Court Opinion

ID: 9729679
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:46:19.508371+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:00.484611
License: Public Domain

*218O’Hara, J.
(concurring). If as my able and perceptive colleague, Mr. Justice Souris, writes, a ludicrous result here was reached by the claims interviewer, I think it is because he has ludicrous precedent from higher echelons of review upon which to depend for guidance. I have no inclination to attempt to reconcile decisions of this Court which award employment security benefits to' a claimant who loses his employment because he was jailed for driving a motor vehicle while intoxicated and hence could not report for work (Thomas v. Employment Security Commission, 356 Mich 665) and withholds them from an employee who fell asleep on the job (Bell v. Employment Security Commission, 359 Mich 649).
We ought to back up and start over. Claims interviewers, referees, and the appeal board of the commission have been led through a labyrinth of decisions of this Court which no rational mind, lay or legal, could possibly reconcile. In the declaration of policy in the act* the legislature very pointedly included this statement:
“Involuntary unemployment is a subject of general interest and concern which requires action by the legislature to prevent its spread and to lighten its burden which so often falls with crushing- force upon the unemployed worker and his family, to the detriment of the welfare of the people of this State.” (Emphasis supplied.)
For years this Court interpreted this to mean that the benefits under the act were “for the benefit of those who were unemployed through no fault of their own,” (Kalamazoo Tank & Silo Co. v. Unemployment Compensation Commission, 324 Mich 101.) The sooner we return to this eminently sensible criterion and repudiate the legalistic distinctions *219■without differences we made in later cases, the better off claimants, employers and the administrators of the act will be.
Applying this basic test to the case at bar, it seems relatively clear that plaintiff, who made his living driving a taxi, had his license to operate a motor vehicle revoked by the State. The State had granted him this privilege and for his failure to comply with the laws relating to the conditions under which he could continue to enjoy the privilege, withdrew it. In consequence, he could not drive a car. Ergo, he became unemployed. If his unemployment was not his own fault, I am hard put to know whose fault it was. To me, claimant does not fall within the class of unemployed persons to whom the legislature intended benefits should be paid.
I concur in the result reached by Mr. Justice Kelly.

 CL 1948, § 421.2 (Stat Ann i960 Eev § 17.502).