Frequently asked questions

No-fault means your own auto insurer pays your crash benefits regardless of who caused the accident. That first claim, your PIP claim, covers medical bills and lost wages. Fault still matters for the second claim, against the at-fault driver, which covers pain and suffering. Two claims, two sets of rules.

Most people in Michigan only ever file the first one. Your PIP benefits are a bundle, not a single check: reasonable and necessary medical care, a share of the income you lose, attendant care when you need help with daily life, replacement services for the household work you cannot do, and mileage to every medical appointment. Almost nobody claims the mileage.

The second claim is the one insurers never mention. Michigan no-fault does not pay for pain and suffering, so if another driver's negligence put you in a hospital bed, that recovery comes from a separate case against them. Deadlines govern both, and they are not the same deadline.

If you were hurt in a crash in Birmingham, anywhere in Oakland County, or across Metro Detroit, a real person answers when you call. Here is how we run both claims.

A Michigan property owner owes you reasonable care. What that means in practice depends on why you were on the property, because the law sorts visitors into three groups.

If you were there for the owner's business benefit, you are an invitee. A shopper, a restaurant guest, a tenant walking to the mailbox. The owner owes you reasonable care to protect you from an unreasonable risk of harm caused by a dangerous condition on the land. That includes looking for hazards, not just reacting to the ones already reported.

If you were a social guest, you are usually a licensee. The owner has to warn you about hidden dangers they know about or have reason to know about. They do not have to go inspect the property before you come over.

If you had no permission to be there, you are a trespasser, and the owner only has to refrain from wilful and wanton misconduct.

None of this turns a property owner into an insurance policy. Falling on someone's floor does not by itself make them responsible. The question that decides these cases is whether the owner knew about the hazard, or should have known about it, and what a reasonable owner would have done next. Since 2023 that question belongs to the fact-finder, which in a tried case means the jury.

It comes down to facts. Cameras, work orders, weather records, inspection logs. Bring us what you have and we will tell you what it shows.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO. A person answers.

You pay nothing upfront and nothing ever unless we recover money for you. The fee is a percentage of the recovery, governed by Michigan's rules for injury cases [cite MCR 8.121], and it is in your written agreement before we start, not negotiated after.

Close to it. Michigan's dog bite statute, MCL 287.351, holds a dog owner liable for a bite even if the dog never showed a hint of aggression before. There is no free first bite under this statute.

The law asks two things. Were you on public property, or lawfully on private property, including the owner's own yard? And did you provoke the dog? If you were where you had a right to be and you did nothing to set the dog off, the owner is liable for the damages you suffered. What the owner knew about the dog does not matter. Michigan courts have described this as an almost absolute liability.

Michigan also treats these claims differently from most injury cases. In a typical injury case, a jury can reduce your recovery by your share of the fault. In Hill v Sacka, the Court of Appeals held that comparative fault does not cut a statutory dog bite claim that way.

That does not make the case automatic. Provocation and lawful presence are real defenses, and they usually go to a jury. Insurance adjusters know both. The facts of the first ten seconds matter more than people expect.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO. A person answers, and the consultation is free.

Your own auto policy pays first, through PIP benefits. If you do not have a policy, coverage follows a priority order: a spouse's policy, then a resident relative's, and for some situations the Michigan Assigned Claims Plan. Health insurance coordinates depending on your policy choices. Your medical providers can bill the auto insurer directly.

That priority order catches people out. A passenger in someone else's car, a pedestrian struck in a crosswalk, a cyclist hit on Woodward, a teenager driving on a parent's policy: each of those has a path to PIP medical benefits, and most never claim it because nobody told them the path existed.

What your insurer pays is capped by the PIP level you chose after the 2019 no-fault reform, and by the post-reform fee schedules. When a provider says your insurer will not cover treatment, that is a coverage dispute, not a final answer. Keep every bill, every referral, and every explanation of benefits.

Do not pay a crash-related medical bill out of pocket before someone checks whether your auto policy owes it. Call 844-ASK-AZZO and ask. That answer is free.

No. Not the way it used to. Since 2023 the fact that a hazard was obvious no longer ends a Michigan case before a jury ever sees it.

In Kandil-Elsayed v F & E Oil, decided in July 2023, the Michigan Supreme Court overruled Lugo v Ameritech in two ways. First, whether a hazard was open and obvious is no longer part of whether the owner owed you a duty at all. It now goes to breach and comparative fault, which belong to the jury. Second, the Court threw out the special aspects doctrine. If a property owner should have anticipated that people would get hurt by an obvious condition anyway, the owner is not relieved of the duty to use reasonable care.

