Court Opinion

ID: 9724527
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:00:19.355407+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:02.100759
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). Counsel for the defendant-appellees depend mistakenly upon Kruutari v. Hageny (DC WD Mich), 75 F Supp 610, a decision which was handed down prior to enactment of the plenary codification of 1949  (CLS 1961, § 257.1 et seq. [Stat Ann 1960 Rev § 9.1801 et seq.]; known by short title as the “Michigan vehicle code”). More comprehensive, and definitely less restrictive than the statutory title Judge Starr was considering when he wrote Kruutari, is the title which headed the vehicle code at the time this plaintiff’s injury was sustained (September of 1960). It read at the time and reads now (2A CLS 1961, p 90 [8 Stat Ann 1960 Rev, p 52]):
“An act to provide for the registration, titling, sale and transfer, and regulation of vehicles operated upon the public highways of this State; to provide for the licensing of vehicle dealers and wreckers; to provide for the examination, licensing and control of operators and chauffeurs; to provide for the giving of proof of financial responsibility and security by owners and operators of vehicles; to provide for the imposition, levy and collection of specific taxes on vehicles, and the levy and collection of sales and use taxes, license fees and permit fees; *329to provide for the regulation and use of streets and highways; to provide penalties for violation of any of the provisions of this act; to provide for civil liability of owners and operators of vehicles and service of process on nonresidents; and to repeal all other acts or parts of acts inconsistent herewith or contrary hereto.” (Emphasis supplied by present writer.)
Judge Starr was doubtless right, in Kruutari, when he wrote (p 617):
“The title of the Michigan motor vehicle law, hereinbefore quoted, PA 1915, No 302, as amended, expressly limits its application to ‘motor vehicles * * * operated upon the public highways of this State.’ ”
He was dealing, however, with a former title; a title which announced no provision—as now—for overall owner liability. One may not rightly say, on strength of Kruutari or otherwise, that the title to the code of 1949 “expressly” or otherwise limits application of section 401 therein to motor vehicles “operated upon the public highways of this State.” Nothing in the section says so and the title to the code does not now dictate or suggest that we say so.
The New York statute,  which supported the eminently sound reasoning found in Sylvester v. Brockway Motor Truck Corp., 232 App Div 364 (250 NYS 35) (one of the cases relied upon by Judge Starr in Kruutari), specifically includes what is not in our statute or in the California statute. See Webster v. Zevin, 77 Cal App 2d 855 (176 P2d 960) 3 (followed *330expressly in Baugh v. Rogers, 80 Cal App 2d 136 [181 P2d 387]), wherein the court properly distinguished the Sylvester Case:
“The case of Sylvester v. Brockway Motor Truck Corp., 232 App Div 364 (250 NYS 35), cited by appellant and which dealt with an accident occurring on private property, is not helpful because the New York statute contains direct and positive language limiting its effect to accidents occurring on a public highway.”
The reasoning of Webster was based upon section 402 of the California statute.  I quote it from Webster:
“ ‘Section 402. Liability of private owners.
“ ‘(a) Every owner of a motor vehicle is liable and responsible for the death or injury to person or property resulting from negligence in the operation of such motor vehicle, in the business of such owner or otherwise, by any person using or operating the same with the permission, express or implied, of such owner, and the negligence of such person shall be imputed to the owner for all purposes of civil damages.’ ”
There is no need for additional analysis of the Webster Case. It is worthy both of reading and application since the statute applied therein is a substantial duplicate of the present Michigan statute. Like our section 401, and unlike the New York statute, it effectively declares owner liability without limitation as to the place of commission of the operator’s causally negligent act. I would follow it.
The specific heading of all of the definitions which appear in our code reads as follows (CLS 1961, § 257.1 [Stat Ann 1960 Rev § 9.1801]):
*331“Sec. 1. The following words and phrases as defined in this chapter and as herein enumerated when used in this act shall, for the purpose of this act, have the meanings respectively ascribed to them in this chapter.” (.Emphasis supplied by writer.)
“Highway or street” (CLS 1961, § 257.20 [Stat Aun 1960 Rev § 9.1820]) was not “used,” by the legislature, anywhere in said section 401 (CLS 1961, § 257.401 [Stat Ann 1960 Rev § 9.2101]). I suggest accordingly, the legislature having advised the courts in the first section of the code that each of the ensuing definitions should he accepted and applied “when used in this act ” that when one of the definitions is not so “used” the courts should not read it in. We should instead pursue the final paragraph of the Webster Case, supra p 859:
“We therefore hold that the legislative intent as expressly stated in the statute was to protect persons who might be injured either upon a public highway or upon private property as a result of the negligent operation of motor vehicles by persons other than the owners thereof, who are operating the same with the permission of such owners. Were we to hold otherwise we would be departing from the clear meaning of the language of the statute which is free from ambiguity. We would be required to rewrite a statute to accord with a presumed legislative intent. To write into the statute a limitation of its application to accidents occurring solely upon public highways and to thereby withhold its application from cases where injuries or death occur on private property would not he construction of the statute at all, hut would amount to judicial legislation, and courts are without power to legislate.”
I do not see how the legislature could have titled and then written a plainer declaration of general owner liability; a liability which is qualified only by the express exceptions that are set forth in said *332section 401, no one of which is of present concern. That body told us that the owner “shall be liable for any injury occasioned by the negligent operation of such motor vehicle.” It did not say that such liability should be limited-to negligent operation “upon a public highway.” It did employ the adjective pronoun “any,” prior to “injury occasioned by the negligent operation of such motor vehicle,” which pronoun courts, lawyers and lay folk have ever looked upon as synonymous with “every,” and “each one of all.” See detailed discussion in Harrington v. Inter-State Business Men’s Accident Ass’n, 210 Mich at 327, 330, 331; also the following approved quotation appearing in Gibson v. Agricultural Life Ins. Co., of America, 282 Mich 282 at 289:
“The clause uses the word’ ‘any,’ which, to the ordinary understanding implies ‘of every kind.’ The word negatives the idea of exclusion and would seem to.mean just what it says.”

