Earlier this year a Michigan appellate court ruled on the case of a man who suffered a collapsed lung and fractured ribs in a car accident. The court’s ruling in this car accident lawsuit helped protect the rights of auto accident injury victims throughout Michigan.
The case was that of Wallace v. Nance-Bacan, and the decision overturned the trial court's dismissal of Mr. Wallace's case. The defendant, Ms. Nance-Bacan, and her lawyers asked the court to dismiss the case on the grounds that Wallace's injuries weren't severe enough to warrant a third-party lawsuit to recover damages for pain and suffering. This is significant because Michigan's no-fault auto insurance law prohibits injury victims from recovering damages for pain and suffering from at-fault drivers unless their injuries are severe enough to impair some important function of the body and affect their ability to live a normal life.
In Kevin Wallace's case, he was hospitalized for a week because of a collapsed lung and fractured rib cage. To many people, it was incredulous that anyone would think that someone impaired enough to spend a week in the hospital wasn't impaired enough to seek damages for pain and suffering. Certainly the ability to breathe is an important body function and it was impaired. And having to stay in a hospital bed certainly affects a person's ability to live a normal life. So what was the problem?
The problem was that prior to a Michigan Supreme Court ruling in 2010, a previous Supreme Court decision made it very tough for injury victims to qualify for third-party car accident lawsuits in auto accident cases. Most cases that succeeded prior to 2010 involved permanent disabilities. While the 2010 ruling overturned much of previous ruling, insurance companies and defense attorneys still try to apply the pre-2010 standards to get cases dismissed or, at least, convince juries not to award damages.
The appellate court in Wallace's case made a ruling that further clarified how Michigan's no-fault auto insurance laws and the impaired body function test should be applied. The ruling made the following important distinctions in a car accident lawsuit:
To meet the statutory threshold for third-party lawsuits, a body function must be "impaired," not necessarily destroyed.
To meet the statutory threshold for third-party lawsuits, an impairment has to "affect" the plaintiff's (injury victim's) ability to live a normal life, not necessarily destroy it.
When severity of injuries are in dispute, it is the place of a trial JURY to decided whether the injuries meet the statutory threshold, not that of the COURT.
The result of Wallace's appellate decision was that Wallace got his day in court. The case was remanded back to trial court to be heard by a jury who was to decide whether Wallace's injuries met the threshold and whether he was to be awarded damages. The case helps protect the rights of other injury victims by preventing lower courts from deciding whether a case qualifies for a third-party lawsuit when facts of the case are in dispute and by ensuring the proper standards are applied to injuries when determining whether they meet Michigan's threshold requirement.
In Michigan, auto accident victims with serious injuries that impair their ability to live a normal life -- even if the impairment lasts for a matter of days and isn't permanent -- can get assistance seeking damages for pain and suffering, loss of income and earning ability and other losses. The auto accident injury attorneys at Sachs Waldman have helped thousands of people successfully recover damages. Call our Detroit personal injury law office at 1-800-638-6722 to schedule a free consultation and find out what damages you may be entitled to.
© 2024 Michigan Injury Attorneys
View Our Disclaimer | Privacy Policy
Detroit Personal Injury & Car Accident Attorneys