Back to Basics: Injured Person Lacks Standing to Pursue Bills After Assignment

When a person injured in an automobile accident grants assignments to their medical providers, the providers become “the real parties in interest with respect to their claims for benefits, and only they [can] sue to recover those benefits.” Farrar v SMART, ___ Mich App ___; ___ NW2d ___ (2023) (Docket No. 358872), slip op at 6.

“[U]pon execution” of such assignments, the injured person no longer has “standing to sue to recover the benefits associated with those providers….” Id.

Because the providers/assignees hold a separate legal right, the intervening providers in Farrar were considered new parties and therefore, their intervening complaints did not relate back to the original filing date, for purposes of the one-year-back rule. Id. at ___; slip op at 4-5.

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