Read that carefully, because the doctrine is not gone. The Court moved it. The question is still real, and it is still tested the same way. Would an average person with ordinary intelligence have discovered it on casual inspection? Defendants still raise it. Defendants still win with it.

What changed is who decides. A judge used to be able to end the case on paper. Now those facts usually get weighed by a jury alongside everything else.

This area is also moving. A bill that would change the rules for commercial property passed the Michigan House in March 2026 by a vote of 58 to 48 and now sits in a Senate committee. As of this writing it has not been enacted. Ask where it stands the week you call.

Ask Azzo. 844-ASK-AZZO.

Michigan caps contingency fees in personal injury cases at one third of the net recovery [VERIFY current rule statement]. Gross versus net matters: know whether the percentage applies before or after case costs, and see it in writing. At Azzo Law the agreement is walked line by line before you sign, and you keep a copy.

That depends on what insurance sits behind the dog, and finding out is the first thing we do. Many dog bite claims in Michigan are paid by the dog owner's homeowners or renters insurance, because those policies commonly include personal liability coverage.

Whether a particular policy covers a particular bite depends on that policy's language, its limits, and its exclusions. We cannot tell you the answer before we read it. So we read it. We ask for the declarations page early, we look at how the policy defines who is covered and where, and we tell you what we find in plain English, including when the news is not good.

One more thing worth knowing. Under Michigan insurance regulation, a home insurer generally cannot refuse or cancel coverage just because you own a pet, though it may charge more for certain breeds if it can justify the rate.

Most people who call us about a bite are not angry. They are stuck. The dog belongs to a sister, a landlord's tenant, a neighbor who waves every morning. They want the medical bills dealt with, they do not want to detonate a relationship, and they have no idea how to hold both at once. Say that out loud when you call. We would rather know.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO and ask. No pressure.

Both, for different things. Your own insurer owes your no-fault benefits. The at-fault driver owes damages those benefits never touch, like pain and suffering. Most people only pursue the first claim and leave the second on the table. That is the expensive mistake.

The two cases run on different rules and different clocks. The claim against your own insurer is about benefits: medical care, lost wages, attendant care, replacement services. The claim against the driver who hit you is about what Michigan calls non-economic damages, and it requires proving a threshold injury.

They are also fought differently. Your own insurer already has your file and can cut benefits off after an independent medical exam. The at-fault driver's insurer wants your fault percentage as high as it can get it, because Michigan's comparative fault rule reduces what you recover.

Running one without the other is how people end up with treatment paid and nothing for the year they lost. We run both together so neither gets shortchanged. Free consultation, and a real person answers at 844-ASK-AZZO.

You prove a Michigan slip and fall with two things. Evidence of the hazard, and evidence the property owner knew or should have known about it. The second one is the harder half.

Michigan courts call that the notice element, and it survived the 2023 change to the open and obvious rule. A published Court of Appeals decision in 2025 confirmed it. You still have to show the owner had actual notice of the hazard, or that it sat there long enough that a reasonable owner would have found it. A puddle that appeared thirty seconds before you walked through it is a very different case from a puddle that had been there since the morning shift.

Notice lives in records that do not last. Store surveillance often records over itself in days or weeks. Floor inspection sheets get boxed. The employee who mopped moves on. What a lawyer can ask a business to hold onto in week one may simply not be there in month four.

So do these things now. Photograph the hazard and the area around it, with something in frame for scale. Ask for a copy of the incident report and write down the manager's name. Get names and numbers from anyone who saw it. Keep the shoes and clothes you wore, unwashed. Get medical care, and tell them you fell.

If you fell this week, call 844-ASK-AZZO this week.

Flat fees for defined matters like tickets and uncontested divorce, hourly for disputes, always quoted before work starts [VERIFY rate schedule pending Kyle]. These matters are never contingency, for anyone, by rule. No surprise billing: scope changes get discussed before they get billed.

Get the wound cleaned and looked at, then report the bite. Under Michigan's public health rules, anyone who knows about an animal bite where rabies is suspected has 24 hours to report it to the local health department. Mich Admin Code R 325.180(6) puts that duty on the person who knows, not only on the doctor.

