Michigan Court of Appeals; Docket No. 70803; Published
Judges Wahls, Bronson, and Kaufman; Unanimous
Official Michigan Reporter Citation: 135 Mich App 465; Link to Opinion 
STATUTORY INDEXING:
Compulsory Insurance Requirements for Owners or Registrants of Motor Vehicles Required to Be Registered [§3101(1)]
Definition of Motor Vehicle (Trailers) [§3101(2)(e)]
General Rule of Priority [§3114(1)]
TOPICAL INDEXING:
Not Applicable
CASE SUMMARY:
This unanimous Opinion by Judge Bronson deals with an issue of priority of payment between the insurer of a semi-truck cab and the insurer of the semi-trailer where a truck driver sustained an injury falling off of the trailer. The Court held that the trailer should be considered a separate and distinct "motor vehicle" within the meaning of the No-Fault statute and thus, where the trailer is lawfully uninsured (because it is an out of state vehicle and not required to be registered or insured in Michigan) the owner of the uninsured trailer has no obligation to pay no-fault benefits and the injured person must obtain those benefits from his own private automobile insurer.
The Court considered the instant case to present "a novel question of statutory construction" which is not answered in other cases involving semi-truck/trailer accidents (see Sherman v Michigan Mutual Ins Co. (item, number 640), Teman v Transamerica Ins Co of Michigan (item number 6 IS), Hathcox v Liberty Mutual Ins Co (item number 70), Griffin v Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Co (item number 706), and BASF Wyandotte Corp v Transport Ins Co (item number 485).
In finding that the owner of the trailer had no obligation to pay no-fault benefits, the Court primarily relied upon the opinion in Kelly v Inter-City Truck Lines, Inc. (item number 606), where "the Court refused to draw an arbitrary distinction between an attached and unattached trailer and held that a semi¬trailer, whether attached to a cab or freestanding, is a motor vehicle under the no-fault act.” The Court stated that the statutory definition of "motor vehicle" as set forth in §3101(2)(c) indicates that a trailer is first a vehicle, and if it complies with the other enumerated conditions, it attains the status of a motor vehicle.
