Enforcement of a scheduling order & rejection of a nonconforming response brief; Cleveland v Hath; Grant of an unopposed summary disposition motion; Ordering dismissal as a sanction; Tolas Oil & Gas Exploration Co v Bach Servs & Mfg, LLC; Summary disposition under MCR 2.116(C)(10)

The court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in enforcing its scheduling order and rejecting plaintiff’s nonconforming response brief. But it held that the trial court’s grant of defendant’s summary disposition motion “lacked an adequate basis—either as a proper merits resolution of defendant’s unopposed motion under MCR 2.116(C)(10), or as a duly justified sanction for plaintiff’s failure to file a conforming response to that motion.” Thus, the court vacated the summary disposition award and remanded. The case concerned a premises liability claim. Defendant filed a renewed motion for summary disposition under MCR 2.116(C)(10). Plaintiff tried to file a response, but the trial court rejected it for failing to comply with the scheduling order’s requirements. The trial court then granted defendant’s motion and dismissed the complaint. As in its recent decision in Cleveland, the court did not “see an abuse of discretion in the trial court’s decision to enforce its own scheduling order and reject plaintiff’s response. There” was no dispute that plaintiff’s response to defendant’s motion did not conform with the requirements of the trial “court’s order, and the order made clear such noncompliance would result in the rejection of that response.” The court “has previously found no abuse of discretion in a court enforcing requirements and consequences of that sort, and” it did not see any “reason to conclude otherwise here.” But while the trial court did not err in treating the motion as unopposed, that did not mean its decision to grant it “and dismiss the case was necessarily proper. [Its] dismissal order appears to identify two potentially distinct bases for that decision: (1) that [it] was ‘enter[ing] judgment against Plaintiff for failing to follow’ its scheduling order, and (2) that summary disposition was being granted ‘under MCR 2.116(C)(10).’” The court found “neither basis adequate to support” the dismissal order. As to the former, the order reflected “none of the requisite analysis of whether dismissal would be appropriate as a sanction for plaintiff’s failure to timely file a conforming response to defendant’s motion.” As to the latter, the court saw no “grounds to affirm the ruling under MCR 2.116(C)(10), as the trial court failed to duly consider whether defendant’s motion, when taken as unopposed, was adequate to” establish that it was entitled to such relief.