In Oakland County, the Health Division observes a healthy owned dog or cat for ten days for signs of illness. Its guidance is that if the animal is alive, well, eating and drinking ten days after the bite, no rabies treatment is needed. The County also directs that if you were treated, your provider fills out a Bite Report Form and faxes it to Animal Control at 248-858-5841, and that if the bite did not need medical care, you can call the Health Division yourself at 248-858-1280.

Then write down what you can while it is fresh. The owner's name and address. Whether the dog is vaccinated. Where you were standing and where the dog came from. The names of anyone who saw it.

Photograph the wound the day it happens, and keep photographing it as it heals. Bites change. A puncture that looks small on Tuesday can be a scar you see in every school picture. Photos taken over weeks tell that story better than any description.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO. We can walk you through the next step in one phone call.

Michigan law prohibits insurers from raising your rates for a claim where you were not at fault [cite MCL provision]. Real life has caveats, and renewals can move for other reasons, but filing the claim you paid premiums for is not something to fear. Ask us if your situation is unusual.

We cannot tell you a number, and you should be careful with anyone who gives you one on a first call. What we can do is tell you honestly whether the case is worth pursuing. We do tell people when it is not.

The value of a Michigan fall case turns on things that are specific to you. How badly you were hurt and whether the injury is permanent. What your treatment has cost and what is still ahead. Wage loss, and whether you can go back to the work you did before. What the evidence actually shows about the hazard and about what the owner knew. And how much of the fall a jury would put on you, because Michigan reduces your recovery by your own share of fault.

Then there is the part nobody advertises. Whether there is insurance or assets behind the defendant at all. A judgment against a business with neither is a piece of paper. We look at what is collectible before we tell you what we think.

Some falls do not make a case. A minor bruise, a hazard the owner had no real way to know about, a property owner with nothing behind them. If that is your situation we will say so on the phone, and you will not have wasted an afternoon finding out.

Ask and you will get a straight answer. 844-ASK-AZZO. The consultation is free.

For injury cases: free, genuinely, with no obligation, and if the answer is "you do not need a lawyer for this," that is the answer you get. For general-practice matters: [VERIFY whether scoping calls are free]. Bring what you have, and do not wait until it is organized. We have seen shoeboxes.

There is no average, and any number you find on a website is a guess. What a dog bite claim is worth depends on the bite, the person, and the policy behind it.

Michigan's dog bite statute makes the owner liable for the damages the bitten person suffered. That covers what you can count and what you cannot. Emergency care, the surgeon, the follow-ups. Time off work. And the part that never shows up on a bill, which is what the injury did to your life and how long it keeps doing it.

Facial and hand bites carry more weight than most people expect, because they scar where the world can see. Children are different again. A scar on a growing body changes as the child grows, and a plastic surgeon often cannot say what a final revision looks like for years. A number that seems generous in month two can look very different in year six.

We do not take the first offer for a healing child. Not because we like the fight, but because the first offer usually arrives before anyone knows how the scar settles. We would rather wait for the doctors to tell us something real.

We cannot promise you a result. We can promise you a straight answer about what we are seeing.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO. The consultation is free.

Yes, a snow and ice fall can be a case in Michigan. This state rejected the natural accumulation rule a long time ago. An owner does not get a free pass just because the ice fell out of the sky instead of leaking out of a cooler.

The Michigan Supreme Court settled that in 1975 in Quinlivan v Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. A property owner has to take reasonable measures within a reasonable time after snow and ice accumulate to reduce the hazard to people invited onto the property. Salt, plow, shovel, warn, rope off the worst of it. Something reasonable, within a reasonable window.

The 2023 open and obvious decision was itself a snow and ice case, and the Court reaffirmed Quinlivan in it. The Court also rejected the reading that owners must now keep a lot clear during every storm. That is not what the decision says. Reasonable is still the standard.

So the real questions are about timing. When did it start? When did it stop? When was the lot last treated, and by whom? Records may hold part of the answer. Weather data. Service invoices. Plow contractor logs. Whether any of it adds up to a breach is for a jury to weigh, and you cannot reach that question without the records. They are easy to lose, and we would rather ask for them now than argue about them later.

Fell in a lot in Birmingham, Troy, or Royal Oak? Call 844-ASK-AZZO.

Less than an adjuster will suggest, and more than most people assume. Provocation is the defense insurers reach for first in a Michigan dog bite case, and it does not require that you meant to do anything at all.

