4/26/14 - The Michigan Supreme Court has sided with the city of Brighton in its case against a couple who sued the city over an ordinance which requires the demolition of unsafe homes whose value is less than the cost of repairing them. The unanimous opinion thus overturns a decision by the state Court of Appeals, which ruled in December of last year that portions of the city ordinance violated due process. The city subsequently filed an appeal with the Michigan Supreme Court, which this week reversed the Court of Appeals decision and remanded the case back to Livingston County Circuit Court for further proceedings. Leon and Marilyn Bonner own two houses on North Street that the city ordered demolished in January of 2009 on the basis that they pose a danger to public health and safety. The Bonners, represented by attorney Dennis Dubuc, took their case to the county circuit court, and after that failed to resolve the dispute, filed an appeal with the Michigan Court of Appeals. In reversing the appellate court decision Thursday, the Supreme Court said that the city ordinance âdid not constitute an unconstitutional deprivation of substantive due process because the ordinanceâs unreasonable-to-repair presumption wasâ¦related to the cityâs legitimate interest in protecting the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens.â Attorney Paul Burns, in representing the city, has consistently maintained the homes are not safe and should be demolished. But the Bonners insist they merely want to repair the homes to bring them up to code, and argue that the cityâs ordinance is unconstitutional. (TT)
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