The Court of Appeals recently held that a lawsuit filed by an injured person against an insurance company for uninsured motorist benefits/underinsured motorist benefits does not preclude a second lawsuit brought by a doctor of hospital against the same insurer to recover no-fault first-party PIP benefits for medical expenses. The court noted that the doctrine of res judicata is applied broadly to bar not only claims already litigated, but also every claim arising from the same transactions that the parties exercising reasonable diligence could have raised but did not. The court further noted, however, that res judicata is intended to promote fairness, not lighten the loads of the state courts by precluding suits whenever and wherever possible. The court reasoned that the injured person and the hospital were not “privies,” and thus the doctrine of res judicata did not apply and the second lawsuit was not precluded. The case is VHS Huon Valley Sinai Hospital d/b/a DMC Surgery Hospital v Sentinel Insurance Co, unpublished Michigan Court of Appeals case 328005, decided October 13, 2016.
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