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Articles 211 - 240 of 275

Full-Text Articles in State and Local Government Law

Boundaries By Agreement And Acquiescence, Harold M. Street Feb 1941

Boundaries By Agreement And Acquiescence, Harold M. Street

Michigan Law Review

An accurate summation of the present-day status of the doctrines of boundaries by agreement and acquiescence is contained in the, following statement made by an eminent text writer: "There are, in this country, a great number of decisions bearing upon the effect of an agreement by adjoining owners as to the boundary line between their lands, or of their recognition of a certain line as the boundary without any express agreement in relation thereto. These decisions are frequently most unsatisfactory in their discussion of the principles involved, and, purporting, as they variously do, to be based on principles of agreement, …

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Instalment Payment Of Judgments, Frederick Woodbridge Jan 1941

Instalment Payment Of Judgments, Frederick Woodbridge

Michigan Law Review

This article is concerned primarily with a discussion of satisfaction of judgments by instalment payments where the judgment debtor is the typical American wage earner. It is based upon an analysis of the applicable statutes, the experience recorded in decided cases, interviews with numerous judges administering the statutes, and observations in certain of the courts where that method is used.

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Public Utilities - Municipal Corporations - Power Of Municipal Corporations To Regulate Public Utility Rates - Finality Of Such Regulation, John S. Pennell Nov 1940

Public Utilities - Municipal Corporations - Power Of Municipal Corporations To Regulate Public Utility Rates - Finality Of Such Regulation, John S. Pennell

Michigan Law Review

Since the decision in the case of Munn v. Illinois it has been settled that where property is devoted to a public use and is charged with a public interest, the state may prescribe reasonable rates for such public service. However, the question then arises as to the manner in which the state may prescribe these rates, through what agencies it may act, and the effect on the total picture of rate regulation within a state after there has been action by one of the proper agencies. The answers to these questions depend to a large extent upon the particular …

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Circuit Courts And The Nisi Prius System: The Making Of An Appellate Court, William Wirt Blume Jan 1940

Circuit Courts And The Nisi Prius System: The Making Of An Appellate Court, William Wirt Blume

Michigan Law Review

Judicial systems organized under the influence of the English tradition have exhibited a tendency to pass through four stages of development. (1) In the first stage the highest court (not taking into consideration legislative bodies) has final appellate jurisdiction and a superior original jurisdiction, civil and criminal. The court is composed of three or more judges who sit in bank for the trial of cases. The judges may sit at a central place or go on circuit throughout the territory. (2) In the second stage the highest court has both original and appellate jurisdiction but does not undertake to try …

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Constitutional Law - Municipal Corporations - Delegation Of Power - Consent Of Adjoining Property Owners - Reasonableness Of Restriction On The Use Of Property., Michigan Law Review Jan 1940

Constitutional Law - Municipal Corporations - Delegation Of Power - Consent Of Adjoining Property Owners - Reasonableness Of Restriction On The Use Of Property., Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

An ordinance of the city of Detroit regulated trailer camps in part by requiring the consent of sixty-five per cent of the adjoining property owners before a permit would issue, and by forbidding the parking of occupied trailers in any camp or camps for more than ninety accumulated days in any twelve-months' period. Plaintiff camp owner sought to restrain enforcement of the restrictions. Held, that as to both the consent and the ninety-day provisions, the ordinance is a valid and reasonable exercise of the police power. Cady v. City of Detroit, 289 Mich. 499, 286 N. W. 805 …

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Federal Courts - Substance And Procedure - Effect Of Erie Railroad V. Tompkins And Rule 8 (C) Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure Upon Burden Of Proof Of Contributory Negligence, John H. Uhl Jun 1939

Federal Courts - Substance And Procedure - Effect Of Erie Railroad V. Tompkins And Rule 8 (C) Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure Upon Burden Of Proof Of Contributory Negligence, John H. Uhl

