property tax act:
*147“ * * Also real estate, with the buildings and other property thereon owned and occupied by any nonprofit trust and used for hospital or public health purposes.’ ” (Emphasis added.)
The Court held:
“The entire hospital facility, including the main hospital building proper and the 6 houses used as these are, must be considered together in determining whether all of it, in combination and, as well, divisibly, serves a hospital purpose and is used therefor. We say the answer is yes, and this answer applies to the houses as well as to the main hospital building.”
Subsequent to that decision, the legislature amended the act to read in pertinent part as follows:
“ ‘Also real estate with the buildings and other property thereon, owned and occupied by any nonprofit trust and used for hospital or public health purposes, but excluding excess acreage not actively utilised for hospital or public health purposes, and real estate and dwellings located thereon used for dwelling purposes for resident physicians and their families’ (Emphasis supplied to show pertinent portion of language used by PA 1966, No 320.)”
I cannot construe “but excluding * * * real estate and dwellings located thereon used for dwelling purposes for resident physicians and their families” as anything but an exclusion from the general exemption statute. After the Supreme Court decision in Oakwood, supra, any other construction would seem to me to render the legislative action meaningless.
I would affirm.