Judges for Third Judicial Circuit v. Wayne County

• Decision Date: 30 September 1971
• Docket Number: No. 34,34
• Citation: 386 Mich. 1,190 N.W.2d 228
• Parties: , 59 A.L.R.3d 548, 66 Lab.Cas. P 52,667 The JUDGES FOR the THIRD JUDICIAL CIRCUIT of the State of Michigan, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. COUNTY OF WAYNE et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

Page 228

190 N.W.2d 228

386 Mich. 1, 59 A.L.R.3d 548, 66

Lab.Cas. P 52,667

The JUDGES FOR the THIRD JUDICIAL CIRCUIT of the State of Michigan, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. COUNTY OF WAYNE et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 34.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Sept. 30, 1971.

Harry M. Nayer, Detroit, for plaintiffs-appellees.

David R. Kaplan, Asst. Pros. Atty., for defendants-appellants.

Before the Entire Bench.

BRENNAN, Justice.

This action was commenced on April 2, 1968, by the filing of plaintiffs' complaint in the circuit court for the County of Wayne.

The complaint alleged that the plaintiffs were duly elected and qualified circuit judges for Wayne County, the Third Judicial Circuit of Michigan.

The complaint alleges that plaintiffs have inherent power to 'provide a sufficient number of court employees with adequate and reasonable compensation in order to permit and expedite the efficient administration of justice.'

Specifically, the complaint stated the need for additional probation officers, research clerks and a judicial assistant. It further alleged that plaintiffs had the inherent authority to employ counsel, on an Ad hoc basis to prosecute the instant litigation and charge the defendant County with the reasonable compensation and expenses of such counsel.

A circuit judge from adjoining Oakland County was assigned to hear the cause. After extended hearings, he entered a judgment on October 15, 1968.

The judgment provided that plaintiffs were entitled immediately to appoint 11 additional probation officers, at a minimum salary of $8,736.00 per annum; a judicial assistant at a minimum salary of $25,000 per annum; 8 additional law clerks at a minimum salary of $9,000.00 per annum. The judgment further provided that the defendants,

'take all requisite action to appropriate, provide or make available the funds required to permit such immediate appointment and compensation of such personnel.'

The judgment also concluded that plaintiffs had the right to employ counsel to prosecute the instant litigation, and required the County to audit and pay counsel for services rendered and expenses incurred in connection therewith.

Defendants appealed. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 15 Mich.App. 713, 167 N.W.2d 337.

We granted leave, and on submission here affirmed in part and reversed in part, remanding the cause to circuit for further proceedings. 383 Mich. 10, 172 N.W.2d 436.

Plaintiffs applied for rehearing, which was granted.

These are difficult times.

The inflation of prices for goods and services which began in the 1940's has so accelerated in recent years that the national currency itself has ceased to be an accurate measure of the value of things. We must talk in terms of 1958 dollars, 1963 dollars, 1967 dollars.

Pressures for tax relief have mounted to crisis proportions. Competition for available tax dollars among the various agencies of government has made the function Public employees, long left standing on the outside looking into the nations' dizzying wage-price escalation, have organized and demanded their fair share of the common treasury.

of apportionment between them ever more delicate, ever more sensitive.

In spite of skyrocketing budgets and increasing deficits in national, state and local governments, the courts have not kept pace.

An epidemic of crime, and a plague of civil litigation, no less than an increasing public demand for judicial resolution of problems not heretofore regarded as justiciable, have united to create a mountainous logjam of judicial business.

At the same time, judicial budgets have been largely static, barely keeping abreast of inflation and scarcely adequate to provide for the mounting demands upon court facilities.

It has been necessary for the Chief Justice of the United States almost literally to take to the stump in an effort to persuade the American people of the need for higher priority in the national purse for the administration of justice.

Several of our sister states, notably Indiana, Missouri and Pennsylvania have found it necessary to take or threaten drastic self help for the courts in those jurisdictions.

In Indiana, Noble County Council v. State ex rel. Fifer, 234 Ind. 172, 125 N.E.2d 709, the Supreme Court declared the right of the judicial branch of government to mandamus the appropriation of county funds for the payment of the salary of a probation officer for one of its circuit courts.

Indiana's Supreme Court withheld issuance of the writ, assuming voluntary compliance with its decision, thus avoiding the final confrontation between judicial and legislative branches of government. Still the threat was unmistakable, and the implication clear.

Missouri approached the problem in State ex rel. Weinstein v. St. Louis County, 451 S.W.2d 99. Its Supreme Court held that the juvenile court had the right to determine the number of needed employees, hire them and fix their compensation.

