Court of Appeals; Docket No. 307363; Unpublished;
Judges Jansen, Sawyer, and Fort Hood; Unanimous; Per Curiam
Official Michigan Reporter Citation: Not Applicable; Link to Opinion 
STATUTORY INDEXING:
Entitlement to PIP Benefits: Transportational Function Requirement [§3105(1)]
Exception for Permanently Mounted Equipment Use [§3106(1)(b)]
Exception for Loading / Unloading [§3106(1)(b)]
TOPICAL INDEXING:
Not Applicable
CASE SUMMARY:
In this unanimous unpublished per curiam Opinion, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary disposition in favor of State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company in a case where plaintiff claimed she was injured while using her vehicle as a motor vehicle and that one of the parked vehicle exclusions applied to the circumstances of her accident.
Plaintiff was injured when she went to her car from her apartment to retrieve a bag of DVDs and in the course of shutting the car door she slipped and fell on black ice. The facts established that due to a previous back injury, plaintiff was unable to drive, and was alone at her apartment without an aid or friend to drive her. Accordingly, the Court held plaintiff failed to establish that she intended to use the vehicle for its transportational function.
The Court first addressed the issue of whether or not one of the exceptions to the parked vehicle exclusion as set forth in MCL 500.3106 applied to the facts of her case. The no-fault statute provides that, with regard to parked vehicles, accidental bodily injury does not arise out of the ownership, operation, maintenance or use of a parked vehicle unless one of the exceptions applies. The Court specifically addressed the exception set forth in MCL 500.3106(1)(b), which would allow recovery if the injury was a direct result of “physical contact with equipment permanently mounted on the vehicle, while the equipment was being operated or used, or property being lifted onto or lowered from the vehicle in the loading or unloading process.”
In the instant case, the Court held that although plaintiff asserted that she had physical contact with the motor vehicle because her hand remained on the door when she was injured, the term “physical contact” refers to contact with “equipment permanently mounted on the vehicle” or with “property being lifted onto or lowered from the vehicle in the loading or unloading process.” In this case, the Court held that the vehicle’s door is not “equipment permanently mounted on the vehicle” for purposes of the parked vehicle exclusion. Frazier v Allstate Ins Co, 490 Mich 381 (2011).
The Court also held that plaintiff was not injured in the “loading or unloading process” as referred to in § 3106(1)(b) because the facts of her injury did not satisfy the requirement that the injury was a “direct result” of “property being lifted onto or lowered from the vehicle in the loading or unloading process.” The Court held that there are no characteristics about a bag containing DVDs that would cause an ordinary person to injure oneself in the process of unloading it from a parked car.
The Court further held that even if plaintiff showed that the injury was a direct result of physical contact with the bag she was unloading, she failed to satisfy the second aspect of her burden: that the injury arose out of the use of a motor vehicle as a motor vehicle as required by MCL 500.3105. That section, as interpreted by our courts, requires proof that the injury is “closely related to the transportational functional of motor vehicles.” Under the facts of the instant case, the Court held that as long as plaintiff was by herself at her apartment without an aid or friend to drive her, and given the fact that plaintiff could not drive due to her medical condition, her car functioned “less as a method of transportation and more as a locker or storage facility.” Plaintiff’s testimony showed that the car had been parked in the same spot for so long that she could not remember how long it had been parked there. The Court noted that the fact that the car was once used for its transportational function, cannot confer transportational status on it for an indefinite period thereafter. Therefore, the Court held that the injury did not arise out of the use of a motor vehicle as a motor vehicle as required by MCL 500.3105.
