A woman in Michigan falls while putting items into her car, and becomes injured. Michigan has no-fault auto insurance, so the woman was paid for her injuries. Her insurer appealed that case. The Michigan Supreme Court has decided that she shouldn’t have been paid for her injuries after all, due to the way the judges understand the definitions of specific words in the policy.
It started with a fall. Mona Lisa Frazier was in the parking lot of her condominium, and on her way to work. Before leaving, she put some items into her truck. She slipped while closing the door of her truck, and ended up breaking her ankle. Anyone who has ever lived in the Midwestern part of the United States can understand how this could happen. Parking lots can become incredibly slippery when covered with ice!
This happened in Michigan, which is one of the states that has no-fault auto insurance. This type of car insurance works almost backwards to how typical auto insurance functions.
Most auto insurance policies will pay for the damage that the policyholder does to another driver’s vehicle, or property, in the case of an accident that was caused by that particular policyholder. It will also cover the medical bills from the injuries that were inflicted upon the people who were in the other guy’s car when the accident occurred.
In other words, if I crash my car into yours, and it is my fault, then my auto insurance would pay the repair bills on the damage I caused to your car. If you smash into my car, and it is your fault, then your auto insurance pays for the damages you caused to my car. It is a reciprocal system. Problems occur when the driver who is at fault fails to purchase auto insurance. That driver doesn’t have any means of paying for the damages he or she causes in the case of an accident.
One way to solve that problem is to use no-fault insurance, instead. Michigan is one of the states that has no-fault auto insurance. If a car accident happens in Michigan, each of the drivers involved are responsible for paying for the damages that were caused to their own vehicle. Their auto insurance policy will cover it. It doesn’t matter which driver is at fault, (or caused the accident).
So, when Mona Lisa Frazier slipped and broke her ankle after putting items into her truck, she sent the bills for her medical care to her auto insurer, Allstate Insurance Company. The insurer paid some of her personal injury benefits, and then stopped.
Allstate’s attorneys argued that Ms. Frazier’s injuries were from a fall, which had nothing to do with her vehicle. Therefore, the insurer felt that it didn’t have to pay for her medical bills. Allstate lost the original court case, and appealed, and the case has just been heard before the Michigan Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court judges decided to overturn the decision from the first court case. They decided that the wording of the policy meant that Allstate was not required to pay those medical bills, after all.
This is because Ms. Frazier was not exiting her truck when she slipped and became injured. She was injured after completing the act of “alighting”. The opinion of the Court was that those two verbs did not mean the exact same thing. She is going to have to pay her own medical bills from that fall.
Image by Doug Waldron on Flickr