Personal protection insurance (PIP) benefits; Limitations period; Notice; MCL 500.3145(1) & (4); Perkovic v Zurich Am Ins Co; “In behalf of”

The court held that the notice of a nonparty-passenger’s (Q) injury that defendant-insurer “received did not comply with MCL 500.3145(4). Because the notice-of-injury exception did not apply, plaintiffs’ claims were barred by the statute of limitations in MCL 500.3145(1).” Q was a passenger in a vehicle insured by defendant when it was involved in an accident. Plaintiffs sought PIP benefits for services provided to Q. Defendant successfully sought summary disposition based on the statute of limitations. Plaintiffs contended “the statute was tolled because defendant had been sufficiently notified of [Q’s] injury within one year under MCL 500.3145(4) by the insured’s telephone calls with defendant’s claims adjuster and the police traffic crash report in defendant’s possession.” Under MCL 500.3145(4), the required “notice must be given to the insurer by either the injured person or by someone ‘in his [or her] behalf.’” Reviewing Perkovic, the court understood it “to mean that any person can provide notice of an injury to an insurer in behalf of an injured person if their reason for doing so is some interest of the injured person. This approach comports with the facts in Perkovic because when the hospital in that case sent the bills and records to the insurer seeking payment, it implicitly acted in the truck driver’s financial interest of having his medical expenses paid. That is, the relevant distinction is whether the notice was ‘given to the insurer . . . by someone in the person’s behalf,’ . . . rather than merely independently acquired by the insurer.” The court found the record did “not show that anyone involved in giving the police report to defendant was motivated by [Q’s] interest. The insured’s representative called [defendant’s claims representative-B] twice in the course of reporting the accident” but did not tell B “anything about [Q] being injured.” Rather, the representative initially told B “that ‘no injuries were reported’ and, in a later call, discussed that there were passengers in the vehicle, but ‘did not report any injury to . . . [them].’ The police and LexisNexis who, respectively, wrote and transmitted the police report to defendant were not acting in [Q’s] behalf, but rather acting as neutral third parties. Lastly, the adjuster did not retrieve the police report in [Q’s] behalf” bur instead “to fill out the file for the insured’s claim and had no knowledge of [Q’s] potential injury before” doing so. No one acting in Q’s behalf notified defendant of his “injury within one year of the accident.” Affirmed.