In Brans v Extrom, a woman stepped backward onto an elderly dog and the dog bit her leg. The Court of Appeals held that an unintentional act can still be provocation. The question is not what you meant to do. Courts look at the act itself and the effect it would reasonably be expected to have on a normal dog in the same situation.

That cuts both ways. In Bradacs v Jiacobone, a twelve-year-old dropped a football near a dog that was eating, and the court did not treat that as provocation that relieved the owner. In Koivisto v Davis, the Court of Appeals held that a dog already in a provoked or attacking state cannot be provoked again. If a dog is on you and you fight back, that is not provocation. That is survival.

Most of the time this is a jury question, not something a judge settles on paper. Which is exactly why the earliest version of events carries so much weight.

If an adjuster has already hinted that you brought this on yourself, call 844-ASK-AZZO before you answer them.

Three years for most Michigan injury claims, under MCL 600.5805(2). That is the number people remember. It is also the number that costs people cases, because a whole category of falls does not run on it.

If a government body owns the ground, the real deadline arrives long before three years. Under MCL 691.1404, a claim involving a defective highway requires written notice within 120 days of the injury, and sidewalk claims run through that same requirement. The notice has to state the exact location and nature of the defect, your injury, and the witnesses you know of. Michigan courts enforce those 120 days as written, even where the delay harmed nobody.

The rest of the map. A person injured before turning 18 gets 180 days to serve that notice. Highway claims run on a two year limitations period, not three. A claim against the State of Michigan requires a filing with the Court of Claims clerk within six months. A child hurt today keeps the general deadline open at least until their nineteenth birthday, and possibly longer, because three years from the injury can land later than that. None of that extra time rescues a missed government notice.

This is not meant to frighten you. It is meant to get you on the phone in week one instead of month eleven. The first thing we ask is who owned the ground you fell on. City, county, road commission, state, private landlord. The answer changes your entire calendar.

You do not need to know it. Call 844-ASK-AZZO and we will find out.

Take care of the wound and the health department reporting first, then know this. A child bitten in Michigan generally has more time than an adult. Under MCL 600.5851, a claim that belongs to a child is protected at minimum until their 19th birthday, and possibly longer, because the ordinary three-year deadline can land later than that depending on how old the child was when it happened.

More time does not make waiting free. Witnesses move. Dogs get rehomed. The neighbor who saw the whole thing in June does not remember it the same way in December.

There is also a piece parents miss. A parent's own claim can work differently from the child's. Ask us about that one directly rather than assuming the two match.

The part we spend the most time on is the scar. A child's face and hands change as they grow, and a plastic surgeon usually cannot tell you in month two what a revision looks like in year five. That is why we do not push a child's case toward a number. We wait for the doctors to say something they can stand behind.

Bring us the photos, the ER paperwork, and whatever the health department sent you. Call 844-ASK-AZZO. A person answers.

You may have a claim, and you are on a much shorter clock. Sidewalk falls against a Michigan municipality run under MCL 691.1402a, and the rules there are specific enough that guessing at them costs people cases.

A municipal corporation has to keep an adjacent sidewalk in reasonable repair. To hold it responsible, you have to show that at least 30 days before you fell, the municipality knew or should have known about the defect. That 30 days gets misread constantly. It is not a repair deadline. No city gets 30 days to fix a sidewalk. It is a knowledge requirement, and proving it is your job.

The statute also starts you in a hole. The law presumes the sidewalk was in reasonable repair. You can rebut that presumption with a vertical discontinuity of two inches or more, or with a dangerous condition of a particular character beyond a simple height difference. Two inches does not mean you win. It means you have a shot at getting past a presumption, and the judge, not the jury, decides whether you did.

On top of all that, the 120 day written notice to the government still applies, with the exact location and nature of the defect spelled out.

So measure the lift. Photograph it from the side with a tape or a coin against the edge, before the city grinds it down and the evidence disappears. Then call.

844-ASK-AZZO. We answer.

Possibly, but not under the dog bite statute. MCL 287.351 is written for bites. It begins with the words "If a dog bites a person," and the remedy it creates runs to the person bitten. A knock-down, a scratch, or a chase does not fit inside it.

Michigan law leaves two other doors open. The first is common-law strict liability. In Trager v Thor, the Supreme Court set out what that takes. The defendant possessed the animal, the defendant knew or should have known about the animal's abnormal dangerous propensities, and the harm came from that dangerous propensity. Notice how that differs from the statute. Here, what the owner knew is the whole ballgame.

