Justice Clifford Taylor on Government Accountability

Robinson v. City of Detroit (2000)

This consolidated case (with Cooper v. Wade) addressed government liability, specifically if the City of Detroit (or individual police officers) could face civil liability for injuries sustained by passengers in vehicles fleeing from the police when the fleeing car caused the accident. In a 5-2 decision, Justice Taylor (joined by Justices Weaver, Corrigan, Young and Markman) wrote that it is unreasonable to suggest under a narrow reading of the statute that the plaintiff’s injuries resulted from the operation of the police vehicles. In this decision the court departed from precedent that the majority ruled was decided improperly (Fiser v. Ann Arbor, Rogers v. Detroit and Dedes v. Asch) and noted that “the rule of stare decisis is not an inexorable command.”

While establishing a two-part test as a basis for departure from stare decisis, the court also asserted that the court’s duty is to accept the Legislature’s understanding of the laws they make. To wit, the opinion in Dedes assumed that when the Legislature wrote “The... employee’s... conduct does not amount to gross negligence that is the proximate cause of the injury or damage” (emphasis added) that the Legislature meant “a” proximate cause. Writing for the majority, Taylor noted:
“After all, the judiciary has always adhered to the principle that the Legislature, having acted, is held to know what it has done, i.e., to know the difference between ‘a proximate cause’ and ‘the proximate cause’... it is not necessary to rely on theoretical surmises to conclude this, as the Legislature has shown an awareness that it actually knows the two phrases are different. It has done this by utilizing the phrase ‘a proximate cause’ in at least five statutes and has used the phrase ‘the proximate cause’ in at least thirteen other statutes. Given such a pattern, it is particularly indefensible that the Dedes majority felt free to read ‘the proximate cause’ as if it said ‘a proximate cause.’ The error will not be compounded, as today this Court corrects the flawed analysis of the Dedes majority.”
For the full text of the case, see this link.

See also