The action was one of Qua warranto. The judgment 'ousted' the county from interference with the judicial prerogative, except to the extent that the county could appeal the juvenile court's budget to the Supreme Court.

That eventuality actually came to pass in Pennsylvania. Commonwealth ex rel. Carroll v. Tate, 442 Pa. 45, 274 A.2d 193, details the efforts of the judges of the Common Pleas court of Philadelphia to obtain the funds they regarded as reasonably necessary for the efficient and effective operation of the Philadelphia courts.

From the original and supplemental budget requests totalling over 21 million dollars, the county approved only 16.4 million. The judges brought an action for mandamus, on the trial of which $2.4 million was ordered appropriated. On appeal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the award, reducing the amount to $1.36 million to reflect the proportion of the budget year which had elapsed.

Our own previous opinion in this cause, Judges v. County of Wayne, 383 Mich. 10, 172 N.W.2d 436, was there cited along with numerous authorities from other jurisdictions for this proposition:

'(1) Expressed in other words, the Judiciary Must possess the inherent power to determine and compel payment of those sums of money which are reasonable and necessary to carry out its mandated responsibilities, and its powers and duties to administer Justice, if it is to be in reality a co-equal, independent Branch of our Government. This principle has long been recognized, not only in this Commonwealth but also throughout our Nation.' Commonwealth ex rel. Carroll v. Tate, Supra, 442 Pa. p. 52, 274 A.2d p. 197.

In general, our prior opinion supported these broad principles. But there is a wide gulf between the Pennsylvania, Missouri and Indiana approach and the approach which this Court approved in Wayne Judges.

We have never doubted the inherent power of a constitutional court to sustain its existence.

The Constitution established that the judicial power of the State is vested exclusively in one Court of Justice. ¹ The legislature may not abolish that court. Neither is it permissible for the legislature to render the court inoperative by refusing financial support. ²

Our problem, in Michigan stems in part from the existing hodge-podge of statutes by means of which the legislature over the years has discharged its obligation to provide the courts with sufficient personnel to carry on the administration of justice.

A look at the condition of things in Wayne County will demonstrate the lack of cohesive policy with respect to the operation of the circuit courts.

COURT CLERKS

Article VI, section 14, of the Constitution of 1963, provides that the county clerk shall be the clerk of the circuit court. The county clerk is an elected county official. He receives a salary as determined by the Board of supervisors. M.S.A. 5.911, M.C.L.A. § 45.401. He is entitled to appoint deputies, who are empowered to do and perform all the duties which devolve upon his office. M.S.A. 5.1131, M.C.L.A. § 45.41.

By statute, that constitutional mandate is implemented. M.S.A. 27A.571, M.C.L.A. § 600.571. The county clerk is required to attend all sessions of the circuit court, an obvious physical impossibility in Wayne County.

M.S.A. 27A.579, M.C.L.A. 600.579 provides that the county clerk in counties over 1,000,000 population shall appoint from the civil service list, a chief deputy circuit court clerk, and one deputy circuit court clerk for each acting circuit judge in the county. The salary of the deputy circuit court clerks is required to be at least $10,750.00. The county civil service commission, with approval of the board of supervisors, is permitted to increase the salaries of deputy circuit court clerks. The salaries of deputy court clerks are to be paid by the county. The statute is silent on the compensation of the chief deputy.

In Bartkowiak v. Board of Sup'rs of Wayne County, 341 Mich. 333, 67 N.W.2d 96, this Court held that the circuit court had no authority in the light of then existing legislation--the county civil service act, M.S.A. 5.1191(1) et seq., M.C.L.A. § 38.401 et seq., and the court clerks salary act, C.L.S.1952, § 692.601 et seq.--to fix the compensation of deputy circuit court clerks.

Previous to the Bartkowiak case, this Court had ruled in Sabbe v. Wayne County, 322 Mich. 501, 33 N.W.2d 921, that deputy court clerks were purely ministerial and not judicial officers, therefore included in the county civil service. We further held that their classification under Civil Service as county employees was no impingement upon the separation of powers, citing Duncan v. Wayne County, 316 Mich. 513, 25 N.W.2d 605.

Justice Dethmers, writing for the Court in Sabbe, held,

'Plaintiff relies upon the following statement concerning a county clerk appearing in this court's opinion in Smith v. Kent Circuit Judge, 139 Mich. 463, 102 N.W. 971:

"He is therefore subject to all the legitimate orders of the court of which he is clerk.'

'The fact that the...