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summaries of opinions as they are released from the Michigan Supreme Court, Michigan Court of Appeals (published & unpublished), and selected U.S. Sixth Circuit.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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Disability discrimination claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); “Hostile work environment”; McNeal v City of Blue Ash; “Adverse employment action” & “failure to accommodate”; Retaliation; Michigan’s Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA); Wrongful termination; Michigan Occupational Safety & Health Administration (MIOSHA)
[This appeal was from the ED-MI.] The court held that plaintiff-Kellar failed to provide evidence to survive defendant-former employer’s (Yunion) summary judgment motion on her discrimination, retaliation, and wrongful termination claims. After Yunion’s office building was flooded, Kellar had concerns about an unsafe working environment and despite reports that the air was safe, declined to go back to the office. She requested an accommodation as to the portion of her work that she could not do from home and worked part-time remotely for a period. She later returned to the office. She then filed a complaint with MIOSHA, claiming that her hours were reduced in retaliation for her concerns about the safety of the building. She also filed a disability discrimination claim with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights and complaints with the Michigan Department of Labor. When her position was changed due to Yunion’s financial hardship during COVID, she left Yunion and sued. The district court granted Yunion summary judgment on all claims. On appeal, the court first considered Kellar’s claim of a hostile work environment. Under McNeal’s general hostile-work-environment analysis, which it concluded should extend to disability-based hostile-work-environment claims, she was still required “to provide evidence showing that, due to harassment based on her disability, her work environment was ‘objectively intimidating, hostile, or offensive.’” The court held that she did not. She offered no “evidence—beyond conclusory statements—indicating the work environment at Yunion ‘produce[d] “some harm respecting an identifiable term or condition of employment.”’” As to her claims for an adverse employment action and failure to accommodate, the court found that the critical question was whether Kellar could “perform the essential functions of the job while working from home for an extended period of time[.]” The court determined that the record clearly showed the answer was no. Case “managers needed to be onsite to perform essential functions of the job” including managing hard copy files kept in locked file cabinets. The job description listed “file management and document review as some of the principal responsibilities for the position.” As to her retaliation claims (1) for requesting accommodation and filing a disability-based discrimination complaint and (2) under Michigan’s WPA for filing workplace complaints, the court held that she failed to establish her prima facie case. It added that even if she had done so, Yunion offered legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for offering her an independent contractor position, budgetary reasons that were not pretextual. Finally, she abandoned her wrongful-termination claim. Affirmed.
Criminal contempt; MCL 600.1701; MCL 600.1711; “Immediate view & presence” requirement; Effect of the fact the hearing was conducted over Zoom; Due process; In re Scott; People v Mysliwiec; Plain error review; Sufficiency of the evidence; People v MacLean; DeGeorge v Warheit
[This opinion was previously released as an unpublished opinion on 9/30/25.] Rejecting appellant’s due process and sufficiency of the evidence challenges, the court affirmed the trial court’s order holding him in criminal contempt. Appellant, an attorney, was representing a criminal defendant (Bennett) during a bond hearing conducted over Zoom. After the trial “court’s bond ruling, appellant apparently believed that the Zoom hearing had disconnected and used derogatory curse words apparently in reference to the judge. But, the judge heard” him, leading to the order on appeal. Concluding that appellant’s due process claims were not preserved for appellate review, the court held that he failed to establish “plain error affecting his substantial rights.” It determined that his “conduct during the [trial] court’s Zoom hearing satisfied the ‘immediate view and presence’ requirement of MCL 600.1711(1)’s plain language. The trial court conducted a hearing addressing Bennett’s emergency motion to reinstate the prior bond and allowed appellant and Bennett to attend over Zoom. Although appellant was able to establish that Bennett’s additional charges were not committed while he was released on bond, the trial court nonetheless denied the motion, concluding that its amendment to the bond terms did not constitute an abuse of discretion. The trial court then ordered all cases scheduled for resolution the following week. After the court clerk announced the date, the transcript reflects that appellant” made the statement giving rise to the contempt finding. “The contempt occurred ‘in the immediate view and presence of the court.’ . . . That is, it was before the eye, view, or ‘face’ of” the trial court. The court noted “the fact that the trial court conducted the hearing over Zoom instead of physically in the courtroom does not preclude a finding that misconduct or insolent behavior by an attorney constitutes contempt when it nonetheless occurs over video in the immediate view and presence of the court.” It found that appellant failed to show “plain error affecting his substantial rights arising from the trial court’s determination that his conduct constituted criminal contempt, the timing of that conclusion and the punishment, and the due process afforded him to prepare and present a defense.” It also held that, viewing “the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court’s factual findings, there was sufficient evidence to support appellant’s criminal contempt.”
