Court Opinion

ID: 9516156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:35:54.619888+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:40.824583
License: Public Domain

T. M. Burns, J.
On January 27, 1967, plaintiff was allegedly unlawfully assaulted, arrested, and imprisoned by the defendants and others, all members of the Flint Police Department. Plaintiff filed a complaint against the defendants; and after a jury trial on the merits, obtained a judgment in the amount of $10,300. Defendants’ timely motion for a new trial was denied July 27, 1970, and they now appeal.
Two officers of the Flint Police Department on the date in question observed the plaintiff driving a vehicle at excessive speeds within the City of Flint. The officers pursued the plaintiff and stopped him at a point beyond the corporate limits of the city. After being stopped, the plaintiff got out of his vehicle and upon request gave his driver’s license to one of the officers. A short time later two other police cars from the City of Flint arrived *668at the scene. One of these cars was manned by the defendants.
At this juncture, there is a substantial dispute in the facts surrounding plaintiffs arrest. Plaintiff contended that he was pushed around and beaten for no apparent reason both at the site where he was originally stopped and later at the police station.
The police account is quite different. The officers who had initially stopped the plaintiff testified that plaintiff became boisterous and used foul language and that additional officers, including the defendants, were summoned to assist in subduing the plaintiff. Plaintiff was arrested for breach of the peace and resisting arrest. In any event, the jury considered all of the evidence in the case and returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff.
Defendants raise three issues on appeal. They will be discussed in the order presented below.
1. Did the trial court err by instructing the jury that the arrest of the plaintiff was unlawful and that anyone assisting in the arrest was equally liable?
It is the defendants’ position that the plaintiffs arrest was lawful for the reason that the city charter of Flint clothes the city police with the same power as the sheriff of the county for making arrests outside of the city limits. We disagree.
Despite the numerous citations by the defendants with respect to the validity of the Flint charter provision which purportedly gives extra-city effect to the arrest powers of Flint policemen,1 *669none of the cases cited can be said to stand for the proposition that a home-rule city’s charter can vest such a power in law enforcement officers. The home-rule cities act, MCLA 117.1 et seq.; MSA 5.2071 et seq., contains no such provision. The sole section dealing with the arrest power of policemen for home-rule cities is found at MCLA 117.34; MSA 5.2114, which provides:
"When any person has committed or is suspected of having committed any crime or misdemeanor within a city, or has escaped from any city prison, the police officers of the city shall have the same right to pursue, arrest and detain such person without the city limits as the sheriff of the county.”
There is no authority interpreting this section of the home rule cities act to guide us. The clear import of the statute, however, is that a home-rule city police officer’s authority to arrest outside of the city is limited to arresting for the crime for which the person was pursued. Therefore, in the present case, the Flint police officers who observed the plaintiff driving at excessive speeds within the city and stopped him outside of the city only had the power to arrest the plaintiff for a traffic violation. They had no authority to arrest the plaintiff for either a breach of the peace or for resisting arrest.
In a further attempt to justify the plaintiff’s arrest, defendants rely upon the following statute:2
"Any peace officer of any county, city or village of this state may exercise authority and powers outside his own county, city or village, when he shall be enforcing the laws of the state of Michigan in conjunction *670with the Michigan state police, or in conjunction with any peace officer of the county, city or village in which he may be, the same as if he were in his own county, city or village.”
From this, defendants erroneously argue that since the officers who originally stopped the plaintiff for a traffic violation had the same authority as the sheriff of the county, the officers were "enforcing the laws * * * in conjunction with any peace officer of the county”.
We can find no authority, nor has any been cited to us, which would support the novel theory advanced by the defendants. After a close reading of the plain language of the statute, we conclude that the statute here in question confers upon the police authority to act outside of their county, city, or village only when they are acting in conjunction with peace officers regularly employed to enforce the laws outside of that county, city, or village.
In the instant case, the Flint police were acting in conjunction with other Flint policemen while all of them were without the corporate limits of the city. No amount of abstract legal reasoning can magically transform the Flint policemen into sheriff’s deputies. Flint policemen they were, and Flint policemen they remained.
Therefore, since the Flint officers were not acting in conjunction with peace officers from the area in which the arrests were made, the statute is wholly inapplicable to the instant case.
In view of the foregoing, we hold that the plaintiff’s arrest was unlawful.
In addition, defendants assert that it was error for the trial court to instruct the jury that all participating officers in the unlawful arrest were liable. We disagree.
*671The law governing this issue is well settled. In Cook v Hastings, 150 Mich 289 (1907), the Michigan Supreme Court held that if an arrest by a policeman is unlawful, all of the other policemen who act and assist in that arrest are responsible for the entire damage caused the plaintiff, although they had no knowledge of its unlawfulness and intended to act in the strict discharge of their duties. Accord, King v Herfurth, 306 Mich 444 (1943).
However, the defendants impliedly argue that under this rule a policeman will be forced to either neglect his duty or run the risk of incurring liability for wrongful arrests. In answer to this argument, we quote with approval the following language of the Court in Cook v Hastings, supra, at 291-292, wherein the same argument was asserted.
"If they [policemen] are sued, the court will pass judgment on their conduct in accordance, not with the judge’s notion of justice, but in accordance with a law which condemns. It is not for the judge presiding over the court to determine whether or not he will apply that law. He has no choice. He did not make the law, and he cannot change it. That law is as obligatory on him as it is on the humblest suitor who ever appeared in his court. He is bound to apply it in determining controversies. The argument under consideration is in reality an appeal for a change of the law. It should have been addressed, not to a court, but to some other tribunal; a tribunal having authority to change the law.”
We hold, therefore, that the trial court’s instructions on this issue were not erroneous.
2. Did the trial court err in failing to charge as to the doctrine of avoidable consequences?
The defendants contend that the trial court *672should have given their requested instruction on the doctrine of avoidable consequences. We cannot agree.
The doctrine of avoidable consequences is applicable where the plaintiff has not exercised reasonable care in mitigating damages after a wrongful act has been committed; e.g., where plaintiff fails to seek proper medical attention when reasonable, and the failure to do so aggravates the injuries and increases the damages. See 22 Am Jur 2d, Damages §§ 30, 31.
In the instant case, there was no testimony which would show that plaintiff’s damages were increased by a failure to seek medical treatment. On the contrary, the record reveals that the plaintiff went to a doctor shortly after being released from jail.
Therefore, the doctrine of avoidable consequences is not applicable to the facts of the present case, and the trial judge properly refused to charge as to this doctrine.
3. Did the trial court err in charging the jury that plaintiff might use reasonable force to resist an unlawful arrest?
Finally, defendants contend that it was error for the trial court to charge the jury that the plaintiff was entitled to use reasonable force in resisting an illegal arrest. Defendants’ contention is without merit.
A party may use such force as is reasonably necessary to resist an unlawful arrest. People v Krum, 374 Mich 356 (1965); People v Gray, 23 Mich App 139 (1970); People v Bonello, 25 Mich App 600 (1970).
We hold, therefore, the trial court’s instructions on this point were not erroneous.
Affirmed.
Danhof, P. J., concurred.

 "Section 35. Powers of Division of Police. The Director of Public Safety and all members of the division of Police shall have the same powers as Sheriffs and Constables in serving civil or criminal process and making arrests within the state, both within and without the city; they shall have power to arrest, without process, any person who in the presence of the arresting officer shall be engaged in the *669violation of any state law or city ordinance and to detain such person until complaint can be made and process issued for his arrest, which complaint shall be made as speedily as possible after such arrest.”

 MCLA 764.2a; MSA 28.861(1).