The Estates & Protected Individuals Code (EPIC); Whether a contingent claim was presented within four months after it arose as required under MCL 700.3803(2)(b); “Claim”; MCL 700.1103(g); “Contingent claim” & “arises”; Applicability of the “fair contemplation test”; Southwestern Michigan Emergency Services, PC (SWMES); Personal representatives (PRs)

The court held that because respondent-SWMES “presented its contingent claim for prevailing party costs within four months after the claim arose, the probate court did not err by denying petitioners’ petition to strike.” The claim for prevailing party costs and fees arose when the jury rendered a no-cause verdict in SWMES’s favor in the underlying medical malpractice case. The notice of contingent claim was presented in the probate court less than a month later. Petitioners (co-PRs of the estate of their daughter) contended that SWMES’s “contingent claim arose in 2013, when petitioners filed the underlying medical malpractice complaint.” As its answer to the complaint showed, that was when SWMES “first contemplated that it could win the case and that it might be entitled to prevailing party costs.” Petitioners contended “that the same conclusion results from application of the ‘fair contemplation’ test, a test used in bankruptcy courts to determine whether a creditor’s claim arose before the potential debtor filed a bankruptcy petition.” They urged the court to adopt and apply the test here. It declined to do so, holding that federal “bankruptcy law is not binding on this Court,” and petitioners made “no argument that the language of the bankruptcy statutes is similar to the language of the relevant provisions of the EPIC.” Their position failed “to identify a proper factual basis to support its conclusion that respondent’s contingent claim arose in 2013.” The court concluded that when arguing that SWMES “knew or should have known that it had a contingent claim in 2013, petitioners do not point to any discernable, underlying facts to support such a claim, other than respondent’s assessment of the medical malpractice complaint. But whatever confidence respondent had that it might prevail and that petitioners’ claims were frivolous, these are not facts of the sort that support a contingent claim.” SWMES’s claim for taxable costs arose under MCR 2.625(A)(1). The factual basis for the claim against the estate of taxable costs was the 2019 jury verdict of no cause of action in favor of SWMES, which “filed its notice of contingent claim approximately two weeks after the jury rendered its verdict, well within the time limit set by MCL 700.3803(2)(b). Respondent’s claim was contingent because the trial court had the discretion to award prevailing party costs or to ‘direct[] otherwise.’” Affirmed.