Answers · Michigan crash law

A Lawyer Told Me My Injuries Don’t “Meet Threshold.” What Does That Mean, and Are They Right?

By Gary Safir, trial lawyer at Michigan Auto Law · August 2026

It means Michigan law sets a bar for suing an at-fault driver for pain and suffering. It does not mean your case is worthless. Threshold is not decided by the name of your injury. It is decided by what the injury did to your life, and whether anyone bothered to document it. Many cases get turned away because the right questions were never asked.

If you were hurt in a Michigan collision and a law firm declined your case with some version of “your injuries don’t meet threshold,” you deserve to know what that actually means, because the phrase gets used to reject cases that a closer look would keep.

What is Michigan’s injury threshold for suing an at-fault driver?

It is the bar Michigan law sets before you can sue an at-fault driver for pain and suffering. Under MCL 500.3135(1) you clear it with death, permanent serious disfigurement, or a serious impairment of body function. That last category is where almost every contested case lives. It is what lawyers mean by threshold.

Michigan is a no-fault state. Your own insurance pays your medical bills and a portion of your lost wages regardless of who caused the crash. In exchange, the law limits when you can sue the at-fault driver for noneconomic damages: pain, suffering, the loss of the life you had.

Under MCL 500.3135(1), you can recover those damages only if you suffered one of three things: death, permanent serious disfigurement, or a serious impairment of body function. That last category is where almost every contested case lives, and it is what lawyers mean by “threshold.”

The Michigan Supreme Court defined the test in McCormick v Carrier, 487 Mich 180 (2010). A serious impairment of body function requires three things:

1. An objectively manifested impairment: something observable or measurable, not just your report of pain
2. Of an important body function: walking, using your back, your neck, your hands, sleeping, thinking
3. That affects your general ability to lead your normal life: your life after the collision is different from your life before it

Read those three prongs again, because here is what they do not say. They do not say “surgery required.” They do not say “broken bones only.” They do not say “herniated disc or go home.” And critically, McCormick itself held that the impairment does not need to be permanent, and it does not need to destroy your entire life. It needs to affect your ability to live your normal life, the one you actually had.

Will a whiplash or soft tissue diagnosis sink my case?

Yes. Threshold is not a diagnosis contest. A sprain/strain can satisfy every prong of McCormick. A dramatic-sounding diagnosis can fail it. The test asks three questions the diagnosis alone cannot answer.

Some lawyers screen cases by diagnosis. They hear “cervical strain” or “soft tissue injury,” picture a small file, and decline. That screening method misses the point of the test.

Threshold is not a diagnosis contest. A sprain/strain injury can satisfy every prong of McCormick, and a dramatic-sounding diagnosis can fail it, because the test asks three questions the diagnosis alone cannot answer.

Is there something objective in the record? Start with a distinction most people, including some lawyers, get wrong. The law requires an objectively manifested impairment, not an objectively manifested injury. Those are different things, and McCormick said so expressly: the inquiry focuses on whether the impairment is objectively manifested, “not the injury or its symptoms.” 487 Mich at 197.

An injury is the thing that happened to your body. An impairment is the diminished functioning that follows: the state of being weakened, damaged, or functioning poorly. The test asks whether that is observable or perceivable by someone other than you. Which means the question is not “does the MRI show it?” The question is “can anyone else see what this did to you?”

The Court of Appeals applied this in a published decision, Patrick v Turkelson, 322 Mich App 595 (2018). The plaintiff’s hearing loss and tinnitus were the kind of injury that resists objective diagnostic testing; her own doctor described tinnitus as a sound inside her head that no machine detects. The defense argued that meant no objective manifestation. The court disagreed: her hearing impairment was observable by others. Family members watched her miss questions and answer wrongly. The fact that the hearing tests had a subjective component did not defeat the claim, because the functioning itself, the impairment, was perceivable to the people around her. The court also noted that medical testimony is generally, but not always, required.

So objective manifestation does not require an MRI lighting up like a Christmas tree. Muscle spasm palpated on examination is an objective finding. Measured range-of-motion deficits are objective findings. Reduced grip strength measured against the other hand, a positive orthopedic test, guarding and crepitus documented by a physician, straightening of the spine on imaging consistent with spasm: all objective. And beyond the chart, the observations of the people who live with you carry evidentiary weight, because they are someone other than you perceiving the impairment. A lawyer who declines your case because “the imaging was clean” may be applying a test the Supreme Court rejected by name.

Is the affected function important? For neck and back injuries, the answer is almost always yes. Spinal mobility, the ability to lift, bend, sit, stand, sleep, and concentrate: Michigan courts have recognized these as important body functions. This prong is rarely where a real case dies.

Did it change how you live? This is where cases are actually won and lost, and it is where the intake conversation fails people.

