Oakland County Jury Awards Brent Grant $7.9 Million on an Uninsured Motorist Claim Against Auto-Owners
Won by Marko Law Firm.
An Oakland County jury awarded Brent Grant $7.9 million on his uninsured motorist claim against Auto-Owners Insurance after the company offered $20,000 to settle, and the verdict survived the insurer's appeal.
What happened
Brent Matthew Grant was driving on a two-lane highway in California when another vehicle crossed into his path and hit him head-on. He was seriously injured. The driver who caused the wreck had no insurance, and neither did the vehicle. Grant carried an Auto-Owners policy that included $1 million in uninsured motorist coverage, so he turned to his own insurer and filed a claim for those benefits.
Auto-Owners, together with affiliated Home Owners Insurance Company, denied the claim. Grant then sued for breach of contract in Oakland Circuit Court. Before trial, a case-evaluation panel valued the case at $125,000, and both sides rejected that figure. At one point the insurer offered Grant only $20,000 to settle.
Marko Law represented Grant at trial, with Jonathan Marko on the firm's team. The jury sided with Grant and returned a verdict of $7.9 million, far above anything the company had put on the table.
That headline number did not translate dollar for dollar into a payment. Because the claim was for uninsured motorist benefits under Grant's own policy, his recovery was bounded by the policy's $1 million ceiling. The trial court entered a judgment of $1,520,437.05, which represented the jury's damages reduced to the $1 million limit, plus taxable costs and statutory interest. The court also ruled that Grant was entitled to case-evaluation sanctions, given the gap between the insurer's offer and the verdict.
Auto-Owners appealed, but it did not contest the size of the verdict. Its only argument was that the trial court should not have awarded case-evaluation sanctions, because the Michigan Supreme Court had amended the governing court rule, MCR 2.403, to remove those sanctions effective January 1, 2022. The insurer relied on a 2023 decision, RAD Construction v. Davis, to argue the court had no authority to apply the older rule.
While the appeal was pending, the Supreme Court decided Webster v. Osguthorpe, which overruled the part of RAD Construction the insurer leaned on. In a per curiam opinion issued June 20, 2025, the Court of Appeals held that the trial court had not abused its discretion. It cited the severity of Grant's injuries, the "emotional ordeal of a trial" he was put through, and the insurer's $20,000 settlement offer as reasons that applying the former rule was fair. The panel affirmed the judgment.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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