In re AGD, Minor.
No. 345717
STATE OF MICHIGAN COURT OF APPEALS
March 14, 2019
FOR PUBLICATION 9:05 a.m. Genesee Circuit Court Family Division LC No. 18-017888-AY
If this opinion indicates that it is “FOR PUBLICATION,” it is subject to revision until final publication in the Michigan Appeals Reports.
Before: BORRELLO, P.J., and SWARTZLE and CAMERON, JJ.
This dispute requires us to interpret the stepparent adoption statute,
I. FACTUAL AND LEGAL BACKGROUND
Petitioner was unmarried when her child was born in 2015. Respondent is the child‘s legal father by way of an affidavit of parentage. According to respondent, he has not seen the child since 2015—when the child was eight months old. Respondent has a history of heroin abuse, and between June 2016 and June 2017, he was in residential treatment for his addiction. While respondent‘s work history is unclear from the record, he did have a job while in “sober living” and had not used drugs for the 19 months after his child was born.
In April 2018, respondent filed a complaint seeking to reestablish contact with his child. Respondent requested parenting time and a child-custody determination, and he also requested the entry of a child-support order. Two months later, petitioners filed their petition seeking consent from the court for the child‘s stepfather to adopt the child. Petitioners also sought termination of respondent‘s parental rights. In her supplemental petition and affidavit to terminate respondent‘s parental rights, petitioner mother represented that she had custody of her child according to a court order.1 At a September 2018 hearing, however, the trial court found that neither a child support order nor a custody order existed. Based on that evidence, the trial court held “that as a matter of law,” petitioners had “failed to meet the threshold procedural requirement of
The trial court also held that, even if petitioner mother had been entitled to file her petition under
On appeal, petitioners argue that the trial court erred by (1) interpreting
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
Questions of statutory interpretation are legal in nature, and thus they are reviewed de novo. In re Hill, 221 Mich App 683, 689; 562 NW2d 254 (1997). A trial court‘s factual findings during a proceeding to terminate parental rights under the Adoption Code are reviewed for clear error. Id. at 691-692. “A finding is clearly erroneous if, although there is evidence to support it, the reviewing court is left with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake was made.” Id. at 692.
III. ANALYSIS
Petitioners first argue that the trial court improperly interpreted and applied
A. VERTICAL STARE DECISIS
As a preliminary matter, the parties have not addressed an essential threshold question of whether this Court is free to announce a new construction of
If the parents of a child are divorced, or if the parents are unmarried but the father has acknowledged paternity or is a putative father who meets the conditions in section 39(2) of this
chapter, and if a parent having custody of the child according to a court order subsequently marries and that parent‘s spouse petitions to adopt the child, the court upon notice and hearing may issue an order terminating the rights of the other parent if both of the following occur: (a) The other parent, having the ability to support, or assist in supporting, the child, has failed or neglected to provide regular and substantial support for the child or if a support order has been entered, has failed to substantially comply with the order, for a period of 2 years or more before the filing of the petition. A child support order stating that support is $0.00 or that support is reserved shall be treated in the same manner as if no support order has been entered.
(b) The other parent, having the ability to visit, contact, or communicate with the child, has regularly and substantially failed or neglected to do so for a period of 2 years or more before the filing of the petition.
The doctrine of vertical stare decisis, as defined by Black‘s Law Dictionary (10th ed), is “[t]he doctrine that a court must strictly follow the decisions handed down by higher courts within the same jurisdiction.” As the trial court correctly noted, in In re AJR, our Supreme Court interpreted the language of former
“An elemental tenet of our jurisprudence, stare decisis, provides that a decision of the majority of justices of [the Supreme] Court is binding upon lower courts.” People v. Mitchell, 428 Mich 364, 369; 408 NW2d 798 (1987). “The obvious reason for this is the fundamental principle that only [the Supreme] Court has the authority to overrule one of its prior decisions.” Paige v. City of Sterling Hts, 476 Mich 495, 524; 720 NW2d 219 (2006). “Until [it] does so, all lower courts and tribunals are bound by that prior decision and must follow it even if they believe that it was wrongly decided or has become obsolete.” Id. (emphasis added.) Accord Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484; 109 S. Ct. 1917; 104 L. Ed. 2d 526 (1989) (“If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.“).
