Day on Torts
Where the trial court found plaintiff credible, and defendant city presented no material countervailing evidence, a GTLA verdict for plaintiff was affirmed.
In a memorandum opinion in Clay v. Memphis Sanitation Division, No. W2023-00519-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 1, 2024) (memorandum opinion), plaintiff filed suit under the GTLA based on an injury he received while standing near a garbage truck. Plaintiff was a contractor completing a home improvement project at a client’s home. The project included replacing a door. Plaintiff placed the old door on the curb next to a garbage can, but later remembered that the door had an alarm sensor. When he went outside to retrieve the sensor, the garbage truck came by.
According to plaintiff, one of the workers engaged him in a conversation about a potential project. Plaintiff testified that he had his back to the truck, and a second worker put the door into the truck and started the compactor. When the compactor started, the door rose and struck plaintiff in the head.
Although he initially thought he was fine, plaintiff sought treatment later that day. Plaintiff called the city to report the incident on the same day, but the exact truck and workers were never identified. Plaintiff sought treatment several times over the ensuing years and testified that since this injury, he has battled daily headaches that affect his life in numerous ways.
The trial occurred six and a half years after the incident, and the trial court found plaintiff’s testimony regarding the incident and his injuries credible. The trial court calculated plaintiff’s damages to be $1,690,500, but it reduced the award to $300,000 due to the statutory cap applicable to GTLA cases. This verdict was affirmed on appeal.
Defendant city raised several issues on appeal, but for many of those issues it failed to include any argument in its appellate brief. Those issues were therefore deemed waived. One issue addressed on appeal was the trial court’s finding that plaintiff was 0% at fault. Defendant argued that plaintiff bore some comparative fault here because he did not follow the city code when disposing of construction debris. The trial court had found no comparative fault on two bases—first, that the cited ordinance did not apply, and second, that that the city worker who loaded the door into the truck was the proximate cause of the injury and that his negligence superseded any negligence by plaintiff. Because “the trial court provided two independent bases for its ruling and the City challenged only one of those on appeal,” the Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling that plaintiff was not at fault.
Next, the Court analyzed defendant’s argument that the trial court erred when determining damages for plaintiff’s pain and suffering. Plaintiff testified that he suffered from daily headaches. Based on this testimony, the trial court calculated three hours per day of suffering every day since the incident, with a rate of $100 per hour suffered. This amount equaled $711,750. The Court of Appeals noted that plaintiff’s doctors and girlfriend corroborated his testimony, and that defendant had no evidence indicating that the testimony was not accurate. The Court found that the “evidence does not preponderate against the findings of the trial court regarding the past pain and suffering of [plaintiff] so as to justify an award of $300,000,” and that any damages beyond that were pretermitted as irrelevant due to the statutory cap.
The Court next considered defendant’s argument that the evidence preponderated against the finding that the unidentified individuals operating the truck were city employees and/or that the truck belonged to the city. The Court emphasized that there was testimony that the truck came by at the regular time for city garbage collection for this home; that the incident occurred on a regular collection day; that this home was not on the route of a third-party collector; that people do not typically collect trash they are not being paid to collect; and that the home owner stated it was the same truck that normally came. Although plaintiff did not remember seeing uniforms or city logos, the Court found that there was “no evidence contained within the record supporting alternative findings with greater convincing effect” than that the city owned the truck, and the individuals were city employees.
Similarly, the Court rejected defendant’s argument that the case should have been dismissed because plaintiff failed to show that the individuals loaded the door and started the compactor. The Court pointed out that plaintiff testified to these events, and the trial court found plaintiff’s testimony credible. Further, although one witness testified that plaintiff said he put the door in the truck himself, she was only testifying as to what she remembered plaintiff saying, whereas plaintiff was testifying to his actual experience. Moreover, the trial court ruled that even if plaintiff put the door in, the actions of the city workers superseded any action by plaintiff, as the workers should have been trained to properly and safely operate the truck.
After considering all arguments from defendant city, the verdict for plaintiff was affirmed.
This memorandum opinion was released almost six months after oral arguments in this case.