Court Opinion

ID: 9724684
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:08:36.535568+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:10:29.056994
License: Public Domain

M. R. Stempien, J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent because I believe the majority’s view results in a substantial denial of plaintiffs due process rights. There are two grounds upon which I differ with the majority’s decision that the Wayne County trial court’s change of venue order was not an abuse of discretion.
First, the Wayne County judge considered improper factors in determining that inconvenience *320justified a change of venue pursuant to GCR 1963, 403, now MCR 2.222(A). While the grant or denial of a motion to change venue rests in the sound discretion of the trial court, the burden of establishing inconvenience or prejudice as a ground for a motion to change venue rests upon the moving party. A persuasive showing of inconvenience must be made by that party. Brown v Hillsdale County Road Comm, 126 Mich App 72, 78; 337 NW2d 318 (1983); 2 Honigman & Hawkins, Michigan Court Rules Annotated (2d ed), p 272. It is equally well settled that a plaintiff’s choice of venue should be accorded deference. "Unless the balance is strongly in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff’s choice of forum should rarely be disturbed.” Gulf Oil Corp v Gilbert, 330 US 501, 508; 67 S Ct 839; 91 L Ed 1055 (1947).
GCR 1963, 403, now MCR 2.222(A), sets forth the permissible considerations for a change of venue properly laid. They are limited to either the convenience of the parties and witnesses, or whether an impartial trial can be held. A trial court’s exercise of discretion in ruling on a motion for change of venue under this rule is limited to these considerations, and reliance on impermissible considerations will constitute an abuse of that discretion. Duyck v International Playtex, Inc, 144 Mich App 595, 600; 375 NW2d 769 (1985).
Here, the Wayne County judge has considered the fact that plaintiff is a resident of Tuscola County. In a case where the plaintiff has selected the forum and energetically opposes a request to change venue, any inconvenience to that plaintiff is waived and is not a proper consideration. Defendant is admittedly situated in Wayne County because that is the locale of its corporate international headquarters and of its principal place of business, including its engineering and product *321design and development facilities. Thus, that party can hardly claim inconvenience, particularly in this products liability case which is founded primarily on a claim of defective design, which design and development process took place in Wayne County.
Regarding witnesses, the Wayne County judge pointed out that the accident occurred in Tuscola County, so the witnesses to the accident resided there, as well as some witnesses who would testify regarding damages and a possible witness in support of a defense theory. However, there was no record as to how many of these witnesses actually existed, who they were, or what actual inconvenience would be experienced by any of them. The Wayne County judge found that the location of expert witnesses was not significant in this case. Merely because the injury or event occurred in another county does not justify a change of venue. Similarly, the fact that several of the witnesses to the accident were residents of Tuscola County is not enough to justify a change of venue. Caro, Michigan, the county seat of Tuscola County, is approximately nintey miles from downtown Detroit, where the county seat of Wayne County is located. Considering southeastern Michigan’s modern highways and transportation, this distance, standing alone, is not sufficiently burdensome to justify a change in venue from Wayne County, where defendant’s design facilities are located.
More importantly, there is no evidence that the Wayne County judge applied the permissible factors contemplated by the court rules as they relate to unfairness, vexatiousness or oppressiveness to defendant. He simply stated his opinion in general, conclusory terms that a greater number of witnesses would be inconvenienced if trial were to be held in Wayne County than would be inconve*322nienced if the case were transferred to Tuscola County. Defendant must show that, because of the distance between the area where the accident occurred and the plaintiffs chosen forum, it will be unable to produce witnesses for trial without substantial hardship. For example, in Gulf Oil, supra, the site of the accident was four hundred miles from the court and the litigants could not compel witnesses to attend the trial. Hence, the case would have been tried by deposition, "a condition not satisfactory to court, jury or most litigants.” Gulf Oil, supra, p 511.
