Joanne & Juanita's Story

The Human Face Project shares the stories of the people who came to the Court seeking justice -- and were denied. The decisions of the Taylor Court in these cases not only left the people before the Court without a remedy, but they have let cities, employers, business owners and polluters know that they can get away with a lower standard of care for their citizens, employees and customers and those who love Michigan's natural beauty. These stories could have ended differently if an independent, fair minded justice was in Taylor's seat on the Court.

While Taylor Sleeps, Justice Weeps: Taylor Sleeps Through Heartbreaking Facts of the Deaths of Six Young Children Due to Preventable Fire in Government Housing

Mothers Joanne and Juanita Tell Their Story Here.

Michigan Supreme Court Denies Recovery, And A Day In Court, For Mothers Who Lost Six Young Children Who Perished In Preventable Fire In Government Housing

In the summer of 1999, Joanne Campbell signed a lease with the City of Detroit Housing Commission (DHC) for an apartment for herself and her three young children, Blake, Joyce and Christopher.

Under the lease, DHC agreed to repair and maintain the apartment and common areas, and to keep electrical services applied by DHC in good, safe working condition. The lease prohibited Joanne from making any alterations or repairs herself, but required her notify DHC promptly of known unsafe conditions and any need for repairs to the apartment and common areas.

For more than a year, Joanne repeatedly complained about numerous electrical problems in the apartment. She saw sparks coming from lights in the basement and in the kitchen. A wall thermostat was shooting flames and making popping sounds. An outlet in a first-floor bedroom constantly sparked. The outlet smelled like burnt paper whenever it was in use.

Despite Joanne’s complaints, no one from DHC ever did anything about the bedroom outlet.

On November 30, 2000, she again told a DHC inspector who came to the apartment that the socket was sparking and smelled like it was burning. Still, the inspector wrote a report that passed the apartment in every respect. Because Joanne had to be at the bank the next morning when it opened, her sister Juanita Fish and Juanita’s four young children, Naomi, Johnny, Jermaine, and Jonathon, spent the night at the apartment, sleeping in an upstairs bedroom so that Juanita could watch Joanne’s children the next day.

Early on the morning of December 1, 2000, Joanne left for the bank while Juanita and the seven children remained asleep. As the result of defective electrical wiring in the bedroom wall and in the first-floor bedroom socket that Joanne had repeatedly complained about, an electrical fire started inside the wall and smoldered until flames spread to the bed and a flash-over occurred.

Fire spread rapidly through the apartment, killing Joanne’s three children, Blake, Joyce and Christopher, and three of Juanita’s children, Naomi, Johnny and Jermaine.

All six dead children were under the age of eight. Juanita and her surviving child, Jonathon, were seriously injured.

Joanne and Juanita sued the Detroit Housing Commission to hold the government agency accountable, and to try to prevent such a horrific tragedy from happening to other families and children. DHC claimed it was immune from the suit because it was a government agency protected from suit by common law and statute. The trial judge denied DHC’s motion.

The Michigan Court of Appeals agreed that the case should go to trial. The Court of Appeals found that the space inside the wall where the fire started was “totally within the control of the [DHC] and not subject to intervention by [Joanne Campbell] as a matter of law.”

The Michigan Supreme Court granted DHC’s application to consider if Joanne and Juanita were entitled to have their day in court and make a claim against the government for the fire that started inside the wall. After twice hearing oral argument, the Supreme Court reversed the trial court and the Court of Appeals, and held that Joanne and Juanita were not entitled to any trial whatsoever for the loss of their six dead children.

“Justice” Clifford Taylor signed a one-paragraph opinion, saying that despite the lease language that made DHC responsible for electrical wiring inside the walls, because the fire started in the walls of Joanne’s own apartment, DHC, as a governmental agency, could not be liable.

As the three dissenting justices remarked, “the walls of plaintiff’s apartment did not spontaneously combust,” the “source of the fire was the electrical wiring” that DHC failed to fix, despite its express contractual duty under the lease to do so.

Joanne Campbell had no control over the electrical wiring. Justice Cavanagh called the Taylor-led majority’s dismissal of the case, based on its interpretation of the law regarding control over walls, “truly egregious,” adding: [T]he majority turns a blind eye and proclaims instead that the fire began “within the walls.” That red herring of a conclusion blatantly ignores the true origin of the fire as shown by expert testimony, through which it was established that the fire originated inside the electrical outlet as the result of electrical “arcing,” which, in turn, “ignite[ed] fuels in the wall space including, but not limited to, any insulation materials that were in there that may have had a combustible component . . .”

The Taylor-led majority turns its back on poor and working families seeking decent housing. Joanne’s and Juanita’s now-destroyed families would have been better off if Joanne had leased her apartment from a slumlord instead of a government housing agency. Under the Taylor-led majority’s ruling, our government, when acting as a landlord, has no responsibility to protect its tenants and their children from death or injury that only the landlord can prevent.

Please read the letter sent to the Justice Caucus by Juanita Fish.