The Tennessee Court of Appeals recently had the opportunity to discuss the doctrine of prior suit pending in a car wreck case, Farmers Insurance Exchange v. Shempert. The Shemperts filed suit for a wreck in which Mr. Shempert was injured and included his own uninsured motorist carrier, Farmers Insurance Exchange,…
You don’t see a lot of defamation cases winding their way up Tennessee appellate courts. Rarer still are defamation cases decided entirely on an affirmative immunity defense. Miller v. Wyatt hits both those marks, so it’s worthy of a crash course in legislative immunity even though it’s a very fact-specific…
On November, 9, 2009, plaintiff was an emergency room nurse at Erlanger Hospital. During her shift, a certified nurse anesthetist employed by the defendant was administering anesthesia to a patient. Near the end of the procedure, the patient awoke prematurely and was agitated. The patient tried to extubate herself and rise from the…
A Tennessee appellate court has ruled that a chiropractic clinic’s assignment agreement unenforceable in lawsuit against former patient injured in car wreck and liability insurance company who settled injury claim with patient. In Action Chiropractic, LLC v. Prentice Delon Hyler,, No. M2013-01468-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 12, 2014), the defendant…
This is a liquor liability case against a bar in East Tennessee known as the Electric Cowboy. After a night of drinking, Ashley Langworthy was driving her vehicle at a speed in the range of 83 to 94 mph when she lost control and struck a tree causing her vehicle…
This case is ugly. And when I say ugly, I mean ugly. This case is so ugly that if it tried to sit in the sand a cat would come up and bury it. This case started in Davidson County General Sessions Court. On May 6, 2010, plaintiff filed a negligence action again Davidson Transit…
The health care liability notice statute continues to supply our courts with work that has nothing to do with the merits of the claim, defense lawyers with increased income for simply pivoting, and plaintiff’s lawyers with heartburn. The plaintiffs in Johnson v. Floyd, No. W2012-00207-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 6,…
The "error in judgment" rule in Tennessee medical malpractice cases is perhaps the most unfair principle of the common law of torts. The rule was conceived in recognition of the fact that there may be more than one right way to approach a medical issue – the "two schools of…
In Dry v. Steele, the Tennessee Court of Appeals grappled with a procedural nightmare, including three related lawsuits separate from the one actually on appeal – a medical malpractice case, an action for interference with service of process, and a malicious prosecution case. Putting aside the morass of ancillary issues, the…
Tennessee law of tort liability of local governments gives rise to some strange scenarios, but this one is odder than most. In Harp v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, No. M2012-02047-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 22, 2014), the defendant, Metro, appealed a judgment entered in favor of one…