Today we follow up on our previous post about the number of civil trials in Tennessee and we concentrate on the number of trials in Tennessee personal injury, wrongful death and other tort cases. (Health care liability trials are excluded from these numbers.) In the fiscal year ending June 30,…
The number of trials in Tennessee state court appears to have declined again in 2020. What follows is the number of jury and non-jury trials in Tennessee state courts for the indicated fiscal years (July 1 – June 30): Year Chancery …
Where a defendant in a Tennessee defamation case moved to dismiss based on both substantive grounds and the assertion that the court lacked personal jurisdiction, the trial court should have considered the personal jurisdiction argument before granting dismissal based on the substantive grounds. In Checkan v. Southern Towing Company LLC,…
Where one defendant in an HCLA case was not the owner or operator of the facility at which plaintiff alleged he received negligent medical treatment, and that defendant did not employee, train or control the employees who allegedly provided negligent care, summary judgment for that defendant was affirmed. Further, where…
Where plaintiff proceeded into a public restroom after seeing water in the floor and then slipped and fell, the Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment based on a lack of duty and plaintiff’s alleged comparative fault because defendant did not meet its burden of showing it had no duty and…
Where plaintiff’s personal injury claim was based on a Tennessee car accident for which defendant was given a traffic citation for failure to exercise due care under Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-8-136, which is a Class C misdemeanor, the statute of limitations for plaintiff’s action was extended to two years…
Where a minor student was accidentally hit in the head by a shot put thrown by his track and field coach, immunity for the school was removed under the GTLA and a judgment for plaintiff was affirmed. In Spearman v. Shelby County Board of Education, No. W2019-02050-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App.…
Where a plaintiff originally named the wrong defendant in a car accident case and did not file an amended complaint naming the correct defendant until after the one-year statute of limitations had run, dismissal was affirmed. In Black v. Khel, No. W2020-00228-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Dec. 30, 2020), plaintiff and…
The Tennessee Supreme Court recently held that product liability defendants “cannot be held liable for injuries resulting from products they did not make, distribute, or sell.” In Coffman v. Armstrong International, Inc., No. E2017-01985-SC-R11-CV (Tenn. Jan. 4, 2021), plaintiff was the wife of a deceased employee of a chemical plant.…
Although plaintiff styled his case as a false imprisonment claim based on a two-hour hold in a hospital related to a mental health evaluation, the Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling that the case actually fell within the HCLA and was thus subject to dismissal for failure to provide pre-suit…