The second door is ordinary negligence. Trager also recognized liability when someone controls an animal ineffectively in a situation where injury could reasonably be expected. An unlatched gate. A dog left loose in a front yard on a street with sidewalks. These claims can be pleaded alongside each other.

Injuries from a dog that never touched you are real. In Hiner v Mojica, a cable technician was chased by a loose dog, was never bitten, and ruptured his Achilles running from it. He brought his case on those common-law theories.

If a dog put you on the ground anywhere in Oakland County, call 844-ASK-AZZO. It is worth ten minutes.

Because the exam they arranged concluded you no longer need treatment. That conclusion is contestable, and juries know who paid for it. Keep treating if your own doctors say to, keep records of everything, and bring us the cutoff letter fast.

The independent medical exam is neither independent nor an exam in the way you expect. Your insurer selects the doctor, pays the doctor, and receives the report. The appointment may run fifteen minutes. The report that follows can end months of paid treatment with one sentence about your injuries not being accident-related.

You usually have to attend. You do not have to accept what comes after. Bring someone with you, write down how long the exam actually lasted and what was actually done, and get your treating physician's opinion in writing.

The mistake that costs the most is stopping treatment because the letter arrived. Gaps in care become the insurer's best argument later. If your own doctor says keep going, keep going.

Michigan adds penalty interest and attorney fees when an insurer pays late without reasonable grounds. Bring us the cutoff letter the week it arrives. We read denials for a living.

You are in a stronger position than most people assume, and Michigan courts said so in both 2024 and 2026. If you fell in a common area of the building you live in, you were probably not a mere visitor there in the eyes of the law.

A tenant is an invitee of the landlord. In 2024 the Michigan Supreme Court held that a condominium co-owner is an invitee of the association in the common elements, overruling the older rule that said otherwise. In 2026 the Court of Appeals carried that reasoning further and treated a short term rental guest as an invitee of the condo association. Invitee is the highest level of protection Michigan premises law offers.

Residential tenants get a second, separate route. MCL 554.139 places a statutory covenant on a landlord to keep the premises and the common areas fit for their intended use. Courts have held that a claim under that statute does not carry the notice requirement an ordinary premises claim does. And fitness gets measured against the tenants the housing was actually intended for. A stairwell in senior housing has to be fit for the residents who live there, not for a hypothetical twenty five year old.

Snow in the lot. A burned out stairwell light. A loose handrail. The walkway between buildings. Those are common areas, and somebody is responsible for them.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO, and have your lease or your association documents handy.

Sometimes, and Michigan law is restrictive here. The dog bite statute reaches owners. A landlord who does not own, keep, or control the dog does not fall under it.

The common-law cases have drawn a hard line. In Szkodzinski v Griffin, the Court of Appeals refused to impose strict liability on a landlord in that position, leaving only a narrow opening where the landlord knew of the dog's vicious nature. In Feister v Bosack, the court found no duty to inspect for a tenant's dangerous animal and held that the power to evict is not the same as control. In Braun v York Properties, a landlord who wrote pet rules and then failed to enforce them still owed no duty, because there was no knowledge of the dog's dangerous proclivities. The theme repeats. Knowledge is the hinge.

In 2023, Tripp v Baker opened a different route. The Court of Appeals held that a dog can be a condition on the land, and that a premises liability claim arising from a dog bite requires showing the dog is that condition and that the defendant knew of the dog's dangerous tendencies.

That route is narrow and it turns hard on facts. Prior complaints. A prior bite. A note in a management file. We look for those before we say anything at all about a property owner.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO and tell us what happened.

You can only recover benefits for the year before you file suit. Every month you wait past a denial is a month of benefits gone. Do not sit on a denial.

This is the deadline that quietly costs Michigan crash victims the most money, and it is not the statute of limitations. People confuse the two constantly. Even with a timely lawsuit, the one-year-back rule cuts off recovery for anything older than twelve months before the filing date. Wait eighteen months after a PIP denial and six months of unpaid medical bills, wage loss, attendant care, and replacement services are simply gone. Not disputed. Gone.

Insurers understand this arithmetic perfectly. A denial followed by a long, polite internal appeal that goes nowhere is not always an accident.

If your no-fault benefits were denied, reduced, or cut off after an independent medical exam, the clock started then. Bring the letter to a Michigan no-fault attorney the week you get it, not after you have exhausted the appeal.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO. The consultation is free and the phone is answered by a person.

