Auto Threshold Law: Another Year in Review
Written by Grand Rapids Car Accident Lawyer, Tom Sinas.
The year’s end is a time for reflection. After counting our blessings on life outside the office, some auto law nerds might ask: what happened in the world of threshold law?
This past year has been relatively stable at our appellate courts. Between September 2024 and September 2025, the Michigan Court of Appeals issued 15 unpublished threshold decisions. This is consistent with the number of threshold cases in most years.
This past year was also substantively consistent with earlier years. Once again, most of the cases involved the “serious impairment of body function” threshold. But there was one case, SGM v. Whiteford, unpublished opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued July 10, 2025 (Docket No. 370920), that addressed the “permanent serious disfigurement” threshold. Also, the aggregate outcomes were steady, with the Court of Appeals holding approximately 55% of the time that the threshold issue could not be decided as a matter of law.
Yet perhaps the most interesting facet of this year’s decisions is the Court of Appeals’ analysis of the temporal requirement of the “general ability” prong of the “serious impairment of body function” threshold. MCL 500.3135(5)(c) requires a showing that the alleged impairment “affects the injured person’s general ability to lead his or her normal life.” In terms of how long that impairment must last, the statute cryptically states: “Although temporal considerations may be relevant, there is no temporal requirement for how long an impairment must last. This examination is inherently fact and circumstance specific to each injured person, must be conducted on a case-by-case basis, and requires comparison of the injured person’s life before and after the incident.”
Searching for something more specific, the Court of Appeals this year referred to its last published threshold decision in Piccone v. Gillette, 327 Mich App 16 (2019). Piccone involved a clavicle injury to a three-year-old child who experienced the following: a few weeks of missed school; inability to use playground equipment upon returning to school; needing assistance going to the bathroom, dressing, and traversing stairs; and an inability to do things like color, ride a bike, or play with friends. Although the defense highlighted that these impairments lasted only a couple of months, the Court found that there was a question of fact regarding threshold injury.
In this year’s cases, the Court of Appeals relied on Piccone for different outcomes in two cases. In SGM v. Whiteford, supra, the Court found that the injured child’s inability to wear pants or spend time with friends was insufficient to create a question of fact and thus affirmed summary disposition for the defendant. Yet Croskey v. Tank, unpublished opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued September 18, 2025 (Docket No. 371418), also involved an injury to a child where the child was unable to spend time with friends for “several weeks if not months.” The Croskey Court reversed the trial court and found a question of fact on the threshold injury issue.
Stay tuned for more threshold injury news in 2026 as Grand Rapids Car Accident Lawyer Tom Sinas. continues tracking these developments.