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Why a Timely Michigan PIP Claim Can Still Lose Money
Michigan’s no-fault act sets more than one deadline, and the two that matter most in a personal injury protection claim both run for a year while doing completely different jobs. One decides when a lawsuit can still be filed. The other decides how far back the benefits reach once it is.
MCL 500.3145(1) bars an action for PIP benefits later than one year after the date of the accident, subject to two exceptions that reopen it. Subsection (2) carries the second rule, and it is the one that quietly costs money. A claimant cannot recover benefits for any portion of the loss incurred more than one year before the date the action was commenced, however timely the filing itself was.
The One-Year Deadline and Its Two Exceptions
The one-year bar is not absolute, and a great deal turns on that. An action filed more than a year after the accident survives where written notice of injury was given to the insurer within one year after the accident, or where the insurer has already made a payment of PIP benefits for that injury.
The notice itself is a modest document. Under subsection (4), it may be given by the claimant or by someone acting on their behalf, and it must give the claimant’s name and address and state, in ordinary language, the name of the person injured and the time, place, and nature of the injury. A letter meeting that description, sent inside the first year, changes which rule governs the case.
Where notice was given or a payment was made, subsection (2) allows the action to be commenced at any time within one year after the most recent allowable expense, work loss, or survivor’s loss was incurred. For an injury that generates ongoing treatment, that can extend the filing window well past the anniversary of the crash. At Neumann Law Group, our personal injury attorneys handle Michigan car accident claims from Grand Traverse County to Wayne County, and this is the provision most often missed by someone who assumed the claim had expired.
What the One-Year-Back Rule Actually Limits
The one-year-back rule is a limit on recovery rather than a limit on time. Even where the action is properly commenced, the claimant may not recover benefits for any portion of the loss incurred more than one year before the date of commencement.
The practical effect is that delay costs money on a claim that never becomes untimely. Someone who is treated for two years, then files suit, has a live claim and a recovery reaching back only 12 months from the filing date. The earlier bills do not become disputed. They fall outside what the statute permits the court to award.
The mistake I see most often is not a missed filing date. It is a claimant who waited, filed inside the deadline, and then learned that a year of medical expenses sat outside the window the statute allows.
Subsection (5) adds a third one-year rule that behaves unlike the other two. An action for recovery of property protection insurance benefits may not be commenced later than one year after the accident, and the statute attaches no notice exception and no payment exception to it. That period is flat.
When the Clock Stops
Subsection (3) tolls the limitations period under subsection (2) from the date a specific claim for payment is made until the date the insurer formally denies that claim. An insurer sitting on a claim does not run out the clock by doing so.
The tolling carries a condition worth reading closely. It does not apply where the person claiming benefits fails to pursue the claim with reasonable diligence. Submitting a claim and then going quiet is not the same as pursuing it, and the burden of showing diligence sits with the claimant.
A formal denial is the event that restarts the period. Ambiguous correspondence from an adjuster, a request for more records, or a partial payment is not a denial, and treating one as though it were can cost a claimant months of tolling they were entitled to.
The Tort Claim Runs on Its Own Clock
Michigan claimants are frequently told they have three years, and for one kind of claim that is right. Sorting out which period governs which claim is the first thing worth doing in any Michigan personal injury matter arising from a collision, because the answer differs by claim within the same crash. MCL 600.5805(2) sets a three-year period for actions to recover damages for injury to a person or property. That is the period for a tort claim against the at-fault driver.
It is not the period for PIP benefits. Those come from a claimant’s own insurer under the no-fault act, and MCL 500.3145 governs them. The two run side by side on the same crash, and applying the three-year figure to the benefits claim is the most common way a Michigan no-fault claim is lost. Both deadlines, along with PIP coverage tiers after the 2019 reform, are covered on our Michigan No-Fault Insurance Guide.
MCL 500.3145 was itself amended by the 2019 reform, so a policy or an article written before June 2019 may describe a structure that no longer governs. Anything a claimant reads about no-fault deadlines is worth dating before it is relied on.
Nothing about the structure is obvious from an insurance policy, and the deadlines start running before most people have finished treatment. If that is where your situation sits, call us at (800) 525-6386.
Checking Which Clock Is Running on a Claim
A PIP claim can be timely and still be worth substantially less than it should be, which is a distinction the statute draws and an adjuster has no reason to explain. We represent injured drivers and passengers at Neumann Law Group across Michigan, from Detroit and Grand Rapids to Traverse City. Call our office at (800) 525-6386, or contact us online, and we will talk it through with you.