Court Opinion

ID: 9654455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:21:54.104313+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:09.537881
License: Public Domain

Cavanagh, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I concur fully in the majority’s analysis and conclusion regarding the presence of a Michigan environmental protection act (mepa) violation in this case, and the analysis regarding the role of a soil erosion and sedimentation control act (SESCA) violation in such a determination, as contained in parts n and m of the majority’s opinion. I fear, however, that the majority, while on one hand recognizing the broad scope and important implications of the Legislature’s determination in enacting the mepa, nonetheless, in its conclusion regarding the availability of attorney fees, reaches a decision that in effect will serve to constrain the application of the mepa only to rare occasions and, thus, frustrate the very purpose of the statute. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent with respect to the analysis contained in part iv of the majority’s opinion, and its conclusion regarding the unavailability of attorney fees in mepa actions.
*45As we have long noted, when it was enacted, the MEPA represented a bold step forward by our Legislature.1 Recognizing the importance of our natural resources and the dangers in entrusting their care solely to state action, the Legislature granted standing to any individual to bring an action alleging undue harm to our natural resources. The wisdom and effectiveness of this procedure was recognized by many of our sister states, who, along with the federal government, came to enact similar environmental laws patterned on Michigan’s model.2
Throughout its history, the application of the MEPA has generally involved the availability of attorney fees.3 Recently, however, two appellate cases have held against attorney fees, although the procedural posturing of one makes it of dubious value.4 It seems *46the better view is that, at least until recently, attorney fees have been such an accepted part of mepa litigation that their availability generally has not even been at issue. This, by and large, has been the case for over fifteen years. It is against this backdrop that we begin the analysis of this case and this context, to which, it seems, the majority fails to give sufficient weight.
While I do not disagree in principle with much of the majority’s analysis of this issue, I find fault with its application to the present case. In the mepa, the Legislature utilized language allowing for costs to “be apportioned to the parties if the interests of justice require.” MCL 324.1703(3); MSA 13A. 1703(3). The majority correctly notes that the Legislature, since the enactment of the mepa, has enacted a host of remedial environmental statutes that allow for the apportionment of attorney fees.5 What the majority fails to appreciate is the obvious inference that, if the progeny of the MEPA are to provide for attorney fees, it follows that the statute that began this entire area of law for our state would also allow them. While the Legislature is presumed to be aware of existing statutes and judicial decisions when enacting new law, I would not extend this presumption to find that the Legislature did not intend to give operative effect to its enactment of the mepa, particularly where both the context of the MEPA and the Legislature’s later pronouncements point in the opposite direction.
The entire Court agrees that the Legislature enacted the mepa to “protect our natural resources *47before they become ‘scarce.’ ”6 In doing so, the Legislature chose to give standing to individual citizens to pursue actions to halt environmental harm, rather than rely solely on the various state agencies that are charged with protecting our environment. The Legislature seems to have implicitly recognized that there would be times when such agencies could not, or would not, act and that the overriding concern for preserving the quality of our environment mandated the availability of private action in such cases.7 That said, I cannot conclude that the Legislature intended to limit this availability to that minuscule portion of the population capable of pursuing environmental actions at their personal expense.
The reality of the mepa actions, as evidenced by the voluminous record in this case, is that they are often protracted and technical proceedings, the cost of which would be prohibitive to most persons, even when, as the plaintiffs herein, they were personally harmed by the actions that also endangered the environment. To expect that the MEPA will be utilized by individuals to protect the environment at private expense is to ignore the reality of litigation today. *48And yet it is in those situations, where the environment is harmed to the detriment of no one in particular, but all of us in reality, that the Legislature intended the mepa to operate. Under the majority’s decision today, I fear that operation by and large will be thwarted. Accordingly, I dissent from the majority’s conclusion that attorney fees are not apportionable in mepa actions as the interests of justice require.
Kelly, J., concurred with Cavanagh, J.

 See, e.g., Ray v Mason Co Drain Comm’r, 393 Mich 294; 224 NW2d 883 (1975).
“The Michigan Environmental Protection Act was the first statute to provide for citizen suits to protect the environment from degradation by either public or private entities and to provide a broad scope for court adjudication. The Federal Clean Air Act and Water Pollution Control Amendments, as well as several state statutes, have followed the Michigan Act’s lead.” [Id. at 298, n 1, quoting Sax & DiMento, Environmental citizen suits: Three years’ experience under the Michigan environmental protection act, 4 Ecology L Q 1 (1974).]

 Id.

 See, e.g., Dafter Twp v Reid, 131 Mich App 283; 345 NW2d 689 (1983), Three Lakes Ass’n v Kessler, 101 Mich App 170; 300 NW2d 485 (1980), Superior Public Rights, Inc v Dep’t of Natural Resources, 80 Mich App 72; 263 NW2d 290 (1977), and Taxpayers & Citizens in the Public Interest v State Hwys Dep’t, 70 Mich App 385; 245 NW2d 761 (1976).

 Platte Lake Improvement Ass’n v Dep’t of Natural Resources, 218 Mich App 424; 554 NW2d 342 (1996), and Attorney General v Piller (After Remand), 204 Mich App 228; 514 NW2d 210 (1994). Piller’s value in this debate is limited by the positioning of the parties, where the defendant had been awarded partial attorney fees, in part on the basis of the plaintiff’s acquiescence to the defendant’s actions by failing to take required *46action on a permit application under another statute, which required such failure to be considered approval of the application.

 See, ante at 41, n 15.

 Ante at 34.

 As Professor Sax, a leading authority on, and drafter of, the mepa, has noted:
Previously these agencies had been given a sweeping mandate to enforce environmental standards as they thought best, and their decisions were subject to judicial review only for arbitrary and abusive use of their authority or for violation of explicit statutory language. Now these agencies must be prepared to defend themselves against charges that their decisions fail to protect natural resources from pollution, impairment, or destruction. [Sax & Conner, Michigan’s environmental protection act of 1970: A progress report, 70 Mich L R 1004, 1005 (1972).]