Court Opinion

ID: 9672173
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:50:14.762306+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:18:15.253756
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring in affirmance). This case has turned out to be one of unusual difficulty. All members of the Court are agreed that our judgment is apt to influence permanently the development for residential purposes of many like tracts of vacant land; also that it is bound to have a broadly unpredictable effect, reaching deep into the unplumbed future, upon suburban life in ever more populous southeastern Michigan. For that reason we have devoted more than an average amount of time to the case.
Some good has arisen from this vexer. It has brought about a sort of self-generated search for *644past érror; a search which has been fruitful and now is to be confessionally painful. For myself it appears that Justices Adams and Smith are both right; that some- of us have been guilty of uncritical application, of standard zoning precedents, to this newér and narrower field of judicial review of municipal zoning. By “this newer and narrower field” I refer to the invoked test by equity (as here and in the two Troy Cases1) of the validity of a zoning ordinance which restricts comparatively large tracts of undeveloped land to the platting 'of larger (one-half to one acre approximately) single-family residential lots, it being agreed:
(a) That the tract in question is suited best to such single family residential use, and
. (b) That the controlling question is whether the landowner has made out a case for relief by allegation2 and proof that he will lose developmental profit if he is ordinance-compelled to build on and sell, or sell prior to building, such larger residential lots.
As is usual in these cases, plaintiffs’ proof as above is sharply disputed. Details will be found in Justice Adams’ opinion. The trouble with all the proof—on both sides—is doubt of its dependability as ground for any judgment or precedent applicable to such newer field. Most of it presents the predictive viewpoints only of partisans favoring realty development for profit, or of partisans favoring idealistic planning for the far uncharted future; each group disregarding—to some extent—the fundamental property right or the fundamental public right. The case in such regard is much like another zoning case, Certain-Teed Products Corp. v. Paris Township, *645351 Mich 434. There opponent parties on like opposing testimony asked the Court to peer into the future to ascertain the accuracy of their contradictory prophecies; one dark for the public right and the other equally dark for the private right.
The Simon, Senior, and Levitt Cases, cited by Justice Adams, stand as excellently reasoned authority for upholding Farmington township’s ordinance as against plaintiffs’ testimonial showing. In particular, at least as appears to the writer, plaintiffs’ claim and proof of ordinance-caused loss of profits is not sufficient to persuade that the ordinance confiscates their tract or that it inequitably affects their property rights. Proof that some developmental profit will be lost, the compared amount either being small or uncertainly established, is not enough to justify a finding that the ordinance confiscates, or that it is unreasonable in its application to plaintiffs’ said tract.
I do not propose to add more, save to vote for express overruling of the Troy Cases, so far as they hold unconstitutional the residential zoning of undeveloped property solely on account of minimally ordained single-family lot sizes accompanied by a testimonial prophecy of consequential loss of developmental profit. When the Court concludes that it has'erred on previous occasion or occasions, and is free so to do, the decision or decisions of error should be thus overruled; not ignored or carefully skirted.
I hold that plaintiff has failed to persuade that the defendant township’s ordinance actionably affects their rights and therefore vote to affirm.

 Christine Building Company v. City of Troy, 367 Mich 508; Roll v. City of Troy, 370 Mich 94.

 The decisive allegation of plaintiffs’ instant bill is paragraph 10 r
“10. That the plaintiffs represent that the subject land is economically suited for development only if divided into building sites of not more than.j.2,500 square feet in area.” . •