Chantell & LaQuata'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.

Cliff Taylor’s Court rewrites statute and decides a city not required to maintain safe highways

14-year-old Girl Dies Due to A City Government’s Reckless Failure to Remove Snow Properly From Streets. Taylor Denies Her Family Any Remedy and Their Day In Court.

Fourteen-year-old Lanecia Wright and her two sisters, 13-year-old LaQuata and seven-year-old Chantell Buckner, were walking the short three blocks west on the north side of Saginaw Street in Lansing to the McDonald’s at the Larch Street/Saginaw intersection just after 6:00 p.m. They tried to stay on the sidewalk, but a large ice and snow pile plowed off the roadbed onto the sidewalk by the city forced them to walk in the street next to the curb.

Luther Wampler’s vehicle struck Chantell and LaQuata, causing massive injuries. Chantell later died.

Chantell’s family sought to hold Lansing accountable under an exception to Michigan’s “governmental immunity” law that requires cities to maintain sidewalks “in reasonable repair so that [they are] reasonably safe and convenient for public travel.” “Govenrmental immunity” is an unfair doctrine descended from the laws which once protected Kings and other royalty from suits which would hold them accountable for wrongful acts committed their against their subjects. Today, Michigan statutes bar you from bringing a suit seeking remedies against government for injuries its employees cause against you or your family. There are very few exceptions to this immunity. One of these exceptions supposedly allows you to seek a remedy for injuries suffered due to the government’s failure to keep streets and highways safe.

The trial court held that Chantell’s family could recover because Lansing had plowed the snow and ice onto the sidewalk creating an “unnatural accumulation.”

In the Court of Appeals, three more judges agreed that the City Governent had a duty to maintain the sidewalk and that a local jury, not judges, should decide whether plowing snow onto the sidewalk violated the statutory requirement to keep the sidewalk reasonably safe and convenient for public travel.

But Cliff Taylor’s majority overruled the lower courts. The Taylor-led majority essentially rewrote the statute. The Legislature required governments to keep highways in “reasonable repair.”

But Taylor’s Court invented a new rule, one which only required governments to meet a lower standard – “Correct structural defects.”

There was no structural defect in the Lansing sidewalk, so there was no claim. The Court ruled that -- in direct conflict with the statute -- the city had no obligation to do anything else to keep its residents safe and fit for travel.

Taylor’s Court majority did this in a one-page, ten-sentence order. Dissenting Justice Elizabeth Weaver could not contain her frustration calling the short order the “latest example of judicial activism by unrestrained statutory interpretation.” And Lanecia Wright’s family were left without a remedy or their day in court.