Sufficiency of the evidence of defendant’s identity as the perpetrator; Sentencing; Reasonableness challenge to a within-guidelines sentence; People v Posey; Sentencing as a habitual offender; People v Burkett; Cruel or unusual punishment; People v Stovall
Holding that the prosecution presented sufficient evidence to establish defendant’s identity as the perpetrator, and rejecting his challenges to his within-guidelines sentences, the court affirmed his convictions and sentences. He was convicted of armed robbery, first-degree home invasion, and unlawful imprisonment. He was sentenced as a fourth-offense habitual offender to concurrent terms of 40 to 80 years. The court first concluded that, viewing “the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, and drawing all inferences and credibility choices in favor of the jury verdict,” sufficient evidence was presented for a rational fact-finder to find that he committed the crimes. Victim-M’s “testimony established that early in the morning on [6/1/21], a man entered her apartment wearing black pants, black hooded shirt, black ski mask, and black Nike tennis shoes with a white ‘swoosh.’ The man threatened her with a gun, demanded the PIN to her debit card, tied her with a rope, put her in the closet, and threatened to harm her if she moved. After he left, she discovered that her purse and her debit card were missing. The record” further showed that on the same morning, a man tried to use M’s “debit card to withdraw money from ATMs at three” gas stations. The stations’ security footage showed that the man trying to use M’s “debit card was driving a red Ford Flex. Although police later stopped defendant while he was driving a rented white BMW, [he] admitted that he owned a red Ford Flex. In addition, when [he] was stopped in the white BMW, police discovered a black and white Nike shoe in the back seat consistent with the shoes worn by the man in the security camera footage. When defendant’s red Ford Flex was located, there was a shoe box in the car for a pair of black and white Nike shoes. Moreover, DNA testing of the rope that was used to tie [M] strongly indicated that defendant’s DNA was present on the rope.” Turning to his sentencing challenges, the court noted that due to his status as a “habitual felony offender, MCL 769.12(1)(a) required a minimum sentence of at least 25 years.” It concluded that his sentences were “proportionate to the seriousness of the circumstances and the characteristics of the offense and the offender, and” thus reasonable. It also rejected his cruel or unusual punishment claim.
Rights to present a defense & confront witnesses; Limits on cross-examination; Assaulting, resisting, or obstructing a police officer (MCL 750.81d(1)); People v. Moreno; Warrantless arrest based on an officer’s receipt of a bulletin providing reason to suspect the person committed a felony (MCL 764.15); Judicial misconduct; People v Stevens; Ineffective assistance of counsel; Failure to make a futile objection; Sentencing; Scoring of OVs 1, 9, 14, & 19; MCL 777.31(1)(d), 777.39(1)(c), 777.44(1)(a), & 777.49(b); Unlawfully driving away a motor vehicle (UDAA)
The court rejected defendant’s claims that he was deprived of his rights to present a defense and to confrontation, and also held that the officers had reasonable cause and lawfully arrested him. Further, he was not entitled to relief based on his claim of judicial misconduct, and defense counsel was not ineffective for failing to make a futile objection. Finally, the court found no error in the trial court’s scoring of OVs 1, 9, and 14 and that any error as to OV 19 did not affect the outcome. The appeal arose from two separate cases. In one, defendant was convicted of UDAA and assault and battery (the driving-away case). In the other, he was convicted of felonious assault; assaulting, resisting, or obstructing a police officer; and malicious destruction of property (“the felonious-assault convictions”). In the driving-away case the record showed “that defense counsel was not prevented from cross-examining the victim to support the defense that the victim had provided belated or incomplete surveillance footage. The only question that defense counsel was prevented from asking was why it had taken the victim nine days to turn over the videos after the victim had testified that it had taken him about a week to do so. On this point, the record further confirms that defense counsel failed to rebut the prosecutor’s objection based on relevancy.” As to defendant's second argument, the “trial court did not err in ruling that the victim’s statements to the police were inadmissible unless the motive to fabricate arose before [he] made the statements.” The court also found no error in the trial court’s scoring of 10 points each for OVs 1 and 9 in sentencing defendant for his felonious assault conviction, and that the record supported the scoring of 10 points for OV 14 in sentencing him in the driving-away case. As to the scoring of 15 points for OV 19 in that case, the “trial court’s failure to articulate with more specificity that defendant used force while attempting to flee from the police was not a clear or obvious error” and further, any error did not affect his substantial rights given “the trial court’s prior finding that [he] struck the police vehicle so forcefully that it put his passengers in danger[.]” Affirmed.