Being partly at fault does not end your claim. Michigan reduces what you recover by your share of the blame. It does not erase it.

Here is the arithmetic. A jury assigns each person a percentage of fault, and your damages come down by your percentage. Twenty percent at fault, twenty percent less.

The one hard line sits above 50 percent. If your fault is greater than the combined fault of everyone else, MCL 600.2959 takes away your noneconomic damages. That is the pain and suffering piece. Your economic damages survive. Medical bills, wage loss, out of pocket costs, all still recoverable, all still reduced by your percentage. So the popular version of this rule, that being more than half at fault means you walk away with nothing, is simply wrong.

This matters more since the open and obvious change, because arguments that used to end cases outright now show up as fault percentages instead. Were you looking at your phone? Were you carrying boxes? Were you in the wrong shoes for January? Expect those questions. In 2026 the Michigan Supreme Court noted that what an injured person did goes to comparative fault, rather than to declaring the property owner reasonable as a matter of law.

Do not talk yourself out of calling because you think you should have been watching your feet. Tell us the whole thing and let us sort out the percentages.

844-ASK-AZZO. No pressure, and no charge to ask.

Nothing happens to a dog automatically, and none of it is decided in your injury case. Michigan's dangerous animal law, MCL 287.321 through 287.323, is a separate criminal and animal-control process. It moves through a sworn complaint and a district court hearing, and it does not pay a victim anything.

The consequences in that law attach only after a court finds the animal is a dangerous animal as MCL 287.321 defines it. That definition carves out a dog acting in self-defense, a dog responding to a trespass, and a dog reacting to provocation or torment.

If a court does get there, the outcomes fall in tiers. Destruction is mandatory where the animal caused serious injury or death. Destruction is discretionary where the animal was previously adjudicated dangerous, or where it is likely to cause future serious harm. In lesser cases a court can order something short of that, like microchipping, sterilization, escape-proof fencing with a top, or liability insurance. The owner faces separate criminal exposure, including a felony carrying up to four years where a dangerous animal causes serious injury, and involuntary manslaughter where one causes a death.

Many people who call us do not want the dog put down. It belongs to a brother. It is the family dog. The child who got bitten still loves it.

Your civil claim and the dangerous animal case are not the same case. Filing one does not start the other.

If you are worried about the dog, say so when you call. 844-ASK-AZZO.

Internal appeals rarely reverse anything on their own. The real lever is a no-fault lawsuit, where penalty interest and attorney fees apply when insurers pay late without reasonable grounds. Here is what suing your insurer looks like.

When you walk into a store or a restaurant, you are an invitee. That is the strongest footing Michigan premises law gives a visitor, and it means the business cannot simply wait to be told about a hazard before it goes looking for one.

It does not mean that falling in a store makes the store responsible. You still have to prove notice. Either an employee knew about the spill, the grape, the tracked in slush, the curled up mat, or it sat there long enough that a reasonable store would have found it. That phrase does a lot of work in these cases. Long enough.

The proof exists, briefly. Chains run floor sweep logs and inspection schedules. Managers fill out incident reports the same day. Cameras cover the front end and often the aisle. Then the system writes over itself. Retail surveillance commonly overwrites in a matter of days or weeks.

You cannot pull any of that yourself. A lawyer can ask for it, and the asking has to happen while the records are still there.

So report the fall before you leave the building. Get the report number. Photograph the floor and what you were wearing. Then call.

844-ASK-AZZO. Our office is at 33687 Woodward Ave in Birmingham, and we work across Oakland County and Metro Detroit.

Three years from the date of the bite. That comes from MCL 600.5805(2), Michigan's general deadline for personal injury claims, and it applies to a dog bite case.

Children get more room. Under MCL 600.5851, a person who is under 18 when the claim accrues has at minimum until their 19th birthday, and possibly longer. Two clocks run, and the later one controls. A child bitten at four has at least until their 19th birthday, because three years from that injury would expire at seven and the tolling rule carries the claim well past it. A teenager bitten at 17 has until 20, because there the three-year clock lands after the 19th birthday and the later date wins. Do not do this math alone. Have someone check it.

A parent's own claim can work differently from the child's. Ask us about that one directly.

Three years sounds like plenty. It is not. Evidence in a bite case is perishable in ways it is not in a car crash. Dogs get rehomed. Renters move. Vaccination records go thin. The health department file that takes one call this month becomes a records request next year.

