The No-Fault Act (NFA); Personal protection insurance (PIP) benefits; Scope of policy coverage; Mapp v Progressive Ins Co; Whether a policy provided greater benefits than required under the NFA; Insurance policy interpretation; Michigan Assigned Claims Plan (MACP)

The court held that there were genuine issues of material fact as to whether defendants-Progressive’s and Falls Lakes’ policies provided coverage to plaintiff. Thus, the trial court erred in granting them summary disposition on this basis. Plaintiff was injured when she was hit by a motor vehicle as a pedestrian. She did not have auto insurance. She “testified she lived with her mother and stepfather, neither of whom had” auto insurance. Thus, she applied for PIP benefits through the MACP, which assigned her claim to defendant-Farm Bureau. Farm Bureau discovered “that, while plaintiff primarily lived with her mother, she went back and forth between her parents’ home for years. She spent two nights and three days each week at her father’s house, where she had her own bedroom, kept some belongings, and performed household chores. She also had a key to the house. Her father lived with his brother, plaintiff’s uncle[.]” Progressive insured her father’s vehicle while Falls Lake insured her uncle’s vehicle. Farm Bureau argued “the trial court erred in granting summary disposition to Progressive and Falls Lake by concluding that domicile, not residency, controlled.” The court agreed. In Mapp, it held that a no-fault “‘policy may provide for greater PIP benefits than are required under the’” NFA. The question in this case, “as it was in Mapp, is whether ‘the policy at issue in this case does provide for greater benefits[.]’” The court noted that the policies here were “substantively similar in identifying who is eligible for PIP benefits” and that the policy “in Mapp similarly provided coverage for residents residing in the same household as a named insured.” As the court explained there, “the term ‘reside’ implies broader coverage than the term ‘domicile.’ . . . A domicile is ‘[a] place where a person lives or has his home,’ that is, a place which ‘is acquired by the combination of residence and the intention to reside in a given place[.]’ . . . By contrast, ‘the term “reside” can be understood as meaning living in a place for substantial time beyond mere transient physical presence.’” The court concluded there were “genuine issues of fact as to whether plaintiff ‘resided’ at her father’s and uncle’s home[.]” As a result, “a genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether Progressive’s and Falls Lakes’ policies covered [her], and summary disposition was inappropriate.” It found their attempts to distinguish Mapp unpersuasive. Reversed and remanded.