In an unfortunate turn of events, Randall Baran sustained a traumatic brain injury when the automatic liftgate of his 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee unexpectedly came down and struck his head as he was attempting to retrieve some dishes from the rear compartment of the vehicle. Vibra of Southeastern Michigan filed suit against Auto-Owners Insurance Company and Home-Owners Insurance Company seeking PIP benefits for rehabilitation services it had provided to Mr. Baran based upon an assignment of rights. Vibra filed a Motion for Summary Disposition asserting that the circumstances of Mr. Baran’s injuries fell within the parked vehicle exceptions of MCL 500.3106(1); specifically the subsections dealing with occupying, entering, or alighting from a vehicle and the injury having occurred as the direct result of physical contact with property during loading and unloading from the vehicle. The trial court granted Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Disposition as to both exceptions and Defendants appealed.
In Vibra v Southeastern Mich, LLC v Auto-Owners Ins Co, et al, unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued July 22, 2021 (Docket No. 355287), the Court of Appeals held in a 2 to 1 decision that the loading and unloading exception did apply to Mr. Baran’s injuries. The Court examined the three-step analysis set out in Putkamer v Transamerica Ins Corp of America, 454 Mich 626, 635-636; 563 NW2d 683 (1997) which required the injured person to show (1) that the facts of the incident fit one of the three exceptions in MCL 500.3106(1); (2) that the injury arose out of the ownership, operation, maintenance, or use of a parked motor vehicle as a motor vehicle; and (3) that the causal relationship between the injury and the parked vehicle was not merely fortuitous.
Defendants argued that the language of subsection (1)(b) required Mr. Baran’s injury to have been caused by his contact with the dishes he was attempting to remove from the vehicle. (An accidental bodily injury can arise out of the use of a parked car if “the injury was the direct result of physical contact with . . . property being lifted onto or lowered from the vehicle in the loading or unloading process”). In relying on its previous holding in Adanalic v Harco Nat Ins Co, 309 Mich App 173; 870 NW2d 731 (2015), the Court reiterated that the statutory language does not mean that the injury must have been caused by the property in order for the exception to apply, but rather, that the injury was a direct result of contact with the property. The Court reasoned, in Mr. Baran’s case, that had he never been attempting to remove the dishes from the vehicle, he wouldn’t have been in the pathway of the falling liftgate, and therefore, his injuries were a direct result of his contact with the property. Accordingly, it affirmed the trial court’s decision as to section (1)(b) and deemed the argument as to the remaining sections moot.
Judge Riordan issued a dissent in which he opined that Mr. Baran’s injuries were caused by the liftgate, not by his incidental contact with the dishes he was unloading from the rear of the vehicle. He further opined that Mr. Baran was not occupying or alighting from the vehicle so neither section (1)(b) or (1)(c) applied and summary disposition should have been granted in favor of Defendants.
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Sarah Nadeau, Editor of The Garan Report Publication, is a Shareholder in our Detroit Office. Sarah can be reached at 313.446.1530 or snadeau@garanlucow.com