Court Opinion

ID: 9593167
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:20:21.275586+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:22:48.066519
License: Public Domain

ON REMAND
Before: Holbrook, Jr., P.J., and Griffin and Marilyn Kelly, JJ.
Marilyn Kelly, J.
This matter is before us on remand from the Supreme Court for consideration as on leave granted. 436 Mich 866 (1990). Plaintiff appeals and defendant cross appeals from an order of the St. Clair Circuit Court which affirmed in part and reversed in part the judgment of the district court.
*288Plaintiff argues that the circuit court erred by denying no-fault automobile insurance work-loss benefits to her after she voluntarily quit her job. In its cross appeal, defendant argues that the court erred in allowing plaintiff work-loss benefits after she resumed employment. We reverse that portion of the circuit court order denying plaintiff all work-loss benefits after she became voluntarily unemployed and affirm the remainder of the order.
On November 16, 1985, plaintiff was injured in an automobile accident which disabled her from her employment. When she was medically released to return to work on March 6, 1986, a permanent replacement had filled her position with her original employer. Plaintiff received no-fault work-loss benefits until she began work for a new employer on September 1, 1986. Her wages in the new position were, on average, $233.60 lower per week than those paid by her former employer. Within two months, plaintiff became dissatisfied with her new job and voluntarily resigned.
Plaintiff argued below that defendant, the no-fault insurance carrier, was liable for eighty-five percent of her wage differential. The differential is the spread between her earnings at her former employment and those at her new employment the two months she worked there and while she was voluntarily unemployed. See MCL 500.3107(b); MSA 24.13107(b). The district court ruled that defendant was responsible for no work-loss benefits after plaintiff commenced her second job. The circuit court reversed and held defendant responsible for eighty-five percent of the wage differential after plaintiff returned to work. We affirm that ruling. However, the circuit court went on to refuse to make defendant responsible for any work-loss benefits after plaintiff became voluntarily unemployed. With that holding, we disagree.
*289The question here is not whether plaintiff should have the same work-loss benefits after she voluntarily quit her new job as she received before she began it. She should not. At issue is whether plaintiff should have the same benefits after she quit as she was entitled to while working the second job. Those benefits are based solely on the difference between what plaintiff was paid before the accident and what she was paid in her new job.
The no-fault insurance act defines "work loss” personal protection insurance as:
Work loss consisting of loss of income from work an injured person would have performed during the first 3 years after the date of the accident if he had not been injured .... [MCL 500.3107(b); MSA 24.13107(b).]
"Work loss” includes actual loss of income. It does not include loss of earning capacity. Ouellette v Kenealy, 424 Mich 83; 378 NW2d 470 (1985). Here, the circuit court ruled that after plaintiff chose to become voluntarily unemployed, her "work-loss” claim was for loss of earning capacity rather than for loss of actual earnings. We disagree. Quellette quite clearly distinguishes the earning capacity loss involved there with a wage loss, which is what plaintiff suffered in the case before us.
Work-loss benefits are payable only for loss of actual income caused by automobile accident injuries. We recognize that subsequent events which are independent and intervening may break the necessary chain of causation. See Smith v League General Ins Co, 143 Mich App 112; 371 NW2d 491 (1985), rev’d 424 Mich 893 (1986); MacDonald v State Farm Mutual Ins Co, 419 Mich 146; 350 *290NW2d 233 (1984); Luberda v Farm Bureau General Ins Co, 163 Mich App 457; 415 NW2d 245 (1987); Coates v Michigan Mutual Ins Co, 105 Mich App 290; 306 NW2d 484 (1981).
In this case, unlike MacDonald, Smith and Luberda, no independent and intervening event broke the chain of causation. By contrast, in MacDonald, the plaintiff had a heart attack which was unrelated to the accident-related injuries. In Smith and Luberda, it was the plaintiffs’ subsequent incarcerations that prevented them from working. In each of these cases, the plaintiffs would have earned no wages after the intervening events, even had the automobile accidents and resultant injuries never occurred. See Ouellette, supra.
Although Coates involved a claim for work-loss benefits, it too is distinguishable from this case. Coates, 297-298. Coates held that work-loss benefits are for loss of income an injured person would have received but for the "injury” and not, as the plaintiff argued, but for the "accident.” Id., 298. The plaintiff in Coates suffered loss of income because of damage to his truck caused by the accident, not because of injuries sustained.
Our decision in this case, to continue benefits based on the pay differential, does not reward plaintiff for quitting; it also does not reward defendant for the happenstance that plaintiff’s new job did not work out. Furthermore, it implicitly recognizes that plaintiff was forced to take the new job because of accident-related injuries. The benefits which plaintiff is eligible for are those which resulted from wage loss due to her injuries and which continued regardless of whether she kept the new job.
We find no basis to deny plaintiff no-fault work-loss benefits for pay loss suffered because of her accident-related injuries, reduced by the wages she *291would have earned. Moreover, based on our analysis of this claim, we find no merit to defendant’s cross appeal.
Affirmed in part, reversed in part.
Holbrook, Jr., P.J., concurred.