The Cochran Firm Legal Blog

If you are involved in a car accident in Michigan, your basic needs will be covered by your personal injury protection (PIP) insurance, a no-fault insurance that all drivers in the state are required to carry. This insurance even covers you if you are a pedestrian hit by a car. PIP covers medical bills and up to 3 years of lost wages. However, it doesn't recognize your non-economic damages, the pain and suffering or diminished quality of life that comes as a result of your auto accident. To get compensation for these less tangible losses in Michigan requires a lawsuit. Only a 2004 ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court, known as Kreiner, prevents most people from successfully filing such a lawsuit. Now, though, the Court will reconsider this ruling, probably between October and May.

In 1972, the Michigan Legislature wrote a law that provided for PIP coverage and allowed people who suffered "serious impairment of body function" as a result of a car accident to file a lawsuit for non-economic damages. The law was refined in 1995 after some legal issues arose. The standard for impairment was further defined as "an objectively manifested impairment of an important body function that affects the person's general ability to lead his or her normal life." This creates a three-point standard for determining whether a person can file a lawsuit:

• Injury must be objectively manifest
• An important body function - the ability to walk, use one's hands, to sit or stand without pain, and generally function without mechanical aids - must be affected
• Ability to lead a normal life must be affected

After the 1995 revision, many believed that if a person met these three standards, including showing some effect on a person's life, regardless of its extent, that person could file a lawsuit for noneconomic damages.

However, in the Kreiner ruling, the Michigan Supreme Court focused on the language that a "person's general ability to lead his or her normal life" must be affected. The Court determined that in order to meet this standard, the "course or trajectory of the plaintiff's normal life" must be altered. In the case of Kreiner, the court decided that because Kreiner was a carpenter both before and after the accident, the course of his life was not altered, even though he could only stay on a ladder for 20 minutes at a time, only work 6 hours a day, not perform roof work, and suffered daily pain after the accident. Similarly, the Court found that although Kreiner could no longer hunt rabbits, his ability to hunt deer meant his life was not altered.

This ruling established what might be called a consolation prize standard in Michigan, where lawsuits were thrown out if insurance companies could show that a plaintiff still inhabited a hollow shell of his or her former life. This standard was so high that 140 of the first 165 cases and 194 of 244 total cases filed since the ruling have been thrown out. Cases are held to the same standard whether the responsible driver was drunk or grossly negligent.

The 2004 decision was written by a 4-3 divided Court, and with one of its supporters ousted the standard will likely be overturned when the Court reconsiders it.

If you have suffered serious injury in a car accident in Michigan, the Detroit, Michigan personal injury lawyers of The Cochran Firm stand ready to represent your right to compensation for noneconomic damages. Please schedule a free consultation today.

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