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No. 131905
| Stella Sidun, |
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John T. Hermann |
Plaintiff-Appellant, |
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Deepak Gupta |
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(Appeal from Ct of Appeals) |
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(Ingham - Collette, W.) |
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| Wayne County Treasurer, |
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Mary Massaron Ross |
| Defendant-Appellee. |
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Jacob S. Ghannam |
| __________________________________________ |
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Plaintiff-Appellant's Brief on Appeal>>
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Background
This case involves a rental house in Hamtramck. Owner Helen Krist paid all expenses connected with the property, including real estate taxes owed to the city of Hamtramck. Tax notices were sent to Krist’s Warren address, which was on file with the city assessor. In 1979, Krist executed a quitclaim deed to herself and to her daughter, Stella Sidun, as joint tenants with a right of survivorship. The deed was recorded. Although neither the Wayne County Treasurer nor the Hamtramck assessor was given a copy of the deed, the Hamtramck assessor’s records were updated to show that both Krist and Sidun were owners of the Hamtramck property. The deed lists both Krist’s Warren address and Sidun’s Birmingham address. In the late 1990s, Krist became ill. She sold her Warren house and moved to Birmingham to live with Sidun, where she resided until her death on January 1, 2003. The city of Hamtramck was not informed that Krist no longer lived at the Warren address, and the tax bills for the Hamtramck property continued to be sent there. The tax bills for the years 2000 and 2001 were returned to sender, and the taxes went unpaid. Delinquency notices were sent to Krist’s former Warren address; these notices were also returned to sender. The property was forfeited on March 1, 2002, for failure to pay $2,066.45 in taxes. On June 14, 2002, the Wayne County Treasurer filed a petition to foreclose the property, under the General Property Tax Act (GPTA), MCL 211.78 et seq. As required by the statute, the treasurer conducted a title search to identify “owners of a property interest in the property” and apparently discovered the deed identifying Sidun and Krist as co-owners. Foreclosure notices were sent to Krist at the Warren address and were returned unclaimed. The treasurer sent a notice to Sidun as well, but that notice was also sent to the Warren address and Sidun did not respond to it. No notice was sent to Sidun at her house in Birmingham. As required by the property tax statute, an agent of the treasurer personally visited the Hamtramck property but was unable to contact anyone, and he posted notice of the pending foreclosure. In addition, the treasurer mailed a notice addressed to the “occupant” of the Hamtramck property. Finally, the treasurer published notice three times in a local newspaper. Sidun and her husband claimed that they never received any of these notices. Sidun did not participate in the foreclosure proceedings, and a judgment of foreclosure was entered by the trial court on March 10, 2003. Sidun’s rights were fully extinguished when the redemption period expired 21 days later, on March 31, 2003. The property was eventually sold on December 30, 2003, following a public auction. Sidun sued the treasurer for money damages in the Court of Claims on December 23, 2004. But the circuit judge granted summary disposition in favor of the treasurer and dismissed Sidun’s suit. The judge found that the treasurer’s efforts to serve notice of the forfeiture were “reasonably calculated” to provide notice under the circumstances of the case and satisfied the minimum requirements of due process. The Court of Appeals affirmed in a 2-1 unpublished opinion. A dissenting judge thought that the treasurer had satisfied due process with regard to Krist, but not with regard to Sidun, an owner of record who was separately entitled to notice. Sidun then appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration in light of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Jones v Flowers, 547 US ___; 126 S Ct 1708; 164 L Ed 2d 415 (2006). In Jones, the United States Supreme Court held that a governmental agency could not foreclose property because of a tax arrearage because the agency did not satisfy due process; after notices sent by certified mail were returned unclaimed, the agency did not take additional steps to notify the property owner, the Court stated. On remand, the Michigan Court of Appeals panel reconsidered the case and, in an unpublished opinion, reached the same result. The majority, adopting its previous opinion, concluded that Jones v Flowers did not change the outcome, due to the additional steps that the Wayne County treasurer took to provide notice. Sidun appeals.
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