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Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan's lawsuit seeking to have Michigan's no-fault auto insurance law declared unconstitutional opens up a new front in his quest to get substantial changes made to a law that has produced America's highest auto insurance premiums.
After hitting legislative resistance, Duggan is attempting to make an end run around the Capitol and get a federal judge to toss out the 45-year-old no-fault law, which would revert Michigan to a tort state where injured drivers have to go to court to get their medical bills paid.
And some on both sides of the debate think the lawsuit just might have a shot at succeeding.
For years, the Legislature has been in a constant impasse over reforming the auto no-fault system, as insurance companies have pushed for wholesale changes and hospitals, medical providers and personal injury attorneys with a vested interest in the multibillion-dollar industry have been fighting to preserve the system.
"I no longer have any faith in Lansing to do the right thing," Duggan said last week after he and eight metro Detroit motorists sued the state insurance commissioner in U.S. District Court.
Duggan's lawsuit seeks to test a 1978 Michigan Supreme Court ruling known as the Shavers decision that said compulsory auto insurance has to be available to motorists at "fair and equitable rates." The lawsuit alleges auto insurance premiums in Detroit and many surrounding suburbs have "become unconstitutionally unaffordable."
"It is a very interesting play," said Vince Colella, a personal injury lawyer with the Southfield firm Moss & Colella PC. "I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a political ploy. But it does feel like a little bit of an act of desperation on the part of the mayor."
Four decades after the Shavers decision, Duggan is trying to upend an auto insurance law that now accounts for one-in-three lawsuits in Michigan's circuit courts, where personal injury...