Johnson v. Wausau is truly one of the most disturbing cases I have ever read, and the public policy it creates for Michigan residents could not be worse.  In Johnson, an insurance company deliberately lied to save money from paying insurance benefits to a 10-month-old little girl with catastrophic traumatic brain injuries from a car accident, continued this fraud for 16 years and got away with it. After this tragic case, insurance company adjusters can now deliberately and intentionally lie to their own policy holders to save money - legally.

Don’t Brush Off TBI in a Michigan Car Accident Case

I will be speaking at three seminars this summer about TBI. I strongly believe that lawyers who represent victims of traumatic brain injury have a special obligation, because TBI can be utterly devastating, yet difficult to prove. We have to do everything we can to perfect our ability to help people both in and out of the courtroom as well. I want to share some of my ideas from these seminars, and I will be sharing them in several installments over the next three weeks. Today’s blog is about how so many personal injury lawyers miss traumatic brain injury, causing clients with very real brain injuries to be severely undercompensated in TBI lawsuits from auto accidents.

Michigan has a complicated automobile accident threshold law, with specific exceptions and rules that relate to victims of traumatic brain injury.  It is absolutely critical that these exceptions and rules be followed, or a victim of TBI can have her case literally thrown out of court.  Some of these guidelines must be adhered to by the victims themselves, and some must be followed by lawyers representing them. Yet none of this has been made widely available in public for accident victims and lawyers to understand.  Our law firm is trying to change that.

On May 12, 2009, Plaggemeyer v. Lee was issued by the Michigan Court of Appeals. Plaggemeyer is the latest injustice in a long line of cases since Kreiner v. Fischer. It too harms Michigan personal injury lawyers and accident victims alike.

Mr. James Plaggemeyer was injured in a serious car accident. He suffered a broken left femur and required surgery. He spent several days in the hospital recovering from leg surgery and needed the use of a walker for an additional four weeks, crutches for the next eight weeks, and a cane for another four to six weeks. Mr. Plaggemeyer testified he had difficulty walking for about a year after the accident, and he sometimes called for his wife Ruth’s support when walking. Nevertheless, the Michigan Court of Appeals, in a panel with Sawyer, Murray, and Stephens, threw his case out of Court.

I had a deposition this week that raised a recurring issue in many of my more serious truck accident cases, and I would like to share it with my fellow truck accident lawyers. After any serious truck accident, where the trucking company has seriously injured or killed someone, it is now common for the truck company’s insurance carrier to send rapid response teams to the scene of the accident. These rapid response teams will usually include accident reconstructionists, adjusters and even the defense lawyer for the truck company.

A Flow Chart Guide to Michigan’s Car Accident Threshold Law

Last week, when I blogged about the Michigan Supreme Court’s 2004 Kreiner v. Fischer decision — the case that has ravaged the rights of car accident and truck accident victims in Michigan — I received a request asking if I could specifically explain Kreiner, which sets forth Michigan’s auto accident threshold law. Here’s a flow chart I use when leading seminars for Michigan lawyers on the state’s automobile accident threshold law, and when teaching the third-party no-fault class at Cooley Law School every year with Professor Borin. You can click on it to view an enlarged version.

On Tuesday, I posted an open letter that my Michigan Auto Law partner Bobby Raitt wrote last year, during his presidency of the Michigan Trial Lawyers Association. Bob asked his fellow Michigan personal injury lawyers whether they can “stand the rain”— the “rain” being the dismal state of consumer rights and personal injury law in Michigan following years of the Engler-appointed “Majority of Four” Court’s dismantling of safeguards, precedent and binding stare decisis designed to protect people. These arch-conservative, activist justices have especially wreaked havoc on victims of car accidents and truck accidents in Michigan with the Kreiner v. Fischer decision.

The state of personal injury law in Michigan is bleak following years of intentional dismantling by the Engler-appointed “Majority of Four” Michigan Supreme Court justices who wreaked havoc on victims of automobile accidents, slip and falls, inadequate security, product liability and medical malpractice laws. In fact, Michigan has the most draconian personal injury laws in the entire country, yet promised drops in insurance rates have never arrived. Meanwhile, Michigan’s auto insurance companies lead the nation in profitability, reaping the rewards of fewer payouts and very little regulation and oversight by the state. Our current laws read like a bizarre work of fiction by Kafka or Orwell, but Michigan residents who are blind (Sidorowicz v. Chicken Shack), disabled (Griffith v. State Farm Insurance), severely injured (Roberts v. Mecosta General Hospital) and raped (Zsigo v. Hurley Medical Center) have had cases thrown out of the courts; as the old extreme four-justice majority has changed long-standing precedent and stare decisis in case after case (Read my previous blog for about more unbelievable Supreme Court judicial travesties).