Michigan Law Review

The case of Erie Railroad v. Tompkins has wrought a great change in the relationship between the state and federal courts. Prior to its decision, the federal courts under the rule of Swift v. Tyson did not have to apply the state non-statutory law. They could apply their own notions as to what the law was in matters of general law relating to substance. The Conformity Act compelled the federal courts to follow the practice, pleading, and forms and modes of proceeding in like causes in the courts of the state within which the federal district courts were held. In …

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Municipal Corporations - Official Misconduct As Ground For Removal Of Officer, Leonard D. Verdier Jr. Dec 1938

Municipal Corporations - Official Misconduct As Ground For Removal Of Officer, Leonard D. Verdier Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff, a member of the council of the city of Highland Park, Michigan, was removed by the council, as provided in the charter because of membership in the Black Legion. The Black Legion was a secret society founded on principles of racial, religious, and political discrimination. Its members took an oath to further these purposes by any means ordered by the officers of the organization, including violence and terrorism. Members were forbidden to expose the organization under penalty of death, and membership was supposedly permanent. The council found that membership in such a society rendered Wilson incompetent to perform the …

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Injunctions - Courts - Labor Law - Power Of A State Court To Enjoin National Labor Relations Board Officials, Amos J. Coffman Jun 1938

Injunctions - Courts - Labor Law - Power Of A State Court To Enjoin National Labor Relations Board Officials, Amos J. Coffman

Michigan Law Review

The Circuit Court of Washtenaw County, Michigan, recently issued an injunction enjoining the regional officials of the National Labor Relations Board from holding a scheduled hearing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The injunction was issued on the theory that if any unfair labor practices were being practiced by the Ann Arbor Press (a local job printer charged with violating the act) they did not affect interstate commerce and hence were not within the jurisdiction of the board. The injunction was at least temporarily effective. The hearing was not held in Ann Arbor. The regional office of the board in Detroit withdrew …

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Police Power - Due Process And State Regulation Of Food Production And Distribution, Charles C. Spangenberg Apr 1937

Police Power - Due Process And State Regulation Of Food Production And Distribution, Charles C. Spangenberg

Michigan Law Review

It is well settled that the state, in the exercise of its police power, may legislate to protect the health and promote the general welfare of its citizens. It is equally well settled that the objects of this solicitude have the right, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment and similar provisions in the state constitutions, to follow such industrial pursuits and make such contracts as they choose. Unfortunately, "these correlative rights, that of the citizen to exercise exclusive dominion over property and freely to contract about his affairs, and that of the state to regulate the use of property and the …

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Municipal Corporations-Standards Required In Licensing Ordinances Feb 1936

Municipal Corporations-Standards Required In Licensing Ordinances

Michigan Law Review

Defendant appealed from conviction for operating a used auto business without obtaining a license for such business under a city ordinance requiring same to be granted by the city commission if in its opinion applicant was a proper and suitable person, the place to be used was proper, having in mind the nature and character of the business and possibility of commission of crime, and the sanitary facilities thereon were proper. There was no specific legislative grant for passage of such ordinance. Defendant's application was rejected by the commission mainly because of lack of proper sanitary facilities. Held, standards …

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Criminal Law And Procedure -Automobiles - Constitutional Law-Criminal Liability Of Owner Of Automobile May 1935

Criminal Law And Procedure -Automobiles - Constitutional Law-Criminal Liability Of Owner Of Automobile

Michigan Law Review

The recent decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in the case of Commonwealth v. Ober has brought to the fore a serious administrative problem arising out of the enforcement of traffic regulations. The problem is particularly acute in the illegal parking cases. Here it is usually impossible for the policeman to do more than tag the car, take down its registration number, and institute proceedings against the registered owner. The difficulty also often occurs in many other situations such as driving through red lights or stop streets where the offense is observed by a patrolman standing near by …

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Corporations-Qualifications Of Officers-Effect On Existing By-Laws Of Change In Statute Jun 1934

Corporations-Qualifications Of Officers-Effect On Existing By-Laws Of Change In Statute

