Michigan Court of Appeals; Docket No. 74131; Published
Judges Gillis, Burns, and Kaufman; Per Curiam
Official Michigan Reporter Citation: 135 Mich App 571; Link to Opinion 
STATUTORY INDEXING:
One-Year Notice Rule Limitation [§3145(1)]
Required Content of Notice / Sufficiency of Notice [§3145(1)]
TOPICAL INDEXING:
Not Applicable
CASE SUMMARY:
In this per curiam Opinion, the Court of Appeals held that where an employee injured in an automobile accident prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Mathis v Interstate Motor Freight System (item number 292) gave written notice to his employer demanding "whatever benefits" the employee was entitled to, the employee had not given sufficient notice under §3145 of the No-Fault statute to toll the one-year statute of limitations controlling such claims. It made no difference that the employee's representative who received the notice administered both workers' compensation and no-fault programs. The Court noted that the no-fault claims involved in this case all accrued prior to the Mathis decision. The Court stated that up to the time the Supreme Court decided Mathis (1978), "the law in the state precluded an employee from obtaining no-fault benefits in addition to workers' compensation benefits." Therefore, the employer had no duty to advise plaintiffs that they might be eligible for no-fault benefits.
As Further support for its conclusions, the Court cited the decisions in Myers v Interstate Motor Freight System (item number 635) and Combs v Commercial Carriers, Inc. (item number 540).
In light of the fact that the plaintiffs failed to satisfy the one-year notice rule, the Court was not going to get into the question of whether notice of a claim for no-fault benefits tolls the statute of limitations "between the time the notice is filed and the insurer acts in the claim."
Finally, the Court rejected plaintiff’s claim that defendant is "equitably estopped" from relying on the statute of limitations defense and that the limitation period is further tolled because of the defendant's "fraudulent concealment" of plaintiff s no-fault claim. With respect to the estoppel theory, the Court stated, "a plaintiff who relies upon the estoppel theory to avoid a statute of limitations defense must allege actions by defendant such as concealment of a cause of action, misrepresentation as to the statutory time in which an action may be brought, or inducement not to bring the action." The Court found none of these upon the facts in this case.
