Court Opinion

ID: 9669386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:54:38.960319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:56.145404
License: Public Domain

*217On Rehearing.
Souris, J.
(for affirmance in part and reversal in part). In Merkel v. Long (1963), 372 Mich 144, Mr. Chief Justice Carr, writing for himself and for three present members of this Court, concluded that a chancellor may order trustees to pay out of the funds of the trust estates the reasonable fees of the attorneys representing petitioning parties in a Dodge act proceeding for the services they rendered their clients. For authority, the Chief Justice relied squarely upon the doctrine of Trustees v. Greenough (1881), 105 US 527 (26 L ed 1157), and Sprague v. Ticonic National Bank (1939), 307 US 161 (59 S Ct 777, 83 L ed 1184).
Mr. Justice Adams, writing now on rehearing, concedes that the doctrine of Greenough and Sprague is inapplicable to the facts of this case, the litigation resulting in no “preservation of or additions to the trust estates”. Justice Adams likewise concedes that there is no statutory or rule authority to support the exercise of such power by a chancellor in such cases. Having conceded the inapplicability of Greenough and Sprague, the authorities upon which Chief Justice Carr relied to reach the result he did, and having conceded the absence of statutory or rule authority in support of such result, Justice Adams nonetheless reaches the same result, but this time on the asserted basis of the great inherent powers of a chancellor to avoid “an inequitable result”.
I agree with Justice Adams, as I said in my opinion for the remaining members of the Court in our immediately preceding decision in this case, 372 Mich at 155, that valid as the doctrine of Greenough and Sprague is (as it has been adopted by this Court for use in this State in appropriate circumstances by our decision in Sant v. Perronville Shingle Co. *218[1914], 179 Mich 42), absent any benefit to the trusts as such, the doctrine was misapplied by the Chief Justice to the facts of this case. I agree with Justice Adams also that there is no statutory or rule authority for the chancellor’s taxation of petitioners’ attorney fees against the trusts; also that, to avoid “an inequitable result”, equity would have inherent power to require payment of such fees out of the funds of these trusts.
However, I fail to be persuaded by Justice Adams’ assertion that any inequitable result could occur in this case, or any similar case, by virtue of taxation of the fees of the guardians ad litem against the trusts, as affirmed by the Court’s prior decision herein, and disallowance of taxation of petitioners’ attorney fees against the trusts. In the first place, none of the cases cited by Justice Adams, all of which were exhaustively considered in our prior opinions, lends any support to his assertion of inequity. Not even Chief Justice Carr, who relied squarely upon those cases, so much as suggested that they stood for the proposition that a chancellor may award such attorney fees whenever failure to do so might “produce an inequitable result”.
Second, no inequity would in fact occur by dis-allowance of such requested costs. In the view I take of this matter, those parties who engaged counsel to initiate this proceeding would and should satisfy their individually contracted obligations for attorney fees from their own private funds, as do other private litigants, while only the fees of the guardians ad litem, appointed by the chancellor to assist him in protecting the interests of the incompetent, unknown, and unborn heirs of the trusts’ settlor and of the life beneficiaries of the trusts, would be taxed against the trusts. Indeed, in my prior opinion on original hearing, I wrote for four members of the Court that a part of the fees of the guardians *219ad litem should he paid directly from income of the trusts thus allocating to the petitioning life beneficiaries who instituted this proceeding and for whose primary benefit its fruits are destined a substantial part of the cost of providing the services of the guardians ad litem made necessary by the proceeding they initiated.
Once again, I would affirm the chancellor’s denial of the trustees’ motions to dismiss the petitions for fees of the guardians ad litem and reverse his denial of the trustees’ motions to dismiss the petitions for fees and expenses of the attorneys for the parties who instituted this proceeding. Further, I would allow the trustees to tax their costs of this rehearing against the petitioners below.
T. M. Kavanagh, C. J., and Black and Smith, JJ., concurred with Souris, J.