Court Opinion

ID: 9519722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:23:34.237817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:38.167312
License: Public Domain

Bronson, J.
(concurring). While concurring in the result reached here, I cannot agree that the reasoning and result of this Court’s decision in Hoseney v. Zantop (1969), 17 Mich App 141, should not apply. In Hoseney the Court stated:
“Nor does the statute require that the copy placed in the hands of the officer have been delivered for service by the officer himself. The provision in the statute requiring that the process be delivered to ‘an officer for immediate service’ is complied with if the process is in good faith delivered to the officer for the purpose of achieving immediate service. * # *
“The purpose of providing a 90-day tolling period is to allow additional time within which to effect service. That purpose is better served by a construction of the statute that allows a plaintiff to proceed as this plaintiff did than a construction which would have required the officer in this case to have taken action which would not have effected earlier service on Zantop and which might well have made impossible any service at all on Zantop within the 90-day tolling period and the few days remaining of the limitational period. The law does not require purposeless or self-defeating action.”
There the Court used a good-faith test:
“The revised judicature act’s 90-day tolling provision requires good faith action by the plaintiff. The good faith of the plaintiff in this case is shown by her delivery of duplicate copies of the process to the officer and the private process server and the diligent efforts of the private process server.”
In the present case we find no such evidence of good faith. As Judge Levin notes in dissenting:
*335“Hoseney can, of course, be distinguished from the present case. In Hoseney a private process server was at all times, both immediately before and after delivery of the process to the officer, attempting to effectuate service, making constant inquiry whether the defendant Zantop in that case, who was out of the jurisdiction, had as yet returned. As soon as he returned, both defendants were simultaneously served.”
Here there is no record of such diligent good faith as that found in Hoseney. The trial judge in the present case stated in a written opinion granting defendant’s motion for accelerated judgment:
“While physical possession of a copy of the complaint and summons was given to the officer on November 7, 1967, the instructions accompanying such delivery negate any present intention that the same was done in good faith for immediate service thereof.”
Indeed plaintiffs’ attorney admitted in his answer to motion that
“[Y]our attorney states that the complaint and summons were placed in the hands of the sheriff on November 7, 1967; that at the time your attorney informed the sheriff to hold said papers for the reason that upon information and belief your attorney was informed that one of the defendants was out of the jurisdiction of the State of Michigan.”
Judge Levin states in his dissent:
“I recognize that in this case the plaintiffs’ answer to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment did not assert fear that service upon the defendant who admittedly was at all times within this state might cause the other defendant to stay outside the jurisdiction until the statute of limitations had expired. However, the affidavit in support of the petition for rehearing * * * did so allege.”
*336It is my opinion that, while plaintiffs might have been allowed to show evidence of good faith at the time the motion was made for accelerated judgment, we should not allow them to remain silent and later assert a Hoseney defense of good faith after judgment has been rendered on the motion.
I concur with Judge J. H. Gillis in the result but without negating Hoseney v. Zantop (1969), 17 Mich App 141.