Plaintiff Titan Insurance Company appeals as of right the trial court’s order granting defendant North Pointe Insurance Company’s motion for summary disposition and denying plaintiffs motion to amend its complaint. We affirm.
I. FACTS
This action arises out of a motor vehicle accident on April 27, 2002, involving plaintiffs subrogor, who is Robert Wells, and Robert Price. Price’s vehicle collided with Wells’s motorcycle. According to the police report, Price was uninsured. In the absence of any other known insurer, plaintiff paid Wells $42,377.23 in personal protection insurance benefits.
*341 Plaintiff attempted to contact Price numerous times, beginning on September 16, 2002, to ask him whether he had a no-fault insurance carrier. Plaintiff asserts that it had difficulty locating Price because he was no longer at the address listed on the police report. In October or November 2003, plaintiff finally learned that defendant was Price’s insurer and wrote to defendant on November 4, 2003, to confirm coverage. One of defendant’s representatives acknowledged to plaintiff that defendant’s obligation to pay had a higher priority than the plaintiffs. Defendant asserted that Price never reported the accident to it and that defendant was not aware of the accident until it received plaintiffs November 2003 notice.
Plaintiff demanded payment from defendant, arguing that it was entitled to bring this action “either one year after the date of loss or one year after learning of another insurance company, whichever is later.” Defendant denied plaintiffs request for payment on December 2, 2003, on the grounds that it was barred by the statute of limitations.
Plaintiff filed this action on March 1, 2004. Both parties filed motions for summary disposition, and plaintiff moved to amend its complaint to add a claim of mistaken payment. Plaintiff argued that the sole issue for the trial court was whether its complaint was timely filed. Defendant responded that plaintiffs claim was barred, or at least limited to recovery of damages incurred “one year back” from the date plaintiffs action was filed. Defendant admitted that there would be no prejudice if the court allowed plaintiff to amend its complaint, but argued that the amendment would “not alter the outcome” of the motions for summary disposition.
*342 The trial court reviewed the motions under MCR 2.116(0(10) and MCL 500.3145(1). The court found that plaintiffs claim was “one of subrogation” and, therefore, the one-year period of limitations of the statute applied. The court denied plaintiffs motion to amend as futile because the one-year limitations period would apply no matter what the basis was for plaintiffs claim.
H. SUMMARY DISPOSITION
A. STANDARD OF REVIEW
This Court reviews the trial court’s grant or denial of summary disposition de novo.
Spiek v Dep’t of Transportation,
B. ANALYSIS
The first issue is whether the limitations period of MCL 500.3145(1) commences on the date the insurer seeking reimbursement learns of the other insurer. This primarily involves a debate over timing and whether plaintiff was on notice that there was another insurer when the accident occurred. Plaintiff argues that the cause of action was brought well within a year after it was on notice that defendant was Price’s insurer. De *343 fendant argues that plaintiffs cause of action was fairly-dismissed as untimely because the action was not brought within one year of the accident and plaintiff “made essentially no effort to identify” or notify defendant.
MCL 500.3145(1) provides, in relevant part:
An action for recovery of personal protection insurance benefits payable under this chapter for accidental bodily injury may not be commenced later than 1 year after the date of the accident causing the injury unless written notice of injury as provided herein has been given to the insurer within 1 year after the accident or unless the insurer has previously made a payment of personal protection insurance benefits for the injury. If the notice has been given or a payment has been made, the action may be commenced at any time within 1 year after the most recent allowable expense.. . has been incurred. However, the claimant may not recover benefits for any portion of the loss incurred more than 1 year before the date on which the action was commenced.
Here, the accident occurred on April 27, 2002. Plaintiff asserts that it was unable to learn that defendant was the primary insurer until October 2003, and this action was not filed until March 1, 2004. Therefore, defendant was not notified of the injury within one year after the accident, and the action was not commenced ■within one year after the date of the accident.
As the trial court explained in its opinion, because plaintiff paid personal protection insurance benefits that defendant allegedly should have paid to Wells, plaintiff was subrogated to Wells’s cause of action against defendant.
Fed Kemper Ins Co v Western Ins
Cos,
Until recently, Michigan courts had not addressed the specific question of tolling when an insurer could not ascertain the identity of a primary insurer, but case law recognized that tolling principles could apply to situations involving a lack of notice of a potential claim. In
Amerisure Cos, supra
at 103, this Court concluded, without discussion, that the plaintiff was “required to file its subrogated claim for personal injury protection benefits within one year after the date of the accident
or after the date it had notice of its potential claim against defendant,
whichever was later.” (Emphasis added.) See also
Michigan Mut Ins Co v Home Mut Ins Co,
However, neither the trial court nor the parties had the benefit of
Devillers v Auto Club Ins Ass’n,
473 Mich
*345
562, 567, 593;
As indicated previously, MCL 500.3145(1) clearly and unambiguously states the necessary time line of an action for recovery of personal protection insurance benefits. “If the language used is clear, then the Legislature must have intended the meaning it has plainly expressed, and the statute must be enforced as written.”
Hills of Lone Pine Ass’n v Texel Land Co, Inc,
The trial court did not err in granting defendant’s motion for summary disposition.
III. MOTION TO AMEND COMPLAINT
A. STANDARD OF REVIEW
The grant or denial of a motion for leave to amend pleadings is reviewed for an abuse of discretion.
Horn v Dep’t of Corrections,
B. ANALYSIS
The next issue is whether the trial court abused its discretion by denying plaintiffs motion to amend its complaint to add a count of “Recovery of Mistaken Payment.” The case on which plaintiff relies,
Madden v Employers Ins of Wausau,
As previously noted, the plain and unambiguous terms of MCL 500.3145(1) are not subject to interpretation, and the statute does not provide, as it could have, a separate limitations period in the event of mistake. See Devillers, supra at 586. Plaintiff argues it could not safely wait to make payment to its subrogor without risking that it would be penalized under the no-fault act for tardy payment. However, as this Court emphasized in Federal Kemper Ins Co, supra at 210, “the statute is clear and ‘plaintiff is an insurance company itself and is presumably well aware of the much-publicized insurance law of this state.’ ” (Citation omitted.) In light of the above case law, even if plaintiff paid the benefits by mistake, its claim is still one of subrogation and subject to the limitations period in MCL 500.3145. The trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying the plaintiffs motion to amend its complaint.
Affirmed.
Notes
Although Amerisure Cos and Michigan Mut Ins Co have been called into question by Devillers to the extent that they recognized the applicability of judicial tolling, their conclusions on the issue of subrogation claims remain valid and correct.