Providing summaries of opinions as they are released from the Michigan Supreme Court, Michigan Court of Appeals (published & unpublished), and selected U.S. Sixth Circuit. Over 60,000 cases summarized to date.
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Search & seizure; Motion to suppress; Whether a search warrant was supported by “probable cause”; The good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule; United States v Leon; Denial of an evidentiary hearing on the warrant; Franks v Delaware; Denial of defendant’s motion for supplemental discovery; FedRCrimP 16; United States v Armstrong; Confidential informant (CI)
In an en banc decision, the court held that a substantial basis supported the “conclusion that evidence of drug trafficking would be found at the” apartment that was the subject of the search warrant. Further, “the officers acted in good faith in securing the warrant” and defendant-Sanders did not show a Franks hearing was warranted. Thus, the district court did not err in denying his motion to suppress the evidence seized from the apartment. The court also upheld the denial of his motion for supplemental discovery. Sanders was charged with several drug and weapons offenses based on evidence obtained through controlled drug buys with a CI and the search of his apartment. After his motion to suppress and his discovery requests were denied, he pled guilty, preserving in part his right to appeal. The court first considered, and rejected, his claim that the search warrant for the apartment was not supported by probable cause. It found that the “controlled buys themselves justified a finding of probable cause.” Sanders challenged the CI’s tip, claiming it lacked specificity. But the court held that “there was ample evidence to infer that the tip was worth pursuing.” Sanders also argued the affidavit was insufficient because it contained no evidence that contraband was seen at or near the apartment. The court rejected the argument that “a probable cause nexus can never be satisfied by a warrant affidavit that establishes only that a defendant is a known drug dealer who lives at a certain location[.]” It concluded that to the extent it had “ever suggested as much, the weight of our case law, as it does in so many probable cause contexts, rejects such a bright-line rule.” It noted that apart from “stray suggestions in the known drug dealer context, we have never required ‘prior, actual observation of all the items listed in a search warrant’ to establish a probable cause nexus; circumstantial evidence that contraband might be found at the place to be searched suffices.” Further, the CI “engaged in two controlled drug buys with Sanders. On both occasions, officers observed Sanders drive from the buy location to the apartment in question.” The court also rejected his arguments based on exceptions to Leon’s exception to the exclusionary rule, and found that his “basis for exclusion under Franks is underwhelming.” As to his motion for supplemental discovery under Rule 16, he sought disclosure of documents relating to the controlled buys. The court has held that “Rule 16(a)(1)(E)(i) allows for production of only those items that would ‘help [the defendant] combat the government’s case against him as to one of the charged crimes.’” It found that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Sanders’s requests. Simply “asserting that ‘discovery . . . could . . . vitiate[] the government’s case’ is insufficient to trigger Rule 16’s discovery obligations.” Further, he could not show that the unavailability of the documents affected his substantial rights. Affirmed.
Involuntary mental-health treatment; Notice of hospitalization; Distinguishing In re Jestila; Right to be present
The court affirmed the probate court’s order granting the petition for involuntary mental-health treatment. First, respondent argued “that the trial court’s failure to ensure that a notice of hospitalization was filed was plain error because it violated respondent’s due-process rights,” citing Jestila. However, it was distinguishable. Here, “the notice of hospitalization was not filed with the court within 24 hours stating that respondent needed to be hospitalized, pursuant to MCL 330.1431(1). Respondent was personally served with the notice of hearing and advice of rights” five days before the hearing. Thus, “the trial court plainly erred by failing to recognize that a notice of hospitalization was not timely issued, thereby failing to comply with the requirements of MCL 330.1431(1).” Unlike the respondent in “Jestila, however, this error did not affect respondent’s substantial rights because respondent was provided with a notice of hearing and advice of rights 5 days in advance of the hearing, the hearing was not rescheduled, and respondent was present throughout the hearing.” Also unlike the trial court in “Jestila, the trial court in this case complied with the ‘procedural safeguards ensuring respondent’s rights to be present and heard’ and, therefore, did not commit a ‘significant error.’” Second, respondent argued that “although his attorney complied with the requirements of MCL 330.1454, respondent’s son testified that respondent did not have a clear memory of meeting with his attorney and, did not have his documents that respondent kept at home; therefore, respondent was deprived of his right to effective assistance of counsel because he could not sufficiently prepare for trial.” This argument was unavailing. “Respondent’s attorney complied with the statutory procedures required of her pursuant to the Mental Health Code, and respondent was given a meaningful opportunity to be heard.” Finally, respondent argued “that he was deprived of his right to be present because he was not present at the end of the hearing.” The court held that his “absence in the final minutes of the hearing did not violate his right to be present at the hearing, nor did it affect his ability to fully participate.” Thus, there was no plain error affecting respondent’s substantial rights.
