The agencies receive commissions from defendant. Plaintiffs objected to the publication of this information, claiming that they had a property right in the information concerning expirations which defendant planned to publish. Plaintiffs filed the instant suit in an effort to stop publication of the reports. In June 1994, the trial court granted plaintiffs a temporary injunction halting publication. Defendant moved for summary disposition in July 1994, and the trial court granted defendant's motion and lifted the injunction.
Plaintiffs argue that the trial court's grant of summary disposition was improper.
In Woodruff , our Supreme Court was asked to decide the extent to which the American Agency System, a custom recognized in Michigan as being generally applicable to insurance agencies, affected the rights of the parties in the case, an insurance company and an agent who had been terminated. To this extent, and no further, the custom should be respected and enforced. Plaintiffs' argument that the American Agency System as discussed in Woodruff should be extended to afford them protection of the expirations data at issue in the instant case must fail. However, such a characterization is unwarranted, and thus their position untenable. Furthermore, unlike private insurance companies, defendant was created by statute to fulfill certain purposes, namely to provide worker's compensation insurance to uninsurable employers and to encourage maximum use of the private insurance system.