SUMMARY.

First: If Kruutari’s result is to be justified, it must be on ground that the concededly more restrictive title to Michigan’s then motor vehicle law forbade—for a controlling reason attributable to Const 1908, art 5, § 21  —the construction of then section 29 (CL 1929, § 4648 [Stat Ann § 9.1446]) for which the plaintiff Kruutari contended.6 Judge Starr’s concern in such regard appears in the discussion which starts on page 614 of Kruutari’s report. See particularly his observation (citing Northwestern Manfg. Co. v. Wayne Circuit Judge, 58 Mich 381 [55 Am St Rep 693]) that “The legislature cannot use one title and explain in the body of the act it means something else.” But here, as previously pointed out, the broad*333ly expanded title of the 1949 Michigan vehicle code expressly provides for that which was significantly absent from the title of the former act. Thus, wholly foreign to Kruutari’s interpretive effort, we have before ns no titular involvement; no question arising under Const 1908, art 5, § 21 (now Const 1963, art 4, § 24).
Second: The decision counsel urge upon us would establish a new form'! of immunity from liability; an immunity vesting automatically as soon as the car owner’s loaned motor vehicle crosses the boundary, from some street or highway which is publicly maintained, to another way open to public use that is not publicly maintained. The acres and acres of driveways and parkways surrounding our burgeoning supermarkets are modern examples of this new locale of immunity. So are the congested, darkened and injury-prone areas of drive-in theaters. And for venerable examples, think of the hundreds of miles of woodland “trails” which tourist-motorists find designated on northern Michigan conservation department maps and use today in greater and greater numbers. Based on natural Michigan sand or gravel, most of these trails and other like public ways have never required and so have never received public maintenance.7
And what about all of the private driveways of Michigan? Should the owner, by what appears in the vehicle code, be held immune when his loaned car is negligently backed over a small child playing thereon? What could this Court, having applied Kruutari to today’s question, say when the borrower has rear-ended another car, say one stopped by milady on one of Kroger’s exitways to await the passage of a pedestrian or car on the adjacent public *334sidewalk or publicly maintained street? Tbe borrower’s tort would have been committed on “private property,” yet tbe injurious ultimate thereof would have taken place on the adjacent publicly maintained way. In sum, what is contended here would turn the liability imposed by said section 401 on and off, like a faucet or switch, as the borrowed car crosses and recrosses boundaries separating publicly maintained ways from other publicly used ways.
It is palpable that no legislator dreamed of such a restrictive result when the code of 1949 was conceived and enacted under the banner of a pointedly broadened title. I prefer to conclude, Kruutari being freshly before the legislature when the code was considered and debated, that the precise portion of the title as quoted above was added by the legislature to foreclose Kruutari, definitely and finally, as of final adjournment of the session of 1949.
I agree with the Chief Justice. Summary judgment for the defendant operator should be affirmed, with costs in her favor. Summary judgment for the defendant owner should be reversed, with costs to plaintiff.
Kelly, J., concurred in result.

 See Webster v. Zevin as reported in 77 Cal App 2d 855, 859. The following note appears there:
“A petition for a rehearing was denied March 3, 1947, and appellant’s petition for a hearing by the supreme court was denied March 31, 1947.”

 The title, as it stood prior to the codification of 1949, may be found on page 4894 of CL 1948.

 See Waubun Beach Association v. Wilson, 274 Mich 598; South Branch Ranch Co. v. Emery, 191 Mich 188; Pulleyblank v. Mason County Road Commission, 350 Mich 223.