Michigan Law Review

Corporate by-laws adopted under and following Act No. 84, Michigan Public Acts of 1921, required that directors be chosen from stockholders, the positions to become vacant should the directors dispose of their stock. In 1931 the statute was changed, now reading that "directors . . . need not be shareholders unless the articles so provide." The by-laws were not altered. Qualified directors subsequently disposed of their stock and petitioned the chancery court under the statute for dissolution of the corporation and appointment of a receiver. Appealing from an order granting that petition, creditors and stockholders of the corporation contended that …

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Stare Decisis -The Retroactive Effect Of An Overruling Decision May 1934

Stare Decisis -The Retroactive Effect Of An Overruling Decision

Michigan Law Review

In 1923 the Supreme Court of Michigan ruled, in Kavanaugh v. Rabior, that property lying between the meander line and the waterline of the Great Lakes belonged to the State. The defendant, after this decision and upon the advice of the State Conservation Department, refused to pay rent to the plaintiff, the littoral proprietor. In 1930 the court, overruling the Kavanaugh case, held, in Hilt v. Weber, that such property belonged to the littoral proprietor. On the basis of this decision the plaintiff brought suit for use and occupation. Held, in the principal case, that the overruling …

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Process In Actions Against Non-Residents Doing Business Within A State, Maurice S. Culp May 1934

Process In Actions Against Non-Residents Doing Business Within A State, Maurice S. Culp

Michigan Law Review

Many state legislatures have undertaken to subject non-resident persons or unincorporated groups, or both, to the power of their local courts in relation to business transacted within their limits. No less than forty States have at one time or another enacted statutes providing for substituted service of process in actions arising out of such transactions. Most of these statutes apply to non-residents generally; but in eighteen States statutes, now or formerly in force, have provided in express terms for substituted service on non-resident partnerships or unincorporated associations. Both types alike provide that service may be made upon an actual agent …

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Constitutional Law - Due Process - Fishing Rights In The Public Waters Of Michigan Apr 1934

Constitutional Law - Due Process - Fishing Rights In The Public Waters Of Michigan

Michigan Law Review

The Ne-Bo-Shone Association, Inc., is an Ohio corporation which owns property on both banks of the Pine River for some distance. Following the decision of the Michigan Supreme Court in Collins V. Gerhardt that the stream is navigable and public, the complainant association was ordered to remove obstructions in the stream which hampered the free use of the stream by the public for fishing purposes. Thereupon complainant sought an in junction against certain public officials from taking action to remove these obstructions, claiming that it has the right to exclude the public from this portion of the Pine River, and …

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Torts - Imputed Negligence - Passenger In Private Carrier For Hire Dec 1933

Torts - Imputed Negligence - Passenger In Private Carrier For Hire

Michigan Law Review

The plaintiff hired Hilton, a private carrier, to drive her from Detroit to Ann Arbor. Hilton's car collided with a car driven by the defendant, both Hilton and the defendant being negligent. Held, that the plaintiff could recover, as the negligence of a private carrier for hire will not be imputed to a passenger riding in his conveyance. Three judges dissented; the four concurring judges refused to join Justice McDonald in his opinion expressly overruling the whole doctrine of Thorogood v. Bryan. Lachow v. Kimmich, 263 Mich. 1, 248 N. W. 531 (1933).

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Intoxicating Liquors -The New Michigan Amendment Jan 1933

Intoxicating Liquors -The New Michigan Amendment

Michigan Law Review

The people of the State of Michigan at the last general election ratified an amendment to section 11, Article 16 of the state constitution, the so-called prohibition section, to authorize the legislature to establish a liquor control commission and to impose an excise tax on liquor sales. In accordance with constitutional provisions this amendment went into effect on December eighth last. As the new amendment is drafted it leaves unsettled at least three important matters: (1) The present law in Michigan on the subject of intoxicating liquors; (2) The powers vested by it in the legislature and the liquor control …

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Banks And Banking - Preferred Claims Of Savings Depositors - Set-Offs Jun 1932

Banks And Banking - Preferred Claims Of Savings Depositors - Set-Offs

Michigan Law Review

Members of the Michigan bar who have had to deal with perplexing receivership problems, growing out of the many recent bank failures, should welcome the case of Reichert v. Farmers & Workingmens Savings Bank, 257 Mich. 500, decided April 4, 1932. It involves twelve important questions in banking law, certified from the Jackson circuit court. The answers of the supreme court to these questions should serve to settle the law for the benefit of receivers and their counsel for years to come.

