Rule 3.717.Dismissals

MCR 3.717 is three sentences long, and it draws a narrow gate. An action for an extreme risk protection order may be dismissed only on a motion by the petitioner, and only before an order issues. There is no fee for that motion. The rule then names three carve-outs and preserves any dismissal otherwise permitted by law.

The timing limit

The words to watch are prior to the issuance of an order. Once an extreme risk protection order exists, the petitioner's voluntary dismissal is no longer the tool that ends it. Relief from an issued order runs through MCR 3.720, which is one of the rules the exception clause names, and which sets out who may move to modify or terminate an order and what the moving party must prove.

The three exceptions

• MCR 3.718(B) covers immediate emergency ex parte orders that a law enforcement officer requests verbally. That rule sets the steps the officer must take afterward, and directs the court, unless good cause is shown, to terminate the order, order that the respondent may reclaim any seized firearms subject to MCL 691.1815, and dismiss the case if the officer does not file within one business day.
• MCR 3.718(D) governs hearings, and it says when the court may dismiss the complaint at that stage rather than adjourn and reschedule.
• MCR 3.720 covers modification, termination, and extension of an issued order.

What the last sentence preserves

The closing line states that the rule does not preclude a dismissal as otherwise permitted by law. MCR 3.717 is a limit on voluntary dismissal by agreement or by a respondent's request, not a repeal of every other ground on which a case can end. Read together, the pieces keep control of an unresolved case with the person who filed it, and shift control of a resolved one to the rule that governs the order itself.

The no-fee provision matters in practice. A petitioner who decides not to pursue the matter is not charged for stepping away, and the exception clause makes clear that the court retains its own paths to ending a case in the situations the named rules cover.