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Margaret's Case
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.
Court rules against crime victims
Court overrules cases stating that the time for filing litigation runs when the identity of the wrongdoer is discovered
Dr. Margaret Eby was raped and murdered in 1986 while residing in the gatehouse on the grounds of the Mott Estate in Flint. Because there was no evidence of forced entry, the police assumed that the killer was an acquaintance of Dr. Eby.
The crime remained unsolved until 2002, when a similar crime occurred. A flight attendant was attacked, raped and knifed, in a hotel room near the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
Dr. Eby's son requested that his mother's murder investigation be reopened. The police compared DNA evidence and fingerprints left at both crime scenes.
The DNA evidence conclusively identified Jeffrey Gorton as the killer of both victims. Jeffrey Gorton was arrested and, in 2003, was sentenced to life in prison.
Jeffrey Gorton had access to Dr. Eby's gatehouse in 1986 home as an employee of his family's lawn sprinkler business. Employees of the Mott Family Office, which administered the Mott Estate, gave Jeffrey Gorton access to the sprinkler system controls located in the basement of Dr. Eby's gatehouse residence.
Within months of the identification of Jeffrey Gorton as the perpetrator, Dr. Eby's daughter and personal representative of her mother's estate filed suit against Jeffrey Gorton, his employer, Ruth Mott, the Mott Family Office and its employees, to recover civil redress for the rape and murder of her mother.
The suit was timely under the Michigan law which had existed since 1963. That law stated that the statute of limitations does not begin to run (the time for filing a lawsuit does not start) until all of the elements of an action for personal injury, including the element of damage, are present. The “damage” was Jeffrey Gorton's rape and murder of Dr. Eby. The fact that Jeffrey Gorton perpetrated these crimes was not known until 2003. Therefore, the statute of limitations began to run at that time.
However, the Supreme Court overturned its settled law on statute of limitations in personal injury cases, leaving Dr. Eby's daughter without any civil claim for her mother's death. The ruling, by a 4-3 margin with Justice Taylor casting the deciding vote, overruled settled Michigan law. The new Michigan law is that the Court has no flexibility in determining whether crime victims or their families knew or should have known all of the elements necessary to prove liability.
With this ruling, the Taylor Court sided against crime victims and rewarded wrongdoers who are able to escape detection for a number of years are rewarded with immunity from civil prosecution, no matter how undeniable their guilt.