Why do intake calls miss cases that would meet the threshold?

Because they ask about the diagnosis, the treatment, and the bills, and then decide. The third McCormick prong is about none of those. It is the distance between your life before and your life after. That surfaces only if someone asks about your life in specifics.

When someone calls a law office after a crash, the conversation usually covers the diagnosis, the treatment, and the bills. Then a decision gets made. But the third McCormick prong is not about any of those things. It is about the distance between your life before and your life after, and that only comes out if someone asks about your life in specifics.

The comparison that matters is built from questions like these:

• What did a normal workday look like before the collision, hour by hour? What does it look like now? Are you on restrictions? Did your employer change your duties, your routes, your hours? Are you losing overtime you used to work?
• What did you do with your hands, your back, your knees at work, and can you still do it the same way? A hairdresser who now holds the dryer differently because of pain, a driver who can no longer lift passengers, a tradesman who cannot kneel through a shift: those are threshold facts.
• Who depends on you? Children you can no longer lift or chase. A parent you helped bathe. A disabled family member you can no longer keep up with. Caregiving is part of your normal life, and losing the ability to do it counts.
• How do you sleep now versus before? Interrupted sleep, changed positions, a recliner instead of a bed: documented night after night, that is a changed life.
• What did your weekends look like? The gym, the garden, the golf league, church, the grandkids? What happened to each one?
• What small things changed? Trouble on stairs. Trips and stumbles. Holding the steering wheel differently. Asking for help with groceries. No single one of these is a case. Together, honestly documented, they are the third prong.

Notice what none of these questions ask about: the name of the diagnosis. Two people can carry the same “cervical strain” on paper. One went back to an unchanged life in three weeks. The other stopped working overtime, sleeps four hours a night, and handed the yard work to a neighbor. Same words in the chart. Entirely different cases under McCormick.

A five-minute intake call built around the diagnosis cannot tell those two people apart. That is how real cases get turned away.

What actually makes a threshold case fail?

Three things, mostly. Nothing objective documented anywhere. A life that genuinely did not change. A gap in treatment and causation the records cannot close. A clean MRI on its own is not one of them.

Honesty requires the other side of this. Some cases genuinely do not meet the threshold, and no amount of better questioning changes that. The common, legitimate failure points:

Nothing objective anywhere. If every examination was normal, imaging was clean, no clinician ever documented a finding, and no one in your life can describe observing your impaired functioning, the first prong is a real problem. But note how much that sentence requires before the case actually fails. A clean MRI alone is not that sentence.

No treatment. An ER visit followed by silence tells a jury the injury resolved. If you stopped treating, the record stops with you. There may be good reasons, no transportation, no childcare, fear of bills, and those reasons should be explored, because sometimes the barrier can be addressed and treatment resumed. But a bare record is a bare record.

A life that genuinely did not change. If you returned to the same work, the same activities, and the same routines, the third prong fails honestly. Threshold is not a reward for the crash. It is compensation for what the crash took.

A lawyer who declines a case for one of these reasons and explains it plainly is doing their job. A lawyer who declines because the diagnosis sounded small is doing something else.

Should I get a second opinion after a firm declined my case?

Often, yes. If nobody asked about your work restrictions, your sleep, your caregiving, or the overtime you stopped working, the decision was made without the facts that decide the third prong. Different lawyers evaluate threshold differently. The limitations period keeps running while you wait.

If your case was declined, three things are worth knowing:

The decision may have been made on an incomplete picture. If nobody asked about your work restrictions, your sleep, your caregiving, or the overtime you stopped working, the evaluation was made without the facts that decide the third prong.

The record can still be built, but only while time remains. Ongoing treatment, documented findings at each visit, and honest reporting of your limitations to your providers create the objective record threshold requires. What cannot be fixed is a missed deadline. Michigan’s limitations period for a claim against an at-fault driver is generally three years, and no strength of injury survives a blown deadline.

Different lawyers evaluate differently. Threshold at intake is a judgment call about what a record will look like after it is properly developed, presented, and tested. Lawyers who try these cases evaluate that differently than offices that settle everything, because they know what a well-documented before-and-after looks like in front of a jury.

Your injury is not a label in a chart. Under Michigan law, it is measured against the life you actually lived. If nobody ever asked you about that life, the answer you got may not be the right one.

And if your case also involves a coverage problem, a driver with no insurance, a cancelled policy, a disputed limit, those questions have their own answers.

Frequently asked questions

This article discusses Michigan law as of July 2026 and is general information, not legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship. Whether an injury meets Michigan’s threshold depends on the specific medical record and facts of each case, and outcomes vary. Results in past cases do not guarantee a particular outcome in any other case. Attorney advertising. Gary Safir is a trial lawyer at Michigan Auto Law.