What are some of the restrictive personal injury laws in Michigan. And when I say restrictive, I mean it’s restrictive of citizens rights and conversely the companies and insurance companies have all kinds of rights.

The first one, is there’s caps on damages. I don’t know if you know that. In medical malpractice cases and in products liability cases there’s only a certain amount of money a judge, or jury can award to a person for non-economic damages such as pain and suffering. Despite having a jury trial and a jury awarding all kinds of money that they feel the victim should be compensated. The judge will reduce the award if it is above the cap. Because that is what the law says.

Now, I personally believe that it is a violation of our constitutional rights and about half the states have this law and half the states don’t, and the states that don’t, they said that it is a violation of our right to have a jury trial.

Another law in Michigan is called the Drug Immunity Law, and this is to protect big pharmaceutical companies. And what this law does is, if a drug is approved by the FDA, yet is still dangerous and still harms people, then the victims of that family or the person is harmed has no claim against the pharmaceutical company. Unless they can show that the pharmaceutical company lied to the FDA during the approval process, and if they can’t prove that, then they have no claim. I believe we’re the only state in the union to have this very restrictive law, and it was enacted years ago to try to attract pharmaceutical companies and so forth, but we have found since then that the one big one here has left and gone to a different state, so they have actually even moved out of state.

Another law is if somebody is involved in an automobile accident then they have to show what is called a threshold injury. It is not how much pain you are in, it is not what your injury is, it is if your day to day activities have been significantly impacted. So you could break a bone, you could break a hip or whatever. But you have no claim against the other driver or the insurance company unless your day to day activities have been impacted.

There’s another restrictive law in Michigan concerning trip and falls or slip and falls. There is a defense available to landowners called the open and obvious defense, which says if the defect is in the open and it is obvious, then the land-owner has no duty to protect or warn of the person that injured himself of the defect. For example, the grocery store has slippery grapes or bananas on the floor, the classic example. That is open and obvious and there is no claim. The problem with that is that it promotes disrepair of properties. In other words you’re better off if your property is in more disrepair and has more hazard because it is in the open and it is obvious. So, socially it is not a good law.