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TAWANDA HALL, CURTIS LEE, CORETHA LEE, and
KRISTINA GOVAN,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
ANDREW E. MEISNER, Oakland County Treasurer;
OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN; SOUTHFIELD
NEIGHBORHOOD REVITALIZATION INITIATIVE, LLC;
CITY OF SOUTHFIELD, MICHIGAN; FREDERICK ZORN;
KENSON SIVER; SUSAN P. WARD-WITKOWSKI; GERALD
WITKOWSKI; IRV LOWENBERG; MITCHELL SIMON;
E’TOILE LIBBETT; SOUTHFIELD NON-PROFIT HOUSING
CORPORATION,
Defendants-Appellees. |
No. 21-1700 |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.
No. 2:20-cv-12230—Paul D. Borman, District Judge.
Argued: July 20, 2022
Decided and Filed: October 13, 2022
Before: KETHLEDGE, BUSH, and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges.
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OPINION
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KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge. In this case the defendant Oakland County took “absolute
title” to plaintiff Tawanda Hall’s home—worth close to $300,000, on the facts alleged here—to
satisfy a $22,262 tax debt, and then refused to refund any of the difference. The other plaintiffs
shared a similar fate with their homes. Under Michigan law—and the law of virtually every state
for the past 200 years—a creditor can divest a debtor of real property only after a public
foreclosure sale, after which any surplus proceeds in excess of debt are refunded to the debtor.
The return of that surplus compensates the debtor for her equitable interest in the property—
which in common speech is called the “equity” in real property, and which English and
American courts for centuries have called “equitable title.” Yet the Michigan General Property
Tax Act created an exception to this rule for just a single creditor: namely, the State itself (or a
county thereof), which alone among all creditors may take a landowner’s equitable title without
paying for it, when it collects a tax debt. In that respect the Michigan statute is not only self-dealing: it is also an aberration from some 300 years of decisions by English and American
courts, which barred precisely the action that Oakland County took here.
The government may not decline to recognize long-established interests in property as a
device to take them. That was the effect of the Michigan Act as applied to the plaintiffs here;
and we agree with the plaintiffs that, on the facts alleged here, the County took their property
without just compensation. We therefore reverse the district court’s dismissal of their claim
against the County under the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution. |
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