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Property Owners Ask Michigan Supreme Court to Restore Appeal in Consumers Energy Tree-Trespass Case
https://olcplc.com/public/media?1781538447
Saginaw County property owners have asked the Michigan Supreme Court to reverse a one-sentence Court of Appeals order that prevented their legal challenge against Consumers Energy and its vegetation-management contractor, ArborMetric Solutions, from being heard on the merits.The dispute began in Saginaw County Circuit Court. The lawsuit alleges that Consumers Energy and ArborMetric entered private property without permission, marked privately owned trees with permanent blue bark paint, and threatened cutting or trimming outside the scope of any lawful easement. The property owners contend the case is a straightforward private-property dispute involving trespass, easement boundaries, statutory tree damages, and the right to keep a private utility from entering land it does not own.
Consumers Energy counter-argued that the case should first go to the Michigan Public Service Commission because the challenged conduct was connected to a "vegetation-management program." The Saginaw County Circuit Court accepted that latter argument, ruling that the owners’ claims could not proceed unless the MPSC acted first. At the same time, the court directed that the case would be stayed.
The property owners appealed. Their counsel has argued throughout the case that the dispute belongs in circuit court because the Michigan Public Service Commission does not decide private trespass claims, does not determine the scope of private easements, does not award statutory damages for injury to trees, and does not issue injunctions against unauthorized entry onto private property.
“This case has never received a true merits decision,” said attorney Philip L. Ellison of Outside Legal Counsel PLC, counsel for the property owners. “Consumers Energy has worked to keep the case from being decided in the one place where these claims belong: a court of law.”
Faced with the circuit court’s ruling, the property owners pursued both available paths. They appealed the circuit court’s order. They also sued the Michigan Public Service Commission in the Court of Claims, asking for a declaration that the MPSC lacks authority to adjudicate private-property claims involving trespass, easement scope, ownership interests, damages for injury to land and trees, and injunctive relief between private parties.
The Court of Claims did not decide whether the MPSC actually has that authority. Instead, it concluded that the property owners’ request was essentially a collateral attack on the circuit court’s ruling and said the issue should be addressed through reconsideration or appeal. That decision was appealed too.
The Michigan Supreme Court application argues that the Court of Appeals should hear and decide the appeal about who has jurisdiction (the MPSC or the Saginaw court) to resolve the dispute. The property owners contend that summary disposition is adjudication, not abeyance. Once the circuit court granted Consumers Energy’s motion under MCR 2.116(C)(8), the case was final in legal effect and appealable by right. At minimum, the owners argue, the Court of Appeals should have treated the matter as if leave to appeal had been granted and decided the issue on the merits.
The court filing asks the Michigan Supreme Court to peremptorily reverse the Court of Appeals’ dismissal and send the case back for a jurisdictional decision.
“Overall, this is not a fight over whether Michigan utilities can safely maintain power lines,” Ellison said. “They can. But a regulated utility does not get to turn regulation into an open license to trespass upon private property, spray paint, and later cut down privately-owned trees. If a utility believes it has an easement, it can prove its easement in court like everyone else. What it should not be allowed to do is avoid a merits decision by bouncing homeowners between courts and an agency that cannot give them relief.”
The case is Sova v Consumers Energy Company, Michigan Court of Appeals Docket No. 379743, arising from Saginaw County Circuit Court Case No. 25-002533-CH. A related appeal, Engel v Michigan Public Service Commission, Court of Appeals Docket No. 379742, concerns the property owners’ effort to obtain a judicial declaration regarding the limits of MPSC authority.
Outside Legal Counsel PLC, together with Gronda PLC, represents the property-owner plaintiffs.
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