Dustina Dixon made a $542 down payment for auto insurance on Aug. 30 at an L.A. Insurance office in Pontiac before she purchased a 2016 Jeep Compass off a Clinton Township used-car lot later that day.

The L.A. Insurance agent sold the 49-year-old Waterford Township woman a policy with coverage split between two different carriers — Integon National Insurance Co. for mandatory medical coverage and USA Underwriters for collision-only coverage. The sale occurred two weeks before state insurance regulators moved to ban split-coverage auto no-fault policies because the Legislature outlawed them in June.

In a jumble of paperwork Dixon received, the agent hand-wrote "pay by 10/2/19" for the next monthly payment of $161.99, leaving Dixon convinced she had paid for a month's worth of auto insurance coverage.

On Sept. 25, a week before the hand-written deadline, a driver in a 1999 Buick Century crossed the center line on Elizabeth Lake Road in Waterford Township and sideswiped Dixon's SUV in a six-car accident, sending Dixon to McLaren Oakland hospital for injuries sustained to her brain and liver, police and hospital records show.

In most cases, Dixon's auto insurance would have fully covered the replacement of her totaled vehicle and medical treatment for her injuries, which have left her walking with a cane and unable to return to work cutting hair for a living.

But on Sept. 13, the insurance policy L.A. Insurance sold Dixon automatically expired, records show, leaving her without collision coverage for the vehicle and without personal injury protection to pay her medical bills and give her the right to sue the at-fault driver for pain and suffering.

What didn't expire were two roadside assistance motor club memberships from Nation Safe Driver and Drive America Auto Club that L.A. Insurance tacked onto Dixon's bill, totaling $250 of her $542 down payment, records show.

The pair of six-month memberships added to Dixon's out-the-door cost raises questions about whether she would have had insurance coverage at the time of the accident if 46 percent of her payment hadn't been applied to driving club memberships that last five-and-a-half months longer than the car insurance.

"I chose (L.A. Insurance) because it was the down payment I could afford," Dixon told Crain's. "I should have known it was too good to be true."

Dixon's case is not unique.

Over the past six years, the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS) has closed 43 separate enforcement cases against dozens of L.A. Insurance agents, employees and individual agencies for a host of violations of the state insurance code.

The most common infraction involves L.A. Insurance agents loading up a new auto insurance policy with optional roadside assistance plans from Nation Safe Driver that inflate the upfront payment without the knowledge of the customer.

The business practice, which state regulators have deemed deceptive, is known in the insurance industry as "sliding," in which hidden costs are slid into the policies, unbeknownst to the customer.

"Most of what they do is a scam. And they double-charge people for stuff they don't need," said Daniel Groves, a personal injury attorney at Bashore Green Law Group in Pontiac. "L.A. does this all the time. It's shady."

Royal Oak-based L.A. Insurance is an insurance retail broker with dozens of storefronts across Michigan. Crain's has learned L.A. Insurance's business is intertwined with USA Underwriters, the insurer that wrote Dixon's collision coverage for $163 for 14 days — the largest portion of her $542 down payment.

Groves reviewed Dixon's case, but declined to represent her because she was not technically insured on the day of the accident.

"Legally, I think they have their butt covered," Groves said of L.A. Insurance. "But ethically, they're taking advantage of low-income people."

Dixon then turned to prominent personal injury attorney Lee Steinberg (of "Call Lee Free" commercial fame), who reached the same conclusion as Groves and also turned her down.

"Since she doesn't have any PIP coverage, she can't even bring a claim against the other driver who's at fault (in the accident)," Steinberg told Crain's. "L.A. Insurance is horrible."

Dale Royal, the chief operating officer of L.A. Insurance, said the company's leaders are "deeply saddened to learn" of Dixon's accident and "pray for her and a full and timely recovery."

"We cannot comment on specifics of claims and accidents, as a matter of respect for our clients' privacy and by policy," Royal said in a statement to Crain's. "We will simply state that a fully informed decision was made by the customer and when all facts are viewed in whole that can be easily verified."