The case involved a sewer contractor who sued the City of Adrian for damages after encountering unexpected quicksand and excessive water during construction of a municipal sewer project, conditions the city allegedly knew about from prior projects but failed to disclose in the plans and specifications provided to bidders. The city filed a cross-claim seeking damages for the contractor's alleged delays and incomplete work. After a jury trial, the jury awarded the plaintiff $115,741.15 on his claim, and the trial court entered judgment accordingly. The Michigan Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the record contained sufficient evidence for the jury to find the city had misrepresented subsoil conditions and that the plaintiff reasonably relied on the misleading specifications in submitting his bid.
This case arose from two successive automobile collisions on a foggy highway in 1946, where the plaintiffs' eastbound vehicle was first struck head-on by defendant Caswell driving in the wrong lane while attempting to pass trucks, then struck again seconds later by defendant Holt traveling in the same direction who could not stop in time. The trial court found both defendants negligent, held the plaintiffs free of contributory negligence, and entered judgments for damages against Caswell and Holt jointly and severally. On appeal by Holt, the court affirmed, ruling that Holt's excessive speed in fog constituted negligence that was a proximate cause of the injuries and that the harms from the collisions were indivisible. The core reasoning was that the evidence supported the trial court's factual findings on negligence and proximate cause, and that successive negligent acts producing a single indivisible injury support joint and several liability.
The case involved Margaret Jordan, who was charged with first-degree murder after her car struck and killed Lenwood Stowe following an altercation and her decision to return to check on him. A jury convicted her of manslaughter. On appeal, she argued that the trial court erred by not instructing the jury on negligent homicide as a lesser included offense under the relevant statute. The Michigan Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, reasoning that the statute permitting a negligent homicide verdict applies only when the defendant is charged with manslaughter committed in the operation of a vehicle, not when charged with murder.
This case arose from a jury trial awarding damages to plaintiffs Mary and Warren Clowe after their car collided with defendant Margaret Paton's vehicle at the intersection of two narrow gravel roads in Clinton County. The defendant appealed the verdicts, arguing that the plaintiff driver was contributorily negligent as a matter of law and that the verdicts were against the great weight of the evidence. The court affirmed the judgments, holding that the conflicting testimony on visibility, stopping, and entry into the intersection must be viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs and that credibility determinations were properly left to the jury. It concluded that the record did not establish contributory negligence as a matter of law nor show the verdicts to be against the great weight of the evidence.
This case was a bastardy proceeding in which the defendant was charged with being the father of a child born out of wedlock based on the mother's complaint. A jury found the defendant guilty, but he appealed on grounds that the trial court's jury instructions contained prejudicial errors about the legal consequences of a guilty verdict and the applicable substantive law. The court reversed the conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding that the instructions wrongly described the parents as each liable for 50% of the child's support in violation of the governing statute and improperly invited the jury to consider matters beyond its limited role of deciding paternity. Other claimed errors in the charge were deemed unlikely to recur.
The case involved homeowners in a platted subdivision who sued to enjoin neighboring lot owners from constructing a tool-and-die manufacturing building, based on recorded 1942 deed restrictions limiting the lots to private residential use only. The defendants had obtained a municipal zoning permit authorizing industrial construction, but the trial court entered a decree enforcing the restrictions and barring the proposed use. The Michigan Supreme Court affirmed, ruling that the zoning ordinance did not cancel or override the private restrictions, that the plaintiffs had relied on them when acquiring their properties, and that enforcement remained equitable given the absence of abandonment, laches, or inequitable neighborhood changes.
