# People v. McMurchy

> Michigan Supreme Court · January 17, 1930 · 249 Mich. 147

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3493725

## Case

- **Full name:** People v. McMurchy.
- **Court:** Michigan Supreme Court
- **Decided:** January 17, 1930
- **Citations:** 249 Mich. 147; 228 N.W. 723; 1930 Mich. LEXIS 678
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Dead
- **Judges:** Dead, Butzel, Potter, Sharpe, North, Fead, Wiest, Clark, McDonald
- **Cited by:** 65 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3493725

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that when one part of a statute is held unconstitutional, the remainder of the statute remains valid unless all parts of the statute are so interconnected in meaning that the Legislature would likely not have passed the one part without the other

## Opinion text

Dead, J.
(concurring.) In view of the purport now given the act, I concur in reversal.
I concur on the further ground that the constitutionality of the act was settled in
People
v.
Maki,
245 Mich. 455 , although the court was there equally divided, as fully as though it had been so held by a majority of the ^justices, and that' the case is authority unless and until overruled by a majority of the court.
The validity of an act of the legislature should not be subject to the general rule that decision by an equally divided court affirms the judgment but constitutes no precedent. Such a decision should be held to be a precedent in support of the constitutionality of an act, whether the question was presented to this court upon a judgment in favor of or against its validity.
I have found no authority for this proposition nor against it. I think it is sound, because of its harmony with the rule that all presumptions are to be resolved in favor of constitutionality, and a law will not be declared invalid unless it is clearly so, because it obviates the deplorable situation of an act, especially a criminal law, being enforceable in some circuits and of no effect in others, but principally because it accords respect to the acts of the other two co-ordinate branches of the government.
Butzel, Potter, Sharpe, and North, JJ., concurred with Fead, J,

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3493725. Public record. Not legal advice.