No-fault benefits; MCL 500.3113(a); “Taken unlawfully”; Swoope v Citizens Ins Co of the Midwest (Swoope I & II); Spectrum Health Hosps v Farm Bureau Mut Ins Co of MI; Rambin v Allstate Ins Co; Monaco v Home-Owners Ins Co; Ahmed v Tokio Marine Am Ins Co; Bradley v Westfield Ins Co; VHS of MI, Inc v State Farm Mut Auto Ins Co; Cases where the vehicle owner neither permitted nor forbade the driver from taking it; “Without authority”; Implied permission; Effect of the owner’s silence

On remand from the Supreme Court, the court held that in cases where the vehicle owner neither permitted nor forbade the driver from taking it, trial “courts must determine whether the driver took the vehicle with the owner’s implied permission.” Because the trial court here did not conduct that analysis for the facts presented, the court vacated its decision denying defendant-State Farm’s summary disposition motion and remanded for the trial court to analyze the facts of the case using the test set forth by the court. State Farm argued that MCL 500.3113(a) disqualified plaintiff-Tiburcio Pena-Cruz from receiving no-fault benefits because the owner (his wife, nonparty-M) of the F-150 truck he was driving at the time of the accident never gave him permission to drive it and he had no reason to believe that she would allow him to take it given that he “did not have a driver’s license and had never used the F-150 before.” The court noted that cases addressing the “taken unlawfully” phrase in MCL 500.3113(a) have generally fallen “into two categories: those in which an owner explicitly gave the driver permission to take the owner’s vehicle and those in which the owner explicitly forbade the driver from” doing so. This case presented a third situation, which no binding case law has addressed – M “neither gave Tiburcio permission to take her vehicle nor forbade” him from taking it. The court held “that, in these circumstances, the relevant inquiry is whether the driver took the vehicle with the owner’s implied permission. This determination will depend on all the facts and circumstances surrounding the driver’s taking of the vehicle, as well as the driver’s previous use of” it. The court noted that while “the legality of the taking must be viewed from the driver’s perspective, the determinative question is whether the owner impliedly permitted or authorized the driver’s taking of the owner’s vehicle.”