Opinion
SC: 164830 COA: 356936.
04-28-2023
Zainab HANS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Ahsan HANS, Defendant-Appellant, and Eisenberg & Spilman, PLLC, and Howard I. Wallach, Other Parties.
Order
On order of the Court, the application for leave to appeal the July 7, 2022 judgment of the Court of Appeals is considered, and it is DENIED, because we are not persuaded that the question presented should be reviewed by this Court.
Zahra, J. (dissenting).
The trial court reasonably resolved a dispute concerning an equitable allocation of property arising in this highly contentious and unduly protracted divorce case. The court, when presented with evidence of changed circumstances, allocated the debt payoffs differently than it did in the original judgment of divorce. The original judgment of divorce simply did not contemplate that the parties would have spent more on attorney fees than the value of their real property. This created "a void related to the actual amount of the liens encumbering the real properties, which the trial court properly could address and resolve because it was incomplete."
Hans v Hans, unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued March 31, 2022 (Docket Nos. 355468 and 356936), p. 4, 2022 WL 981092, citing Andrusz v Andrusz, 320 Mich.App. 445, 453, 904 N.W.2d 636 (2017).
Both parties appealed, and the Court of Appeals initially affirmed the trial court in a split unpublished per curiam decision. Plaintiff moved for reconsideration. Defendant, acting in propria persona, filed an answer. Judge RICK, who originally voted to affirm, changed her vote and supported reconsideration, along with Judge SHAPIRO, who authored the dissenting opinion. It is exceedingly rare that a Court of Appeals judge admits to making a palpable error that requires reconsideration of the same issue that its panel has already decided. Even more rare is to grant reconsideration only to overturn a trial court's discretionary decision that was plainly within a reasonable range of principled outcomes. I am puzzled by the panel's decision to grant reconsideration of its initial opinion.
Generally, and without restricting the discretion of the court, a motion for rehearing or reconsideration which merely presents the same issues ruled on by the court, either expressly or by reasonable implication, will not be granted. The moving party must demonstrate a palpable error by which the court and the parties have been misled and show that a different disposition of the motion must result from correction of the error.[]
I detect no palpable legal error in the panel's initial decision, nor can I discern any misdirection to satisfy the threshold to grant a motion for reconsideration. And frankly, the Court of Appeals' initial opinion is far better reasoned and appropriately more deferential to the trial court's equitable decision in this overly protracted divorce case than the opinion issued on reconsideration. I would reverse the Court of Appeals' opinion and reinstate the initial Court of Appeals' opinion affirming the trial court's judgment.