It is also significant that the Wayne County judge considered some matters which have no place in the proper exercise of discretion to change venue. He held that certain witnesses could be deposed and their testimony could be presented by deposition rather than in person. A decision concerning the manner of presentation of proofs, including testimony, is an advocacy decision that is for the parties, not the court, to make. How that advocacy decision is made is not a proper factor for the court to consider when deciding the inconvenience to witnesses under MCR 2.222(A). The trial judge also found that, because there was some prior litigation arising out of the same accident, "chances are better that the trial judge will have acquired some expertise both as to legal and factual issues.” Such a consideration is totally outside the plain language of GCR 1963, 403, now MCR 2.222(A), and therefore is impermissible. In this case, in fact, a different trial judge ultimately heard this case, which is the result that should have been expected.
Finally, the chronology of the Wayne County judge’s order of August 10, 1977, in relation to the case flow management problems of the Wayne Circuit Court cannot be totally ignored. *323The history of docket overcrowding in that circuit in 1977 is well documented. At that time, its record of time from date of filing to date of trial had reached fifty to sixty months. Also well known is the intensive, zealous effort at that time to dispose of some contested jury trials through emphasis on changing venue and remanding cases to lower courts for that reason, rather than for legally permissible reasons. Although that consideration is not stated in the Wayne County judge’s order, the chronological association is clearly present. Since the moving party has not made the required persuasive showing of inconvenience in this case, docket congestion in Wayne County should not have been considered by the Wayne County judge at all. Duyck v International Playtex, Inc, supra, p 602.
All contested litigation could be said to be inconvenient to all witnesses who must testify. The clear thrust of the court rule herein contemplates the court’s interference with the plaintiff’s choice of forum on the basis of inconvenience only in those exceptional cases where the weighing of the permissible factors shows decisively such inconvenience as will likely interfere with a fair trial to the defendant as guaranteed by due process of law. In the absence of some compelling reason to change venue properly laid, including considerations of ease of access to proofs, such as the difficulty of producing witnesses and evidence for trial or other proper considerations relating to receiving a fair and impartial trial, the request should have been denied.
The second ground for my dissent from the majority’s opinion is that it creates the danger of the precedent of ignoring due process rights whenever a substantial expenditure of legal resources has been made in a case. Here, plaintiff has been *324deprived of his right to select a forum for a jury-trial because of the consideration of factors other than those , permitted under the venue rule. Then, on appeal, the majority would deprive plaintiff of his right to select a forum because of his failure to apply prior to trial for leave to appeal from the Wayne County judge’s erroneous order granting change of venue to Tuscola County. As the majority recognizes, there has been no violation of MCL 600.1645; MSA 27A.1645. Venue was proper in Wayne County.
The fact that there has been a significant expenditure of legal resources through the two-week trial should not affect the decision here. Where a plaintiff has been deprived of so fundamental a right as selection of a forum in which to choose a jury because of improper considerations under the venue rule, it is not possible to truly determine whether the plaintiff has been given a fair trial. Plaintiff certainly has been denied the choice of the jury panel from which the jury was chosen, that being a panel composed of citizens who are residents of the urban county in which defendant’s product design facility is located. The erroneous change of venue order substituted a jury panel of citizens who are residents of a county which is primarily rural in character.
A number of Michigan cases have established that the analogous right to trial by jury is so fundamental that its denial, even without a showing of prejudice, requires automatic reversal. In the leading Michigan case, People v Miller, 411 Mich 321, 326; 307 NW2d 335 (1981), the Supreme Court held that variance by a trial court of the jury pool procedures required reversal even when it could not find prejudice to the objecting party. The Court stated:
*325[G]iven the fundamental nature of the right to trial by an impartial jury, and the inherent difficulty of evaluating such claims, a requirement that a defendant demonstrate prejudice would impose an often impossible burden. A defendant is entitled to have the jury selected as provided by the rule. Where, as here, a selection procedure is challenged before the process begins, the failure to follow the procedure prescribed in the rule requires reversal. [Citation deleted.]
