MICHIGAN IMMUNE FROM SUIT BY COUNTY

Duggan To Appeal Over Abandoned Drug House

A Wayne County judge ruled Wednesday that the state of Michigan is immune
from a lawsuit by Prosecutor Mike Duggan demanding that it tear down or take
control of an abandoned drug house.

Duggan called the decision a major defeat for city residents, and said he is
working on an appeal to the state Supreme Court, with a request to bypass
the Court of Appeals. The abandoned, state-owned home on Mettetal Street has
been raided five times for drug activity since May 2000, he said. Neighbors
told the Free Press this month that drugs are dealt daily from the home.

"The prospects are horrifying," Duggan said. "We're driving the drug dealers
out of privately owned homes. Now the judge told them they can move into the
state-owned houses."

Duggan has called the state of Michigan the largest owner of drug houses in
the city of Detroit. At least 20 state-owned homes have been the subject of
drug raids in the city since May 2000, according to a list compiled by his
office.

With the drug trade fueling violence in Detroit -- including several of the
recent child homicides, Duggan had said the case could have been
precedent-setting if the judge ruled in his favor. He has about 20 other
similar lawsuits pending in Wayne County Circuit Court.

But Circuit Cochief Judge Timothy Kenny ruled that the state has sovereign
immunity from such lawsuits, as argued June 7 by the state Attorney
General's Office.

"The court finds that the Public Nuisance Act neither by express provision
nor by necessary implication creates an exception to the state's sovereign
immunity from suit," Kenny wrote in his 13-page opinion.

Duggan called Kenny's ruling "the single stupidest decision I've seen in my
20 years of practicing law." Legally, Duggan's office argued that the state
was only immune from tort cases, which involve allegations of injury or
damages. Duggan said this lawsuit is only seeking an injunction.

Assistant Michigan Attorney General Diane Smith declined comment Wednesday.

Penny Davis, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Management and
Budget, said the lawsuit brought the house to the state's attention and it
has since been boarded up.

"Very often we are not made aware of these nuisance complaints," she said.
"We acted quickly and the house is at the top of our priority list.'

Davis said the state will assess whether the house can be resold to a
nonprofit community group for rehabilitation or demolished.

The state owns 9,000 abandoned parcels of land in Detroit, Davis said. About
2,500 of those parcels have some sort of structure on them, she said.