Premises liability; Trip & fall on an uneven city sidewalk; A municipality’s duty to maintain the sidewalk in reasonable repair; MCL 691.1402a(5); The open & obvious doctrine; Special aspects; Kandil-Elsayed v F & E Oil, Inc
On remand from the Supreme Court for reconsideration in light of Kandil-Elsayed, the court held that the law no longer supported the trial court’s grant of summary disposition to defendant-city in this trip and fall on an uneven sidewalk case. The court previously affirmed the trial court’s ruling. But Kandil-Elsayed changed the applicable legal framework for premises liability claims. The trial court granted defendant summary disposition on the ground “the sidewalk defect was open and obvious and without special aspects, thereby negating the duty defendant owed under MCL 691.1402a.” However, pursuant to “Kandil-Elsayed, the open and obvious nature of the defect no longer precludes the existence of a duty. . . . To the contrary, defendant plainly had a statutory duty to ‘maintain the sidewalk in reasonable repair’ under MCL 691.1402a(1).” Thus, assuming the trial court granted defendant’s summary disposition motion due to lack of a material question of fact as to “the duty element, its reasoning is no longer supported by law. Moreover, even viewing defendant’s open-and-obvious argument in the context of the breach element, summary disposition was improper. As a municipal corporation, defendant is entitled to an initial presumption that it fulfilled its duty to maintain the sidewalk in reasonable” repair. But this presumption “may be rebutted with evidence described in MCL 691.1402a(3), including evidence showing that ‘[a] vertical discontinuity defect of 2 inches or more in the sidewalk’ was a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury.” In this case, photos showing “the uneven sidewalk on which plaintiff tripped, clearly demonstrated that the vertical discontinuity between the two slabs of sidewalk was more than 2 inches for the portion of the sidewalk nearest the road. As a matter of law, plaintiff sufficiently rebutted the presumption that defendant maintained the sidewalk in reasonable repair.” Thus, the court concluded that, “at minimum, a question of fact existed with respect to the breach element of plaintiff’s claim[.]” Reversed and remanded.
Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA); 28 USC § 1346(b); Sovereign immunity under the discretionary-function exception to the FTCA (§ 2680(a)); United States v Gaubert; Failure to follow a mandatory Incident Command System’s (ICS) command structure in response to a wildfire in a national park; The Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS); “Duty to warn” claim; Abbott v United States; Fire Management Officer (FMO); Department of Interior (DOI); National Parks Service (NPS); Fire Monitoring Handbook (FMH)
The court held, among other things, that an NPS’s employee’s (the FMO) failure to follow the mandatory ICS’s command structure when fighting the 2016 Great Smokey Mountains National Park (GSM) fire was not protected by the FTCA’s discretionary exception. After the wildfire, which spread into the City of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, plaintiffs-insurance companies (who had paid policyholder claims arising from the fire) sued the NPS under the FTCA alleging negligence for failing to follow multiple mandatory fire-management protocols and failing to issue public mandatory warnings. The district court dismissed the claims relating to fire-management protocols under the discretionary-function exception but declined to dismiss the claims based on failure to warn. Both sides appealed. The court noted that a “two-part test determines if the discretionary-function exception applies.” The test is conjunctive – “‘[i]f the actions are either non-discretionary or discretionary but unprotected, the government is not entitled to sovereign immunity.’” The court concluded the existence of “‘specific marching orders’” in this case distinguished “the command-structure claims here from fire-suppression cases where courts have held that the discretionary-function exception protects fire-suppression efforts of the government from FTCA waiver of sovereign immunity.” In contrast to those cases, “using the ICS and following chain of command is not a discretionary firefighting technique.” The court found that the FMO’s “failure to use the required incident-command structure is not the type of decision or conduct protected by the discretionary-function doctrine. The DOI policy decision to require use of the ICS and incident-command structure in fighting all wildland fires did not leave [the FMO] with any choice to take an alternative course of action. [He] thus violated the mandatory incident-command system requirements, so the discretionary-function exception does not apply.” As to plaintiffs’ fire-monitoring claim, GSM had adopted the FMH. The court found the FMO “had the discretion to decide how to deploy resources to fight the Fire” and that both parts of the Gaubert test were satisfied. It also agreed with the district court’s dismissal of the WFDSS claims where unlike “the ICS command structure, WFDSS involves decisions that directly related to firefighting strategies and tactics.” These decisions “involve social and economic considerations that the discretionary-function exemption is designed to protect.” Lastly, the court held that plaintiffs’ duty-to-warn claims survived the government’s facial challenge. Thus, it reversed the dismissal of plaintiffs’ incident-command claim but affirmed (1) the “dismissal of the fire-monitoring claim and the WFDSS claim as part of the discretionary fire-suppression decision-making process” and (2) the “denial of the government’s facial challenge to” the duty-to-warn claims. Remanded.