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Presumptions - Constitutional Validity Of Statute Establishing Proof Of Reputation As Prima Facie Evidence Of Commission Of Crime Feb 1932

Presumptions - Constitutional Validity Of Statute Establishing Proof Of Reputation As Prima Facie Evidence Of Commission Of Crime

Michigan Law Review

The rise and sway of the gangster as a menace to American social and economic security has led, of late, to the employment of unique means of combating lawlessness. Faced by a tremendous increase in the difficulties lying in the path of those seeking the conviction of professional criminals for major crimes, the police and prosecutors often turn towards a means of fighting crime originally devised to make life uncomfortable for petty off enders. The enforcement of the pistol laws and the vagrancy statutes against millionaire gangsters, and repeated arrests on suspicion, have been resorted to as a means of …

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The Initiation Of Criminal Prosecutions By Indictment Or Information, Raymond Moley Feb 1931

The Initiation Of Criminal Prosecutions By Indictment Or Information, Raymond Moley

Michigan Law Review

One of the most pronounced changes in criminal procedure proposed by the new criminal code prepared under the direction of and approved by the American Law Institute is that which proposes "all offenses heretofore required to be prosecuted by indictment may be prosecuted either by indictment or information.'' This would radically affect the present criminal procedure of one-half of the states. In twenty-four states prosecution of practically all cases may now be by information. The reform thus officially proposed by the Institute has been widely recommended by commissions and committees interested in the reform of criminal procedure. In many of …

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Constitutional Law-Statutory Prohibition Of Possession Of Liquor May 1927

Constitutional Law-Statutory Prohibition Of Possession Of Liquor

Michigan Law Review

The Michigan court has recently declared the state statute prohibiting the mere possession of liquor to be constitutional. People v. Burt, 236 Mich. 62, 210 N. W. 97. The court does not enter into any: discussion as to the constitutionality, but relies on a previous decision, People v. Stambosva, 210 Mich. 436, 178 N. W. 226. This phase of the case is stressed, however, in a vigorous dissent by Chief Justice Bird, who denies that the Stambosva case is controlling. That case held the statutory provision in question to be valid, as not violative of due process, but …

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Sterilization Of Mental Defectives, Burke Shartel Nov 1925

Sterilization Of Mental Defectives, Burke Shartel

Michigan Law Review

In 1923 the legislature of Michigan passed an act "to authorize the sterilization of mentally defective persons". This act has recently been sustained in its main provisions by the Michigan supreme court in a case brought to test its constitutionality. Probably the United States Supreme Court will also have an opportunity to pass upon the validity of this law, but the Michigan decision, although not final on the question whether the sterilization of defectives is violative of the "due process clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment, is nevertheless very significant. It is the first instance so far as the writer can …

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Perpetuity Statutes, Edwin C. Goddard Dec 1923

Perpetuity Statutes, Edwin C. Goddard

Michigan Law Review

The common law of perpetuities is one of the most interesting examples of almost pure judicial legislation. De Donis, The Statutes of Uses and of Wills, but· gave wider scope to the development by the courts of rules of law to thwart the attempt of the great landowners to tie up their landed estates in their families in perpetuity. One body of rules to this end limited restraints upon alienation, another the creation of future interests vesting at too remote a period. Restriction of restraints upon alienation, and the rule against perpetuities, these two were developed for the same end, …

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Declaratory Judgments, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1923

Declaratory Judgments, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

The Connecticut legislature passed an act in 1921 authorizing courts to make binding declarations of rights. The act was attacked as unconstitutional on the same ground raised by the supreme court of Michigan against the Michigan Declaratory Judgment Act in the case of Anway v. Railway Co., 211 Mich. 592, 12 A. L. R. 26i namely, that declaring rights was not a judicial function. But the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut sustdined the act as in no way contravening the constitution.

