Personal Injury Lawyers in Sterling Heights, MI

Sterling Heights’ roughly 134,000 residents make it Michigan’s fourth-largest city, sitting just north of Warren along the same Macomb County stretch of I-75 commuter traffic. But ask a local personal injury lawyer which address comes up most, and it isn’t a street — it’s a roundabout. The interchange at 18½ Mile Road and Van Dyke Avenue recorded 162 crashes in 2024, a 20% jump from 135 the year before, landing it as the second most dangerous intersection anywhere in Michigan. A second trouble spot, Hall Road at Schoenherr, added another 76 crashes and 11 injuries the same year. Between the traffic and a manufacturing-heavy workforce, Sterling Heights produces a distinctive mix of injury claims, and Michigan’s no-fault insurance law shapes nearly all of them.

A Roundabout That Keeps Getting Worse

Roundabouts are supposed to reduce serious crashes by slowing traffic and removing the T-bone collisions common at signaled intersections, but the 18½ Mile and Van Dyke roundabout has moved in the opposite direction, with crash totals climbing rather than falling year over year. A second Sterling Heights location, Hall Road and Schoenherr, also cracked Michigan’s most-dangerous list in 2024. Both intersections sit on heavily traveled commercial corridors, and rear-end and left-turn collisions caused by distracted driving, red-light running, and improper merges account for most of the injuries reported there.

No-Fault Insurance Comes First, Every Time

Because Michigan runs a no-fault auto insurance system, a Sterling Heights driver hurt in a crash — at the Van Dyke roundabout or anywhere else — typically files first with their own insurer for Personal Injury Protection benefits, which are supposed to cover medical bills and a share of lost wages regardless of fault. Since the 2020 no-fault reform, the amount of PIP coverage available depends on which tier the driver selected when buying the policy, and disputes over that coverage are common once treatment goes beyond a first urgent-care visit.

A separate claim against the at-fault driver for pain and suffering only becomes available once the injury clears Michigan’s “serious impairment of body function” threshold under MCL 500.3135 — a standard that leans heavily on consistent medical documentation, which is one reason ongoing treatment records often matter as much as the police report from the scene.

No Cap on What a Standard Injury Claim Can Recover

Unlike some states, Michigan places no cap on economic or non-economic damages in a standard personal injury case — a car accident that clears the tort threshold, a slip and fall, a dog bite, or a defective product claim can recover whatever a jury or settlement supports. The one exception is medical malpractice, where non-economic damages are capped at $538,000 for most cases and $1,065,000 for catastrophic injuries such as paraplegia or permanent cognitive impairment, under MCL 600.1483. For the crash and premises claims that make up most of Sterling Heights’ injury docket, that cap simply doesn’t apply.

Stellantis, General Dynamics, and a Manufacturing Workforce

Sterling Heights’ economy runs on advanced manufacturing. The Stellantis Sterling Heights Assembly Plant on Van Dyke Avenue builds Ram 1500 pickups across a 5-million-square-foot campus and has employed thousands of production workers, while General Dynamics Land Systems runs a major defense manufacturing operation in the city. That workforce feeds heavy shift-change traffic onto Van Dyke and 18 Mile Road twice a day, adding to the congestion that already makes the roundabout a known trouble spot.

Injuries at the assembly plant or a defense contractor site generally route through workers’ compensation rather than a personal injury lawsuit against the employer. A personal injury claim still applies when a third party outside the employment relationship causes the harm — a delivery driver on plant grounds, a subcontractor’s defective equipment, or a crash involving a vehicle owned by an unrelated company.

The 51% Rule and Sharing Fault

Outside the no-fault threshold, Michigan applies modified comparative fault under MCL 600.2959. A Sterling Heights claimant found 50% or less at fault has damages reduced by that percentage — someone found 20% at fault for a $50,000 loss recovers $40,000 — but a claimant found 51% or more at fault recovers nothing at all. Multi-vehicle roundabout collisions, where merge sequence and yield rules are often disputed, are exactly the kind of crash where insurers push fault findings toward that line.

Filing a Claim in Macomb County

• Most personal injury lawsuits must be filed within three years under MCL 600.5805(2); no-fault PIP claims run on a separate one-year clock.
• Michigan places no cap on damages in standard injury cases, though medical malpractice claims are capped under MCL 600.1483.
• Michigan’s 51% rule bars recovery once a claimant is found half or more at fault, under MCL 600.2959.
• Smaller matters can start at the 41-A District Court at 40111 Dodge Park; most personal injury lawsuits go to the 16th Judicial Circuit Court in Mount Clemens.

Choosing a Sterling Heights Personal Injury Lawyer

The Lawyer Atlas is a directory, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice about your specific situation. Because Michigan’s no-fault system and serious impairment threshold add real complexity, ask any attorney you’re considering how often they’ve handled PIP coverage disputes and roundabout or multi-vehicle liability disputes in Macomb County. Free consultations are the norm in Sterling Heights, and most personal injury attorneys work on contingency, so there’s little downside to getting an early opinion on your case.

See the Michigan overview above for the statewide no-fault and comparative fault rules that apply to every claim filed out of Sterling Heights, or check the Warren and Detroit pages for how the same rules play out elsewhere in Macomb County.