When Susan Al-Maliki was seriously injured in a rear-end car accident, she never thought it would be a Wayne County Circuit Court judge in Detroit who would pose the greatest obstacle to her pain and suffering claim reaching a jury.

Without warning – and without providing her an opportunity to respond – Judge Warfield Moore Jr. dismissed Ms. Al-Maliki’s auto-tort lawsuit for a reason that he alone chose to focus on.

Car Accident Lawyer Highlights Court Trend Requiring Permanent Injuries for Plaintiffs to Win

I’d like to remind my fellow car accident lawyers that judges in Michigan are forgetting injuries do not need to be permanent to be serious. This is exemplified in O’Keefe v. Auto Club, an unpublished Michigan Court of Appeals win for an auto accident victim who sustained neck and back injuries.

I make note of it because although the plaintiff wins, this case perpetuates the problem of seemingly requiring that an impairment is permanent in order for it to qualify as a serious impairment of body function. In O’Keefe, the fact that saves the day for the plaintiff’s claim is that her residual impairments “appear to be permanent.”

15 Months Off Work and Unable to Walk From Personal Injuries Is Not “Serious Enough”

If there’s one truth to emerge from the horrifically flawed Michigan Supreme Court ruling in Kreiner v. Fischer, a case that has doomed thousands of auto accident victims in Michigan, it is this:

The word “normal” doesn’t mean what you think it does.

At least not for innocent Michigan residents who have suffered serious personal injury from car accidents and must now follow Alice into Wonderland.  Linda Berishaj has had to learn that lesson the hard way.

On Tuesday I wrote about an appalling case, Roberts v. Farmers Insurance Exchange; involving a 14-year-old car accident victim with traumatic brain injury and an insurance company that once again, refused to pay her no-fault insurance benefits. Farmers Insurance did this because the child did not make it to her mandatory insurance medical examination.

But the reason she couldn’t get there is because her indigent, working mother was in the ICU with a serious illness for more than two weeks.

As a no-fault insurance lawyer, I have seen many, many dishonest tactics insurance companies employ to avoid paying benefits to very injured car accident victims. But this is by far, one of the most appalling. In the published Michigan Court of Appeals case Roberts v. Farmers Insurance Exchange, Farmers Insurance unilaterally scheduled a mandatory insurance medical examination (also known as an IME), for a child with a traumatic brain injury. The insurance company did this without first checking to see if the appointment date and time would conflict with the child’s working and indigent mother’s schedule.

I’ve received a heartfelt response to my recent blog, Michigan’s Auto Accident Law Protects Drunk Drivers, Not Accident Victims, from the mother of the actual car accident victim in the Michigan Court of  Appeals case Wayne Cottrill v. Craig Kenneth Senter (No. 285216).

In Cottrill v. Senter, a drunk driver with a .30 blood alcohol level slammed head-on into a car carrying an 11-year-old boy named Anthony. Anthony sustained multiple personal injuries, including fractures to his foot, wrist, hand and ribs. He missed months from school and had to drop out of the many activities he participated in before the car crash, like football. But thanks to Michigan’s car accident law Kreiner v. Fischer, Senter didn’t face any civil consequences for his actions. Unfortunately, as a personal injury lawyer, I’ve seen many legitimate auto accident cases thrown out of court because of Kreiner. Meanwhile, many honest accident victims continue to suffer.

A drunk driver with a .30 blood alcohol level slams head-on into the oncoming car of an 11-year-old boy.  The drunk driver walks away. The boy, Anthony, doesn’t walk away at all.  Anthony isn’t able to walk again for at least another month after the car accident, due to multiple fractures to his foot, wrist, hand and ribs. He also loses consciousness and requires in-home nursing care while recovering from his injuries. He misses two more months from school, and has to drop out of the many activities he participated in before the car crash, such as playing on the football team.

From left, Steven M. Gursten, Judge William J. Giovan and attorney Ed Stein

I received a comment yesterday from retired Chief Judge of Wayne County Circuit Court, William J. Giovan, after my letter on Johnson v. Wausau.

Judge Giovan is a true intellectual and has an excellent grasp of the rules of evidence.  In fact, I once invited him to speak to the Michigan Trial Lawyers Association on evidentiary issues car accident lawyers face in trial.  Judge Giovan also knew my grandfather, and on more than one occasion, has shared memories of him as a lawyer while we were in his chambers.  It isn’t every judge that knows and cares about three generations of one family.

Michigan Lawyers Weekly, The Oakland Press and the Detroit Legal News recently published my letter on Johnson v. Wausau Insurance Co., a case about an insurance company adjuster who lied to save money from paying attendant care insurance benefits to the caregivers of a 10-month-old girl with a severe traumatic brain injury from a car accident — and got away with it. Well, my letter has sparked a little debate, mainly from an attorney Daniel J. Bernard.  Mr. Bernard disagreed with my opinion of the case, which now allows insurance adjusters to legally lie to their customers in order to avoid paying no-fault insurance benefits. As an attendant care attorney in Michigan, I thought it was one of the most disturbing cases I’ve ever read. I feel so strongly about the horrible public policy this case creates for Michigan residents, that I wanted to respond to Mr. Bernard. My rebuttal was printed Monday on the front page of the Detroit Legal News as follows. Please click on the title to see the story in its newspaper form.

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.