Michigan Court of Appeals; Docket No. 126228; Unpublished
Judges Griffin, Reilly, and T.M. Burns; 2-1 (with Judge Reilly Dissenting); Per Curiam
Official Michigan Reporter Citation: Not Applicable; Link to Opinion 
STATUTORY INDEXING:
Entitlement to PIP Benefits: Arising Out of / Causation Requirement [§3105(1)]
TOPICAL INDEXING:
Not Applicable
CASE SUMMARY:
In this 2-1 per curiam Opinion, the Court of Appeals held that a truck driver who sustained back injuries at some point during a particular day on the job when his vehicle hit a bump in the road causing the driver's seat in the truck to "bottom out" jolting the plaintiff, had pled sufficient facts to avoid defendant's motion for summary disposition that alleged plaintiff had not sustained an "accidental bodily injury" within the meaning of §3105 of the no-fault statute. The court discussed its earlier holdings in Wheeler v Allstate Insurance and Tucker Freight Lines (Item No. 643) and Randies v Carriers Insurance Company (Item No. 778) and held:
"We read Randies as being consistent with the Wheeler court's holding that in order for an injury to be 'accidental' under the no-fault act, the injury must have been sustained in a single accident having a particular temporal and spatial location. However, under Randies, the fact that the plaintiff cannot identify the precise point in time and place where the accident occurred will not necessarily preclude a no-fault claim. Rather, an injury should be compensable under the no-fault act where the plaintiff is clearly injured, and the plaintiff can place the injury within fairly narrow temporal and spatial parameters.
In the instant case, plaintiff has consistently maintained that he injured his back during the first night off, on his established route, while driving defendant's truck. Under Randies, even if plaintiff could not indicate the precise point that the injury occurred, recovery may still be available under the no-fault act... Further, looking at plaintiff’s deposition and the other documents available to the trial court, reasonable minds could disagree as to whether plaintiff did actually indicate that the very first bump was the point of injury and that the subsequent bumps merely aggravated the" injury." (emphasis added)
Judge Reilly dissented on the basis that there was insufficient evidence that the injury was the result of a single accident having a temporal and spatial location. Judge Reilly pointed out that the plaintiff was not able to point to a specific location as being the site of the injury and the plaintiff further testified that his seat had bottomed out every time he hit a pothole or bump in the road and that this happened 100 to 300 times on the first night he returned to work after recuperating from his previous back injury. Furthermore, plaintiff was not able to say which bump caused his injury. In this regard, Judge Reilly stated, "there is no evidence to indicate that the first bottoming out rather than the third or fiftieth was the cause of the injury, and there is no reason to believe that plaintiff could make such a showing if further discovery was permitted."
