The No-Fault Act (NFA) (MCL 500.3101 et seq.); Security requirement; MCL 500.3101(1); Dye v. Esurance Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co.; Insurer priority; MCL 500.3114(4); Stone v. Auto-Owners Ins. Co.; Latent ambiguity; Shay v. Aldrich; Rescission on the basis of misrepresentation; Titan Ins. Co. v. Hyten; Materiality; Oade v. Jackson Nat’l Life Ins. Co. of MI; Silent fraud; U.S. Fid. & Guar. Co. v. Black; "Including"; Intentional injury; Burden of proving a policy exclusion; Hunt v. Drielick; Whether conduct is intentional; Miller v. Farm Bureau Mut. Ins. Co.; Reckless conduct; American Alternative Ins. Co., Inc. v. York; Circumstantial evidence; Bergen v. Baker; Skinner v. Square D Co.; Relevant evidence; MRE 401; Evidence of a person’s character; MRE 404(a); Rock v. Crocker; Other acts evidence; People v. Mardlin; People v. Sabin (After Remand); Attorney fees & penalty interest; MCL 500.3148(1) & 500.3142(4); Overdue personal injury protection (PIP) benefits; MCL 500.3142(2); Effect of a judgment that an insurer owes PIP benefits that have not been paid; Nashal v. Fremont Ins. Co.

The court found no merit in defendant-Esurance’s claim that plaintiff-Sowle was not entitled to PIP benefits where her mother (R) was a co-owner of the car involved in the accident and maintained insurance on it. While Esurance abandoned its priority claim in the trial court, the court considered it and concluded that Sowle was entitled to collect benefits from Esurance under MCL 500.3114(4)(a) because it insured R. It also rejected Esurance’s contention that it was entitled to rescind the policy on the basis of a misrepresentation, and determined that Esurance failed to prove that Sowle intended to commit suicide. Finally, it upheld the award of attorney fees and penalty interest to Sowle under the NFA. R shared the policy with her then-boyfriend (H) and it was paid for with her credit card. Finding that there was a latent ambiguity in the policy, the court agreed with the trial court that “the terms ‘named insured’ and ‘additional driver’ were synonymous.” It noted that the “policy did not use the terms ‘rated operator’ or ‘additional driver’ in any location other than the declarations page. And when the policy used the term ‘named insured,’ it did not place that term in quotation marks with boldface and italics.” The declarations page provided that both H and R were “Rated Operators,” and listed under “Driver Type” that H was “Named Insured” and R was “Additional driver.” The contract contemplated “more than one person may be a named insured by stating that ‘you’ or ‘your’ refers to ‘[t]he named insured(s) shown on the Declarations page[.]’ Second, according to the testimony of the Esurance agent who originally facilitated the policy for [R] and [H], a licensed insurance agent who was employed by and exclusively sold insurance policies for Esurance, the terms ‘Rated Operator’ and ‘Additional driver’ are synonymous with ‘named insured’ under the policy.” As to rescission, the court determined that Esurance failed to show that the ownership status of the car was material or that H “engaged in silent fraud when he failed to inform Esurance that the vehicle would be kept at another address and that Sowle would drive it.” Further, the trial court did not err in concluding that Esurance offered “speculation rather than circumstantial evidence to support that Sowle attempted suicide during” the incident, or that Esurance’s withholding of benefits was unreasonable. Affirmed.