Court Opinion

ID: 9667776
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:54:52.109043+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:40.792153
License: Public Domain

M. S. Coleman, J.
(dissenting). Although it characterizes plaintiff’s cause of action as "arising from breach of an abstracter’s contractual duty”, the majority opinion adopts a "tort action of negligent misrepresentation in this context”. The effect and purpose of this adoption is to delay the running of the statute of limitations.
I cannot agree with the theory or the result.
I agree with the majority that plaintiffs’ action is premised on a breach of contractual duty. MCLA 600.5807, MSA 27A.5807 says:
*42"No person may bring or maintain any action to recover damages or sums due for breach of contract * * * unless, after the claim first accrued to himself or to someone through whom he claims, he commences the action within the periods of time prescribed by this section.
"(8) The period of limitations is 6 years for all other actions to recover damages or sums, due for breach of contract.”
When did plaintiffs’ claim accrue? The answer is found in MCLA 600.5827, MSA 27A.5827 which provides, insofar as applicable to these facts,
"[T]he claim accrues at the time the wrong upon which the claim is based was done regardless of the time when damage results.”
Plaintiff’s claim thus accrued, at the very latest, in 1959, although no specific date was alleged. Suit was not filed until 1971.
To avoid application of this unambiguous legislative directive, the Court today adopts a theory which razes the structure of contract law. Prompting this destruction is a desire to afford plaintiffs an opportunity to recover damages after the applicable statute of limitations has foreclosed suit. I repeat a concern expressed in Rizzo v Kretschmer; 389 Mich 363; 207 NW2d 316 (1972). By so altering the law "to fit a single desired result this Court would force Michigan courts to apply the distortion here wrought to all future cases.” (p 381.)
The Legislature is entitled to place limitations upon the bringing of actions in the courts of this state. Indeed, it is the duty of the Legislature to impose jurisdictional limitations in such matters. There is such a limitation applicable to the facts of this case.
*43The majority cites examples of a number of states which have legislation purporting to do what would be done here by judicial fiat. I thoroughly agree that we should give "judicial support of legislation” when possible. In fact, that is the point of this dissent. Michigan has no such statute and we should not attempt to provide such by judicial action.
I repeat what was written in dissent in Dyke v Richard, 390 Mich 739; 213 NW2d 185 (1973): "Although individuals may differ as to the wisdom of the legislation, it is not our function to rewrite it.” I would reverse the Court of Appeals and affirm the circuit court’s grant of accelerated judgment.
Levin and J. W. Fitzgerald, JJ., did not sit in this case.