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Challenges To The Array, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1923

Challenges To The Array, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

Trial by jury demands impartial jurors as the indispensable basis for public confidence. And the first requisite for obtaining impartiality is indifference on the part of those who select the jury. This was fully recognized at the common law, and ever since the days when jurors ceased to be witnesses and became triers of facts, it was a good objection to the entire panel that the sheriff was not indifferent between the parties in the selection and summoning of the jury. Prejudice on the part of individual jurors could be met by challenges to the polls, but when favor lurked …

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Joint Tenancy In Personal Property In Michigan, Ralph W. Aigler Jan 1922

Joint Tenancy In Personal Property In Michigan, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

In Lober v. Dorgan, 215 Mich. 62, decided July 19, 1921, the court again wrestled with the problem which has troubled the Michigan courts for many years, as to whether the law of the state recognizes any such thing as joint ownership in personal property with the common law incident of survivorship. The facts presented a controversy between the estates of husband and wife, the latter having survived the former. A real estate mortgage had been given to "George W. Bush and Sarah Bush, his wife, of Gobleville, Michigan, as joint tenants, with sole right to the survivor." After the …

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Declaratory Judgments, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1922

Declaratory Judgments, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

The subject of declaratory judgments has received a great deal of attention in the United States during the last few years, and the interest aroused has resulted in the enactment of statutes in a considerable number of states authorizing courts to declare the rights of parties in cases where relief of the conventional sort is inadequate, inconvenient or impossible. Such judgments may now be obtained in California, St I92I, ch. 463; Connecticut, P. A. 1921, ch. 258; Florida, Laws 1919, No. 75; Hawaii, Laws 1921, Act 162; Kansas, Laws 1921, cl. 168; New Jersey, Laws 1915, ch. 116, Sec. 7; …

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Trust Company In Michigan, Ralph Stone May 1921

Trust Company In Michigan, Ralph Stone

Michigan Law Review

A trust company in Michigan is a financial and business institution. It came into being, in this state -as elsewhere, in response to the need for an efficient and business-like organization to administer estates and trusts of all kinds as a relief to the individual executor, administrator and trustee. The ever -increasing complications of business and finance placed a burden upon the individual- the relative, the friend, or the business associate-which he found he could not carry without considerable sacrifice either to his own interests or to those of the trust. Those who create trusts either by will, or private …

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History Of Michigan Constitutional Provision Prohibiting A General Revision Of The Laws, W L. Jenks Apr 1921

History Of Michigan Constitutional Provision Prohibiting A General Revision Of The Laws, W L. Jenks

Michigan Law Review

Alone among the states of the Union, Michigan has, since i85o, pr6hibited any general revision of the laws and permits only a compilation of laws in force without alteration. As practically all the neighboring states, as well as New York, from which much of the early legislatiorf of Michigan was derived, have continued to revise their statutes from time to time, it may be interesting to see why Michigan alone has thought it desirable not only to stop the practice which it followed until I85o, but to prevent effectually its legislature from ever attempting it in the future.

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The Usefulness Of Intervention As A Remedy In Attachment, Edson R. Sunderland Jan 1921

The Usefulness Of Intervention As A Remedy In Attachment, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

While rules of procedure are not saved from the rude hand of the reformer by the "due process" guarantees of our constitutions, they do rest, nevertheless, under the very efficient protection of professional conservatism. Such rules are looked upon by the bench and bar as their own special concern, and innovations in this field must maintain the burden of proving their character before both the lawyer members of the legislature and the lawyers and judges who interpret them in the course of litigation. It would be natural, therefore, to expect that a proposed reform in procedure would have to meet …

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