holding no governmental immunity for county
How later courts described this case
- holding no governmental immunity for county
- “Sovereign immunity is a specific term limited in its application to the State and to the departments, commissions, boards, institutions, and instrumentalities of the State.”
- the common law and statutes abide unless “changed, amended or repealed”
- opinion by O’Hara, J.
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Souris, J.
{concurring). I concur in Mr. Justice O’Hara’s decision, the result of which is to overrule Lewis v. Genesee County (1963), 370 Mich 110 .
Mr. Justice O’Hara writes currently to abrogate the doctrine of governmental immunity as applicable to villages, townships, and cities, at least for the interim until the effective date on July 1, 1965, of PA 1964, No 170. In my view, however, the doctrine of governmental immunity already has been abrogated as to municipal corporations — as defined in Bacon v. Kent-Ottawa Metropolitan Water Authority (1958), 354 Mich 159 , to include incorporated villages, fourth-class cities, special charter cities, home-rule cities, charter townships, and school districts — by this Court in our decisions in Williams v. City of Detroit (1961), 364 Mich 231 , and McDowell v. State Highway Commissioner (1961), 365 Mich 268 . *
While I join in the result reached by Justice O’Hara, I cannot subscribe his opinion because of the different views we take of the recent decisions of this Court herein cited.
*13 Adams, J., concurred with Souris, J.
Perhaps, however, Sayers v. School District No. 1 (1962), 366 Mich 217 , suggests that McDowell’s definition — by reference to Bacon —of municipal corporations is subject to contemporary judicial refinement, for in Sayers our majority held that a school district continued to enjoy its tort immunity notwithstanding its inclusion in the definition of municipal corporations announced but months before in McDowell . Unfortunately, the point was not considered in Sayers .