In past published decisions of this Court, there has been disagreement about whether this Court can, after the Legislature amends a statutory provision, disregard past decisions of our Supreme Court construing the provision as it was formerly drafted. However, our Supreme Court recently addressed that question in Associated Builders & Contractors v. City of Lansing, 499 Mich 177, 191-192 & n 32; 880 NW2d 765 (2016) (Associated Builders),
Although one can determine with relative ease whether a case was overruled by this Court, we acknowledge that it is not always so easy to determine whether a case has been “clearly overruled or superseded” by intervening changes in the positive law. At one end of the spectrum are situations in which the Legislature has entirely repealed or amended a statute to expressly repudiate a court decision. In such situations, lower courts have the power to make decisions without being bound by prior cases that were decided under the now-repudiated previous positive law. [Id. at 191 n 32.]
“The other end of the spectrum is harder to define,” but as a general rule, where the operative statutory language interpreted by the Supreme Court in the previous case remains the same after amendment, the intervening amendment of the statute does not clearly overrule or supersede the Supreme Court‘s prior interpretation. See id.
Under the framework delineated in Associated Builders, we conclude that this Court is not bound to follow In re AJR‘s construction of former
While we agree with the trial court‘s interpretation of the statute, we are not persuaded by its reliance on legislative history to support its holding. While it is true that several legislative bill analyses support the trial court‘s conclusion that the proposed amendment to 2016 PA 143 was intended to counter In re AJR‘s holding and change the meaning that courts would ascribe to
We are now tasked with determining whether the trial court properly interpreted
As our Supreme Court explained in Sun Valley Foods Co v. Ward, 460 Mich 230, 236-237; 596 NW2d 119 (1999):
The rules of statutory construction are well established. The foremost rule, and our primary task in construing a statute, is to discern and give effect to the intent of the Legislature. This task begins by examining the language of the statute itself. The words of a statute provide the most reliable evidence of its intent[.] If the language of the statute is unambiguous, the Legislature must have intended the meaning clearly expressed, and the statute must be enforced as written. No further judicial construction is required or permitted. Only where the statutory language is ambiguous may a court properly go beyond the words of the statute to ascertain legislative intent.
In interpreting the statute at issue, we consider both the plain meaning of the critical word or phrase as well as its placement and purpose in the statutory scheme. As far as possible, effect should be given to every phrase, clause, and word in the statute. [Quotation marks and citations omitted.]
“A provision of a statute is ambiguous only if it irreconcilably conflicts with another provision or is equally susceptible to more than a single meaning.” Bedford Pub Sch v. Bedford Ed Ass‘n MEA/NEA, 305 Mich App 558, 565; 853 NW2d 452 (2014).
“Statutes that relate to the same subject or that share a common purpose are in pari materia and must be read together as one law, even if they contain no reference to one another and were enacted on different dates.” Walters v. Leech, 279 Mich App 707, 709-710; 761 NW2d 143 (2008). “The object of the in pari materia rule is to give effect to the legislative intent expressed in harmonious statutes. If statutes lend themselves to a construction that avoids conflict, that construction should control.” Id. at 710 (citations omitted).
We disagree with petitioners’ suggestion that the pertinent language in
As this Court recently noted in In re Brody Trust (On Remand), ___ Mich App ___, ___; ___ NW2d ___ (2018) (Docket No. 330871), lv pending; slip op at 8-9:
“Because the Legislature is presumed to know the rules of grammar, statutory language must be read within its grammatical context unless something else was clearly intended.” Niles Twp v. Berrien Co Bd of Comm‘rs, 261 Mich App 308, 315; 683 NW2d 148 (2004). “Proper syntax provides that
commas usually set off words, phrases, and other sentence elements that are parenthetical or independent.” Dale v. Beta-C, Inc, 227 Mich App 57, 68-69; 574 NW2d 697 (1997). Moreover, “[i]t is a general rule of grammar and of statutory construction that a modifying word or clause is confined solely to the last antecedent, unless a contrary intention appears.” Sun Valley Foods Co v. Ward, 460 Mich 230, 237; 596 NW2d 119 (1999). The “last antecedent” of a given term or phrase is “the last word, phrase, or clause that can be made an antecedent without impairing the meaning of the sentence[.]” People v. English, 317 Mich App 607, 614; 897 NW2d 184 (2016) (opinion of WILDER, P.J.), quoting 2A Singer & Singer, Sutherland Statutory Construction (7th ed), § 47:33, pp 494-497.
