Opinion ID: 848642
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: the legislature's intention with respect to food

Text: It is difficult to deny that food is a product reasonably necessary for the care of an invalid, however narrowly care is defined. Without nourishment, an injured person could not be restored to health and could not properly be cared for. In fact, without it, a person's physical well-being would be immediately threatened. A finding that food is necessary for care accords with the purpose of the no-fault act: to provide benefits needed by someone injured in an automobile accident. There is a limitation on those benefits in the act: all benefits reasonably necessary. Given the wide variety of circumstances under which injured parties seek no-fault benefits, the act provides for wide latitude in determining what benefits are reasonably necessary in a given situation. Unfortunately, the majority limits the wide latitude provided by the Legislature by restrictively reading the word care. It is noteworthy that the Legislature did not expressly limit the expenses recoverable in no-fault cases to those that the injured person did not require before the injury. It could have included, but did not, a clause such as benefits are payable except for those that were reasonably necessary for the care of the person before the injury. It is the majority, not the Legislature, that writes this limitation into the act. The majority concludes that food is not necessary for the care of Mr. Griffith because he requires food, injured or not. It adds that food has nothing to do with an injured party's care, recovery, or rehabilitation. It further reasons that food is not an allowable expense when consumed in the home, although it is an allowable expense in an institution. [4] This is not a reasonable construction of the statutory language. Nothing in the language of the no-fault act indicates that whether a home-based expense is allowable depends on whether an uninjured person has the same expense. The act's language mandates that the appropriate question is whether the injured person reasonably incurred the questioned expense as part of his or her care, recovery, or rehabilitation. The logic in the majority's reasoning is, charitably speaking, illusory. If an automobile accident victim is hospitalized, the reasonable cost of his or her food is a covered expense under § 3107(1)(a). If another automobile accident victim requires the same care, but receives it at home, the reasonable cost of his or her food likewise should be a covered expense under § 3107(1)(a). I agree with Justice Boyle's partial concurrence in Manley v Detroit Automobile Inter-Ins Exch, [5] and the Court of Appeals decision in Reed: no principled distinction justifies a holding that, where a patient is institutionalized, food is a reasonably necessary expense, but if he or she is home receiving the same care, it is not. Moreover, the plain language of the no-fault act makes no such distinction. The majority claims that its ruling is necessary to keep down the cost of no-fault insurance. However, the record contains no evidence to support that claim. There is nothing to indicate that no-fault insurance has become unaffordable because of in-home food expenses that insurers until now have been required to provide to catastrophically injured policyholders. [6] The facts of Mr. Griffith's case illustrate the complexity of the issue before us and why the Legislature could not have intended the interpretation made by the majority. Mr. Griffith is receiving one hundred percent institutional care, albeit in a home setting. He resides in his own home and is being cared for solely by medical professionals, his wife having been placed in a nursing home. Thus, family members play no role in cooking for Douglas Griffith or in providing his food. There is no evidence that his meals differ in any respect from those he earlier received in the hospital. Because food in both settings is necessary for his care, both should be compensable under the act. The only distinction between Mr. Griffith's hospital care and his in-home care is the location at which he receives it. The language of the no-fault act does not limit expenses only to those incurred in a hospital setting. This is a new rule created by the Court. The majority attempts to buttress its interpretation by asserting that it has discerned the policy choice made by the Legislature. It insists that my reading is my own policy choice that cannot be accurate unless the Legislature amends the no-fault act. This is a logical fallacy that assumes the majority's conclusion as its premise. Also faulty is the majority's assertion that my reading of the statute essentially invent[s] a new entitlement system. Ante at 904 n. 13. To the contrary, my reading of the statute conforms with the law as interpreted for at least the past twelve years. The Court of Appeals made the same application. While the majority's accusations and appeal to cost concerns create a rhetorical flourish, it is the majority, and not I, that advocates a drastic change in established law. Let there be no mistake in this: motorists, required to purchase no-fault insurance in order to drive in Michigan, now have one less resource available to them because of the majority's restrictive reading of the no-fault act. The majority holds that food, as a matter of law, is never reasonably necessary for one's care, recovery, or rehabilitation outside a hospital. A proper reading of the text belies the majority's conclusions. There is no need to require the Legislature to amend its decision that all expenses should be covered as long as reasonably necessary to an injured person's care, recovery, and rehabilitation.