Adventures in the Law: Pitfalls

Here’s a riddle: How do you change the oil without parking your car?

Give up? The answer is that in some jurisdictions, maybe most, a car undergoing an oil change is never considered parked.

A Michigan woman, we'll call her Catherine, found this out following a mishap at Friendly Oil Change. Inside the service area, her car had come to a complete stopover but not completely covering a service pit. The gearshift was in the P position, the engine was turned off, and Catherine exited the car.

Beginning his work, the technician thought the filter needed changing. He asked Catherine to look, so she followed him toward the front of the car. She later testified that she noticed that the area around the service bay was painted yellow but didn’t know what that meant.

Stepping onto the yellow-painted area, Catherine slipped and fell into the gap between the front of her car and the end of the service pit. She later testified that she was not looking down because her eyes were on the technician.

She turned to her insurance company for compensation for her injuries. When her insurer denied coverage, she sued for personal injury protection (PIP) benefits under Michigan’s no-fault act. She claimed eligibility under either or both of two provisions: injuries arising (a) out of the “maintenance of a motor vehicle” or (b) “out of the use of a motor vehicle … that was parked in such a way as to cause unreasonable risk of bodily injury.”

Her insurer answered that (a) Catherine was not performing maintenance and (b) the car was not parked in a way that caused unreasonable risk. On the latter point, her insurer presented footage from Friendly’s security camera showing that Catherine had ample opportunity to observe, react to, and avoid any alleged hazard.

The trial court ruled that Catherine was engaged in car maintenance when she was injured. It ruled that the parked car exception was not applicable, but if it were, Catherine would be eligible for PIP benefits because the car was parked in a way that exposed part of the pit.

Her insurer appealed, arguing that Catherine's injuries did not arise out of maintenance of her car and the car was not parked in a way that created an unreasonable risk of injury. In her insurer’s view, the sole cause of the fall was clear: Catherine didn’t watch where she was walking.

On the maintenance issue, the Court of Appeals came down squarely on her insurer’s side, ruling that “plaintiff’s claimed injuries did not arise out of the maintenance of her vehicle.” Instead, “it was plaintiff’s lack of attention to where she was walking that caused her to fall into the service pit ….”

Turning to the parked car provision, the court noted that in a prior case, it had ruled that “a vehicle is not necessarily parked just because it is stopped, halted, standing, or otherwise not presently in motion.” 

Furthermore, the court noted that Catherine argued that if her car had completely covered the service pit, she could not have fallen into it. Therefore, the court reasoned, she was not really arguing about how the car was parked. Rather, she was “actually contesting the positioning [italics in original] of her vehicle over a service pit.” And, of course, the no-fault act contains no coverage for injuries from unsafely positioned cars, only injuries from unsafely parked cars. Reversed and remanded.

The lesson: Even though a car is stopped, the engine is turned off, and the gearshift in P as it undergoes an oil change, it is not parked. It is positioned. Apparently, in the oil change context, P means position.