Several Court of Appeals panels have followed the Miller rationale. In People v Adkins, 117 Mich App 583, 586; 324 NW2d 88 (1982), the Court, analyzing Miller, stated:
Our Supreme Court agreed that there was nothing in the record from which one could affirmatively find prejudice; nevertheless, the Court reversed the defendant’s convictions, reasoning that, given the fundamental nature of the right to trial by an impartial jury and the inherent difficulty of evaluating claims of prejudice, a requirement that a defendant demonstrate prejudice would impose an often impossible burden. The Court held that the failure to follow the procedure prescribed in the court rule requires reversal.
See, also, People v Key, 121 Mich App 168; 328 NW2d 609 (1983), Bishop v Interlake, 121 Mich App 397; 328 NW2d 643 (1983), and People v Parham, 28 Mich App 267; 184 NW2d 273 (1970), lv den 384 Mich 803 (1971).
In the present case, Michigan law requires a deference to plaintiffs choice of an urban industrial area forum and the juries in that forum. See Duyck v Playtex, supra; Brown v Hillsdale County Road Comm, supra. Plaintiff lost his fundamental right to trial by a jury in the forum of his choice, where venue was properly laid, when the Wayne *326County trial court transferred venue. The Wayne County trial court abused its discretion in granting a transfer. Although there may be an inherent difficulty in evaluating prejudice to plaintiff’s right to trial by an impartial jury in the forum of his choice, the fundamental nature of the right to trial by jury requires reversal when there has been a clear abuse of discretion. I believe it is a fiction to analyze whether a "fair trial” has been provided plaintiff once a fundamental right to selection of a forum for choosing a jury has been denied plaintiff on impermissible grounds, as was done here. As was recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Vasquez v Hillery, 474 US —; 106 S Ct 617; 88 L Ed 2d 598 (1986), it is impossible to make such an analysis where so serious a denial of due process has been made.
Here, a product design issue is involved. Defendant’s principal place of business is in the forum chosen by plaintiff. Given the type of subject matter involved and the factual questions which often arise in products liability cases, it is especially erroneous to deprive plaintiff of an urban forum, in this case Wayne County, and to require him to proceed in a rural setting that is foreign to industrialized activities. The trial court has deprived plaintiff of his right to choose a setting for the selection of jurors whom he believes would be best equipped to understand the factual questions of his case, where no significant inconvenience to the opposing party has been shown and venue is properly laid under the court rule.
Both the United States Supreme Court and the Michigan Supreme Court have recently ruled on the significance of error involving the fundamental right of jury composition. In a recent United States Supreme Court opinion, the Court held that where a defendant had been indicted by a grand *327jury from which members of his own race were systematically excluded reversal of the conviction of the defendant was required. The Court refused to apply a harmless error analysis or to rule that a subsequent fair trial has purged any taint attributable to the erroneous grand jury process. The Court found that a conviction at a fair trial could not cure the taint attributable to a grand jury selected on the basis of race. Vasquez v Hillery, 474 US —; 106 S Ct 617; 88 L Ed 2d 598 (1986).
Further, recently the Michigan Supreme Court, after reviewing an order of the Wayne Circuit Court which transferred venue from Wayne County to Macomb Circuit Court, summarily vacated that order and the case was remanded to Wayne County for further proceedings. Parton v Aco, Inc, 424 Mich 851 (1985). This Court had refused to grant an application for leave to appeal from a change of venue order. Docket No. 84718, order of July 31, 1985 (unreported). This Court’s records show that the basis for this Court’s denial of the application for leave to appeal was that the event at issue took place in Macomb County, the residence of the plaintiff was Macomb County, and, medical treatment took place in Macomb County. In view of the fact that, in the instant case, the Wayne County court improperly considered the convenience to plaintiff who had already chosen his forum, this Court cannot ignore the fact that the Michigan Supreme Court has clearly indicated that the reliance on similar considerations in Parton were improper.
I would reverse and remand for a new trial in Wayne County.