If you are anywhere near a deadline, do not wait until you are sure. Call 844-ASK-AZZO. We will tell you where you stand, and we will tell you if you do not have a case.

A social guest in Michigan is usually a licensee, not an invitee, and that changes what your host owed you. A licensee gets a warning about hidden dangers the owner knows about or has reason to know about. A homeowner does not have to inspect the house before you come over.

So the question is narrower here than it is in a store. Did they know about the rotted step, the loose railing, the basement stair with no light? Did they say anything? A hazard the homeowner genuinely had no reason to know about is a hard case, and we will tell you that plainly rather than let you spend a year finding out.

The part people actually get stuck on is not legal. It is personal. Nobody wants to sue a friend, a neighbor, or an aunt. That hesitation is real and we are not going to talk you out of it. What we will do is read the homeowners policy. Those policies commonly include personal liability coverage, and whether a particular policy reaches a particular fall depends on that policy's language, its limits, and its exclusions. Nobody should assume the answer in either direction before someone actually looks.

One more thing worth checking. If you were on the property for a business or commercial reason rather than as a guest, your status may be different and better. Tell us why you were there. It matters more than people expect.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO and just ask. No pressure.

That turns on whether you were lawfully on the property, and Michigan's dog bite statute answers a good part of it. MCL 287.351 protects people on public property or lawfully on private property, and MCL 287.351(2) spells out what lawfully means. It covers a person performing a duty imposed by state law or by United States postal regulations, and it covers an invitee or a licensee of the person lawfully in possession of the property.

Those categories are written to reach people who are there to do a job or who were asked to come. A mail carrier on a route. A meter reader. A delivery driver at the front step. A technician in the side yard. Whether any one of them fits is a question of facts, but the statute plainly contemplates people working on someone else's property.

The statute also reaches a person bitten on the dog owner's own property, which trips people up, because many assume being a guest cancels the claim. It does not.

There is one carve-out worth naming. The protection falls away if entry was gained for an unlawful or criminal act.

Expect the question either way. Lawful presence is one of the two defenses in a dog bite file, and the answer usually turns on small facts. Which gate. Which part of the yard. What you were there to do.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO. We are at 33687 Woodward Ave in Birmingham, and we answer.

Then the contractor may answer for it directly, under ordinary negligence rather than premises liability. In 2026 the Michigan Supreme Court held that a contractor who creates a hazard and then leaves the property gets judged by ordinary negligence rules, not by the rules that apply to the possessor of the land.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Premises liability arrives with the property owner's defenses attached to it. Ordinary negligence asks a simpler question. Did this company do its work with reasonable care, and did the failure hurt you?

Which turns the case into questions about the work itself. Where did the plow put the snow? Was that pile uphill of the walkway you crossed? What happened to it when the temperature moved? Nobody gets to call any of that settled from a single photograph. Those are the questions a case has to answer, and they get answered with evidence.

It also means there may be more than one party worth looking at. The owner or association that hired the work. The contractor who performed it. The management company that scheduled it. Each usually carries its own insurance, and the contract between them often decides who is really on the hook.

The evidence here is paper. Service logs, dispatch records, invoices, truck GPS, the text message telling somebody to come out and salt. Contractors keep it. They do not keep it forever.

If you fell on ice in a lot that somebody was paid to maintain, say so when you call. 844-ASK-AZZO.

Talk to someone before you sign anything. An offer made in a kitchen with everyone still shaking gets made before anyone knows what the injury turns into, and a signed release closes the door for good.

Michigan's dog bite statute makes the owner liable for the damages the bitten person suffered. Medical bills are one piece of that. They are not the whole of it. A bite can also cost you wages, follow-up procedures, and a scar that is still there long after the last bill is paid. A child who becomes afraid of every dog on the block is carrying something real too.

None of that means the owner is acting in bad faith. Most of them are not. Most of them feel terrible, and the offer is genuine. The problem is timing, not motive. Nobody standing in that kitchen knows yet what month six looks like.

There is also the coverage question. If there is homeowners or renters insurance behind the dog, whether it applies to this bite depends on that policy's language, limits, and exclusions. We read it before we tell you anything.

Michigan's general deadline for an injury claim is three years under MCL 600.5805(2), and a child's claim can run longer. Which one applies here depends on facts we would need to hear from you.

Call 844-ASK-AZZO. Free, no pressure, and we will tell you if you do not need us.