In this circumstance, the last antecedent rule does not support petitioners’ argument that the statute is ambiguous. The last word, phrase, or clause that can be made an antecedent of the modifying phrase “according to a court order“—without impairing the meaning of the sentence—is the phrase, “custody of the child.” Put differently, the phrase “according to a court order” modifies the immediately preceding phrase “custody of the child.” Its meaning is clarified by reading the whole as one unit—i.e., “custody of the child according to a court order.” Thus, we do not find the last antecedent rule particularly helpful, and it certainly does not render the statute ambiguous.
We similarly disagree that other rules of grammar render the statute ambiguous. The provision at issue can be broken down as follows. Before the colon that introduces the two subsections of the provision at issue, i.e.,
A basic principle of grade-school grammar is that an independent clause is one that can stand alone as a complete sentence. In other words, an independent clause is a complete thought that stands by itself as a simple sentence or is part of a complex sentence in which there is at least one dependent clause. By contrast, dependent clauses are clauses in a complex sentence that cannot stand alone as complete sentences. Thus, contrary to petitioners’ assertion, a clause is not independent just because it is separated by commas.
In this case, the second clause at issue here—“or if the parents are unmarried but the father has acknowledged paternity or
Accordingly, petitioners’ proposed construction of
To arrive at petitioners’ contrary interpretation, one is forced to ignore the plain meaning that is expressed by the Legislature‘s decision to use the disjunctive use of “or” and the conjunctive use of “and” at different times, particularly in concert with the word “if.” Put simply, petitioners’ construction of the sentence does not afford distinct meanings to the phrases “and if” and “or if.” “As this Court has previously recognized, the words ‘and’ and ‘or’ are not interchangeable and their strict meaning should be followed when their accurate reading does not render the sense dubious and there is no clear legislative intent to have the words or clauses read in the conjunctive.” Coalition Protecting Auto No-Fault v. Mich Catastrophic Claims Ass‘n (On Remand), 317 Mich App 1, 14; 894 NW2d 758 (2016) (citation omitted). In this sentence, affording those words their respective conjunctive and disjunctive meanings does not render the provision unintelligible, nor is there any clear legislative intent that would require a different interpretation. For those reasons, we reject petitioners’ attempt to inject ambiguity into the statute.
Petitioners also argue that the trial court‘s construction of the statute would render part of
Petitioners’ view of
Viewed through that statutory lens, we disagree with the meaning the petitioners suggest should be afforded to the phrase “putative father” in
More importantly, petitioners take the phrase “putative father” out of context. The full relevant phrasing is “putative father who meets the conditions in section 39(2) of this chapter,” i.e.,
As this Court recognized in In re BKD, 246 Mich App 212, 215; 631 NW2d 353 (2001), in the context of adoption proceedings,
This separation of putative fathers into two distinct categories, in compliance with federal constitutional law, is precisely what
With this legal backdrop in mind, petitioners’ argument is logically unsound. Petitioners contend that under the trial court‘s construction of
Lastly, petitioners argue the trial court erred in its application of
There is no dispute that petitioner mother, although she had custody of the child, did not have custody according to a court order when petitioners filed their petition under
Affirmed.
/s/ Thomas C. Cameron
/s/ Stephen L. Borrello
/s/ Brock A. Swartzle
Notes
If the putative father has established a custodial relationship with the child or has provided substantial and regular support or care in accordance with the putative father‘s ability to provide support or care for the mother during pregnancy or for either mother or child after the child‘s birth during the 90 days before notice of the hearing was served upon him, the rights of the putative father shall not be terminated except by proceedings in accordance with [MCL 710.51(6) ] or [MCL 712A.2 ].