Day on Torts
Where the defendant in a car accident case received several citations for violations of city traffic laws, the statute of limitations was not extended to two years because the citations were civil in nature, not criminal.
In Sandridge v. Henderson, No. W2024-00242-COA-R10-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Dec. 19, 2024), the plaintiff and defendant were involved in a car accident. In connection with the wreck, the defendant received citations for violating municipal traffic ordinances. These citations included “no driver’s license, failure to maintain proper control, and failure to show financial responsibility.”
The plaintiff filed this personal injury action more than one year after the accident. Although the statute of limitations for a personal injury claim is typically one year, the plaintiff asserted that the limitations period here was extended to two years under Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(2)(A) due to the traffic citations. The trial court agreed, ruling that the citations were criminal in nature and therefore triggered the extended statute of limitations. The Court of Appeals reversed this ruling.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104 provides that personal injury suits must be filed within one year. The statute also, however, extends the statute of limitations to two years when “[c]riminal charges are brought against any personal alleged to have caused or contributed to the injury” or “[t]he conduct, transaction, or occurrence that gives rise to the cause of action for civil damages is the subject of a criminal prosecution…” Tenn. Code. Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(2). This extension of the statute of limitations based on criminal charges is to be “strictly construed.” Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(3).
The plaintiff argued that Tennessee case law supported the interpretation that the city citations issued here were criminal in nature, but the Court pointed out that the cases the plaintiff relied on addressed the concept of double jeopardy. When analyzing municipal ordinance violations in connection with the personal injury statute of limitation extension, the Court of Appeals had held in Glover v. Duckhorn, No. W2002-00697-COA-R3-CV, 2023 WL 3193204 (Tenn. Ct. App. May 2, 2023) that “issuance and enforcement of a municipal citation for violation of an ordinance does not trigger the two-year limitations period in Tennessee Code Annotated section 28-3-104(a)(2).”
Looking to the reasoning in Glover, the Court noted that there is “longstanding precedent that municipal citations and enforcement proceedings are civil only, not criminal.” (internal citation omitted). The Court stated that municipal codes may “mirror, duplicate, or cross-reference” state traffic statutes, but that “the two are not interchangeable.”
Because the defendant received only municipal citations, which were civil in nature, the two-year statute of limitations was not triggered, and the plaintiff’s complaint should have been dismissed as time-barred.
There are now multiple Court of Appeals cases concluding that a citation for a municipal ordinance violation issued after a car accident will not trigger the extended two-year personal injury statute of limitations in Tennessee. As this case illustrates, determining the time limitation for filing a claim can be complicated, and filing late can cause a plaintiff to lose out on a potentially meritorious claim. Anyone with a potential personal injury claim should consult an experienced attorney as soon as possible to preserve his or her rights.
This opinion was released one month after oral arguments.