A unanimous panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals on May 22, 2026 affirmed a $20.6 million jury verdict in a personal-injury action where the plaintiff was struck and severely injured by a van while clearing snow from his driveway. The defense appeal centered on plaintiff counsel's closing argument, which the panel agreed was improper and inflammatory. The verdict nonetheless stood because defense counsel did not contemporaneously object during the closing and made no request for a curative instruction. The court held that plain-error review did not justify reversal, and that the unpreserved challenge to counsel's emotional appeals could not now serve as a basis for new trial relief.
The procedural holding is the entire ruling, and that procedural holding is what makes the decision important to plaintiff and defense litigators alike.
What the panel held
Michigan, like most jurisdictions, requires that objections to opposing counsel's closing argument be raised contemporaneously and on the record. The Court of Appeals applied the established rule: if no objection is lodged at the time of the improper conduct, and no request for curative instruction follows, the issue is reviewable only for plain error affecting substantial rights. The panel found that the closing here exceeded the bounds of permissible advocacy but did not reach the level of fundamental unfairness required to grant relief in the absence of preserved error.
The opinion is brief on the substantive question of where the closing crossed the line, and that brevity is intentional. The panel had no need to draw a precise line because the procedural posture made it unnecessary.
Why this matters for defense counsel
The practical effect of the decision is to put defense counsel in Michigan, and the broader Sixth Circuit jurisprudential footprint, in a familiar but increasingly uncomfortable bind. Plaintiff lawyers in nuclear-verdict territory have become more aggressive in their use of emotional framing in close. The defense response options are well known and well rehearsed:
- Object contemporaneously, with the jury watching, and risk being characterized as obstructive.
- Request a curative instruction at sidebar.
- Move for mistrial immediately following the closing.
- Allow the closing to proceed without comment, hope for a moderate verdict, and rely on appellate review of the resulting record.
The Michigan panel's affirmance forecloses the fourth path. The first three remain available, and trial-court records that include any of them preserve the issue for appeal. A clean record of "no objection followed by post-verdict surprise" cannot serve as a basis for reversal.
This is hardly novel doctrine. Preservation requirements in trial practice are bedrock. The reason the Michigan decision matters is that it is the most recent and one of the more high-dollar applications in a year when post-trial review of plaintiff closings has become a recurring appellate theme. The Sixth Circuit and its state-court counterparts will continue to hear these challenges, and the answers continue to come out the same way.
What plaintiff counsel should take from the decision
The corollary for case-law strategy on the plaintiff side is uncomfortably plain. The panel's willingness to characterize the closing as "improper and inflammatory" without disturbing the verdict effectively confirms that aggressive emotional framing in close, at least where the underlying liability and damages evidence support the verdict, carries an appellate risk that is asymmetric in plaintiff's favor.
That is not a recommendation. Plaintiff counsel who push too far create real risk of judicial referral, potential discipline, and prejudicial effect on future cases before the same trial judge. But for the closing argument that lands in the gray zone of impassioned but not affirmatively misleading, the decision lowers the perceived appellate cost of going hard.
Verdict structure and damages-mix observations
The composition of the $20.6 million award is also worth noting. Court filings indicate that economic damages, including past and future medical, future life-care planning, and household economic loss, accounted for the majority of the gross. Non-economic damages, while substantial, represented under 40% of the total. That mix is consistent with the verdict-structure pattern seen across recent Michigan and Ohio plaintiff verdicts in the $15 to $30 million range.
The implication for case workup, particularly in auto-accident matters of this severity, is that the heaviest pretrial investment continues to belong on the economic side. Life-care planners, vocational economists, and rebuttal of defense biomechanical experts on causation produce the foundation on which non-economic damages then build. Defense efforts to challenge the economic-damages model on cross frequently struggle when that model is built on documented future need rather than projection alone.
Preservation, generally
For litigators in any jurisdiction, the Michigan decision is a reminder that preservation hygiene matters at trial. Common preservation failures that have led to similar affirmances over the past two years include:
- Closing-argument objections lodged only at post-trial motion stage.
- Evidentiary rulings challenged on appeal without continuing objection during testimony.
- Jury-instruction objections raised before charge but not renewed for the record after charge.
- Mistrial motions made informally to the court without a written record.
Trial counsel running cases with potential appellate exposure should consider building a preservation checklist into the trial-prep playbook. Most appellate departments do this routinely; many small-firm trial sections do not.
What to expect next
The defense is likely to consider a petition for leave with the Michigan Supreme Court, though the procedural posture makes discretionary review unlikely. Plaintiff verdicts in this range continue to attract close attention in the appellate bar, and any state-court decision that addresses both nuclear-verdict review and preservation doctrine will draw amicus interest. For now, the affirmance stands as one more data point in the running record of where appellate courts in the Midwest are landing on the boundary between zealous advocacy and reversible error.