Change of domicile; Rains v Rains; Best interests; MCL 722.23; Threshold proof & temporal scope; Vodvarka v Grasmeyer; Attorney fees; MCR 3.206(D)(2)(a) & (b); Ability to bear the expense of the action; Ability to pay; Misconduct; Motion to compel discovery; Discovery scope; MCR 3.215(F)(2)
The court held that the trial court properly changed the child’s domicile and correctly denied plaintiff-mother’s attorney fee and discovery requests. Applying Rains, the court noted the mother did not contest proper-cause or change-of-circumstances. It rejected her claim that the trial court relied on “outdated” evidence as to best interests, noting Vodvarka’s timing limits pertain to the threshold showing and do not bar relevant history in the best-interests phase. It found that evidence of her “prior behavior was relevant, and necessary, to determine whether she continued to make poor decisions” about the child’s medical issues, among other things. The court reviewed the best-interest factor and deferred to the trial court’s credibility findings. It found factors (b), (d), (e), (f), (g), and (j) equal, and that (c) favored defendant-father. Rejecting the mother’s tally the factors argument, the court reiterated that trial courts may weigh factors differently and must decide the child’s best interests. Here, the trial court permissibly placed “great weight” on factor (c) and concluded the child should live primarily with father “so [he] could continue to receive appropriate and regular medical and dental care,” while retaining joint legal custody to ensure equal access to information. Any error in conducting the referee hearings by Zoom was harmless. The judge reviewed the record from the 30 referee hearings, took live testimony, made independent findings (disagreeing with the referee on multiple factors), and interviewed the child. As to attorney fees, the court affirmed denial under MCR 3.206(D)(2)(a) because the mother did not show the father was able to pay. He had only nominal substitute-teaching income and was otherwise unemployed. Compelling fees would in effect compel a nonparty to pay, as his spouse (not a party) paid household expenses and bills. Denial under MCR 3.206(D)(2)(b) was also affirmed. Fees must be “incurred because” of defiance or discovery abuse. While the father’s notice of urgent-care visits was imperfect, the referee and judge found no willful refusal, both parties contributed to the proceedings’ length, and the trial court had already sanctioned the father twice for discrete violations. The discovery rulings were also proper under MCR 3.215(F)(2). The court upheld the order partially denying plaintiff’s motion to compel discovery. The argument as to a subpoena to the court reporting firm was waived when counsel agreed the trial court could take judicial notice. Affirmed.
Motor-vehicle exception to governmental immunity; MCL 691.1405; Alex v Wildfong; Employee immunity; Gross negligence; MCL 691.1407(2)(c); Statutory definition of parking & loading exception; MCL 257.38; Bensinger v Happyland Shows, Inc; Comparative fault; MCL 500.3135(4)(a); Negligence per se; Inference of negligence; Zeni v Anderson; Lane change duty to ascertain safety; MCL 257.642(1)(a); Proximate cause; Klanseck v Anderson Sales & Serv, Inc
Holding that plaintiff was not illegally parked because Michigan’s statutory definition of parking excludes loading, and that any statutory violations would create only an inference of negligence for the factfinder to weigh under comparative fault, the court reversed as to defendant-SMART and remanded while affirming dismissal as to defendant-Pace. Plaintiff pulled into a marked bus stop to pick up her adult daughter and stopped with her foot on the brake as the daughter began to board. A SMART bus attempted to enter the stop and its rear clipped plaintiff’s car. The trial court granted summary disposition for defendants on the ground that plaintiff was negligent as a matter of law for stopping in the bus zone. On appeal, the court rejected the negligence per se ruling, explaining that a statutory violation “creates only a prima facie case from which the jury may draw an inference of negligence” and that “it is the jury’s duty to decide, as a matter of fact, whether the violation was a proximate cause of the accident.” Turning to the parking statute, the court held that the near century-old definition of parking contains “a critical exception for ‘loading or unloading,’” and because SMART conceded plaintiff “had her foot on the brake and was helping to load her passenger,” she was by definition not parked under MCL 257.38 and did not violate MCL 257.674(1). As to the Uniform Traffic Code’s bus stop provision, the court noted that it allows a temporary stop for expeditious loading “if the stopping does not interfere with any bus or taxicab waiting to enter or about to enter the zone,” and whether plaintiff interfered is a question of fact. The court emphasized that allocation of fault belongs to the jury under comparative fault and that reasonable minds could differ about who was more to blame. Finally, because counsel conceded that plaintiff did not allege gross negligence against the driver summary disposition for Pace was appropriate.
