TOTAL LOSS

At 5:48 on a Tuesday, a box truck ran a red light. Four days later the injured woman's husband called a Michigan trial lawyer — not about a lawsuit, but because a hospital financial counselor had used the word “cap,” and nobody had explained it.

Michigan has the strangest auto insurance law in the country. Since the 2019 reform it has also had six different levels of medical coverage, a fee schedule that has pushed providers out of treating crash patients, and a limit on the hours a family member can be paid to care for someone at home.

Most drivers choose their coverage in about nine seconds, from the premium column. Almost nobody understands what they just gave up.

TOTAL LOSS is what a Michigan trial lawyer would tell you across your kitchen table — before the crash, if he could.

Inside

• What to say, and never say, in the first seventy-two hours
• A recorded statement taken apart line by line, and how each answer gets used two years later
• Why the denial letter may carry the name on your own insurance card
• All six PIP coverage levels, explained in plain English — and who is even allowed to choose the cheapest one
• The 56-hour attendant care rule, and what it means for a family doing the caregiving
• When Michigan law lets you sue, and when it doesn't
• Every deadline that can quietly end a claim, with the statutes cited
• Eight questions that make bad lawyers squirm
• Checklists, a coverage audit, and a deadline table built to be torn out and kept

About the author

Written by Joseph Dedvukaj, who has represented injured people in Michigan since 1994 in motor vehicle and trucking cases. He is the author of several books on Michigan injury law published by Square Lake Press. See all titles →

Read it before something happens. Then go look at your declarations page — one line on it decides what care you get.