By Beth LeBlanc
eleblanc@detroitnews.com
The Michigan Supreme Court said it will hit pause on a case brought by the father of a teen killed in the Oxford High School shooting because it is considering a similar procedural question in a separate, unrelated case brought against Michigan State University.
In a brief order released Monday, the high court ordered that the case brought by Steve St. Juliana against the Michigan State Police and the state of Michigan be held in abeyance, or paused, while the court considers similar arguments about the timing of the filing raised by St. Juliana.
The families whose children were injured and killed in the Oxford High School shooting who have brought civil cases related to the shooting have so far been unsuccessful in the state’s highest court.
St. Juliana, whose 14-year-old daughter Hana St. Juliana was shot and killed in the Nov. 30, 2021, attack, filed a notice of intent to sue the Michigan State Police and the state of Michigan in September 2022, arguing that state police had not done enough to respond to Oxford-related threats reported to the state’s OK2SAY program.
But the state in court argued that St. Juliana’s lawsuit should be disregarded because he didn’t provide notice to the state of his intent to sue Michigan State Police within six months of the actionable event, the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting of his daughter.
St. Juliana has argued he couldn’t have filed a notice of intent sooner because he wasn’t named the personal representative of his daughter’s estate until Feb. 25, 2022. Under a statutory exemption for a wrongful death, St. Juliana argued, he should have had a two-year window to file notice.
The argument at issue — how soon after an event an individual has to provide notice to the state of a lawsuit — is largely procedural, but it is a technicality that has been snarling big lawsuits brought against the state for the past several years. Among the suits that have challenged the six-month notice window are ones involving the Flint water crisis and persistent problems at the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency.
“It’s a procedural issue that applies across the body of case law, not just to Oxford cases, that the Supreme Court needs to decide,” said Kevin Carlson, an attorney for St. Juliana. “… The state is all too willing to rely on those procedural hurdles to keep people from having their day in court, which is a shame.”
In St. Juliana’s case, the Michigan Court of Claims ruled with the state, arguing the law clearly requires a notice of intent be filed within six months of the actionable issue. A Court of Appeals panel of judges in July reversed the lower court ruling. The appellate panel found that, on a wrongful death claim, there are specific provisions in the law extending the timeframe for filing in order to safeguard the rights of those filing on behalf of the deceased.
“We conclude that this provision not only extends the filing timeframe but also tolls the statutory notice period,” the panel wrote in July.
In August, the state police appealed the Court of Appeals ruling to the Michigan Supreme Court. The high court on Monday noted it had another case involving Michigan State University that revolved around a similar question and could help resolve some of the questions in the St. Juliana case.
The Michigan State University case, which is pending before the high court, was brought as a breach of contract action by two law professors, Amy and Robert McCormick.
The husband and wife were tenured faculty at the Detroit College of Law before it merged with MSU in 2020. Prior to the merger, in 2013, the McCormicks entered into contract agreements with the Detroit College of Law in which Robert agreed to retire and gain certain retirement benefits, while Amy agreed to continue as an emeritus professor.
During the merger, the Detroit College of Law and MSU agreed that all Detroit College of Law employees would be terminated Dec. 31, 2019, and then offered new employment on Jan. 1, 2020. MSU also agreed to assume, pay or discharge all of the Detroit College of Law’s liabilities and obligations.
Amy McCormick declined to take employment with MSU. And the McCormicks filed breach of contract claims, but initially only against the Detroit College of Law.
The McCormicks said they did not learn of MSU’s agreement to assume the Detroit College of Law’s obligations until May 2022, after which they filed a notice of intent to sue MSU as well on the grounds that their contracts had been breached, according to court filings. MSU contested the suit on the grounds that notice had not been filed within six months of the merger.
The McCormicks argued that they were afforded a two-year window after discovery of the agreement in May 2022 under what’s called the fraudulent-concealment exemption. The Court of Claims and Court of Appeals have so far sided with the McCormicks.
The exemption the McCormicks cited is similar to the wrongful death exemption St. Juliana is citing, in that both claims argue there should be a two-year window for notice of intent following either fraudulent concealment or a wrongful death.
“… The decision in that case may resolve an issue raised in the present application for leave to appeal,” the Monday Supreme Court order said of the McCormick and St. Juliana cases.