Whether due process was denied by limiting cross-examination in PPO-termination proceedings; HMM v JS; JLS v HRS; Whether the firearm possession prohibition was an abuse of discretion; MCL 600.2950a(26)
The court affirmed denial of respondent’s motion to modify/terminate a PPO, holding there was no due-process violation and that inclusion of a firearm prohibition was within the trial court’s discretion. Petitioner alleged months of unsolicited texts, emails, letters, and social-media messages, sometimes from new numbers after blocking old ones. At the hearing, the trial court swore in both parties, reviewed the submitted messages, and repeatedly invited respondent to present witnesses or evidence. Respondent admitted sending the communications but said she wanted petitioner to know about an affair with petitioner’s spouse. Unlike HMM, where the trial court halted cross-examination, respondent here neither requested to cross-examine nor identified foreclosed inquiries, and the trial court afforded her an opportunity to respond to the evidence. As such, there was no error that affected substantial rights. As to firearms, MCL 600.2950a(26) expressly authorizes prohibiting purchase or possession in a PPO. Given the volume and persistence of communications that caused petitioner fear, the trial court’s refusal to carve out a firearms exception for respondent’s employment or hunting was not outside the range of principled outcomes. The PPO prohibiting stalking and firearm possession remained in place.
Adjudication; Whether there was a showing of probable cause that allegations related to respondent fell within MCL 712A.2(b); Plain error review; Placement of the children in foster care; MCR 3.965(C)(2); Whether respondent was adequately informed of her rights before she entered her plea; MCR 3.971(B); In re Pederson; Harmless error
The court held that the trial court did not err in considering the entirety of respondent-mother’s conduct before the petition was filed and properly considered the factors “in MCR 3.965(C)(2) when placing the children in foster care.” While it plainly erred in not advising her in accordance with MCR 3.971(B)(3), (4), and (6), the court held that this error was harmless here. She first contended “that the trial court erred in removing the children from her care and custody at the adjudication hearing.” The court found that her argument that the trial court erred in removing the children “because the petition did not allege conduct that was recent regarding her action, is misplaced because the plain language of the statute does not require that the allegations are contained to a specific time period before the petition is filed. Instead, MCL 712A.2(b) requires a showing that the children are subject to a substantial risk of harm, or [are] in a home or environment that is unfit, because of respondent.” Evidence was presented to the trial court “that the children were attending school dirty and that, seven months before the petition, respondent was living in her car with” them. In addition, she admitted “she was living in a home that was unfit for the children to live.” Thus, the petition contained allegations that she “had and still was neglecting the children[.]” As to their placement into foster care, the court found no plain or obvious error in the trial court’s finding “that removal of the children was proper because of respondent’s ‘refusal to cooperate with services’ . . . .” Finally, although the trial court plainly erred in not advising her of all “her rights under MCR 3.971(B) before she entered her plea,” she did not show how this failure “at the adjudicative stage prejudiced her when the evidence at the termination hearing primarily concerned events that occurred after” her plea. The court noted “the trial court was presented with evidence throughout the proceedings that respondent had not maintained employment or obtained Social Security Insurance or disability during the pendency of the case, and she had tested positive for meth[] and amphetamine use shortly before the termination hearing. [It] terminated [her] parental rights because of those facts, among others.” Affirmed.