Today, May 4, 2012, is the 20th anniversary of the landmark McIntyre v. Balentine opinion, the case where the Tennessee Supreme Court adopted modified comparative fault. All in all, most would say that the comparative fault scheme in Tennessee improved the quality of the civil justice in Tennessee. I agree. For…
T.C.A. Section 20-1-119 is one of the most important statutes for those of us who practice personal injury law in Tennessee, and the recent Mills v. Fulmarque opinion issued by the Tennessee Supreme Court has changed the way many people thought about this statute. Subject to several important limitations, the…
A truck driver who negligently caused a car wreck on an interstate highway cannot be held responsible for an accident occurring four hours later in traffic backed-up because of the original crash. In Blood v. VH-1 Music First, No. 09-399 (7th Cir. Feb. 9, 2012), the appellate court affirmed a…
A law student at the University of Texas, Michael T. Raupp, has written a note in the Texas Law Review (Issue 90, Volume 1) titled "The Multiplication of Indivisible Injury." The work is critical of the handling of the subject by the Restatement (Third) of Torts, which prompted a…
The Missouri Supreme Court has determined that comparative fault principles should apply to cases where the loss suffered by the plaintiff is purely economic. In Children’s Wish Foundation, International, Inc. v. Mayer Hoffman McCann, P.C., No. SC9094 (Missouri S.C. 2/8/11) plaintiff brought a professional negligence claim against the accounting firm…
I have had several lawyers ask me to post our most recent work in the area of filing motions to strike insufficient affirmative defenses in comparative fault cases. I have been filing these motions since 1992. A defendant has an obligation to follow Rule 8.03 of the Tennessee Rules of…
Here are the first few paragraphs of an article that I wrote for the November 2009 edition of the Tennessee Bar Journal titled "Party Planning for Tort Lawyers." Rest the rest of the article (and the footnotes) here. Litigation in a world of comparative fault and several liability involves party…
The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that a plaintiff who lost a medical malpractice case in federal court was not estopped from pursing a case against a State-employed doctor even though the federal court jury assigned no fault to the doctor, a non-party in the federal court action. An excerpt:…
Do you have a question about comparative fault law in Tennessee? Or the interaction between comparative fault law and civil procedure? If so, you may wish to consult Tennessee Law of Comparative Fault. Donald Capparella and I wrote the original edition of the book, and John Wood joined us for the…
In 1997, five years after the adoption of comparative fault in Tennessee, Donald Capparella and I wrote a book called Tennessee Law of Comparative Fault.. Five years later our friend John Wood joined us for the second edition of the book, and West Publishing Company took over the printing and…