This is the fifth in a series of posts about changes in Tennessee statutory law of interest to tort lawyers. For other changes click on the Legislation 2009 category. Tennessee has a "Ski Area Safety and Liability Act" codified at TCA Section 68-114-101 et seq. Public Chapter 85 changes the…
This is the fourth in a series of posts that addresses new laws of interest to Tennessee tort lawyers. For other changes go to the Legislation 2009 category of this blog. Those of us who keep an eye on the Tennessee General Assembly know that there is an ongoing battle…
Many lawyers think that the law concerning depositions is set out only in the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure and the case law interpreting those rules. That is not correct. Public Chapter 55 creates a new subsection to TCA Section 24-9-101, which allows court to award attorney fees and expenses…
On July 20 I warned you about new federal regulations known as the "Red Flag" rules, which require businesses, including lawyers and law firms, to take pro-active measures to detect and prevent identity theft. The rules were scheduled to go into effect on August 1. The FTC, the agency charged with the…
The second post in this series reports on a new law that confers immunity from civil action upon victims of crime for testimony given at offender’s parole hearing unless testimony is intentionally or maliciously false and defamatory. Here is the full text of the new statute: T.C.A. Section 40-38-303. (a)…
For the last five or six years my friend Bill Marler, food poisoning lawyer extraordinaire, and I have worked together on food poisoning cases. Bill knows this area like the back of his hand and is widely understood to be the lawyer with the greatest expertise in this field. One thing I really…
As you would expect, the Tennessee General Assembly is not particularly fond of drug dealers. But did you know that the General Assemby had passed what they call the "Drug Dealer Liability Act?" The Act, codified at TCA 29-38-101 et seq, permits the recovery of damages caused by drug dealers. …
That is what Tennessee’s own Jim Hall called for in today’s New York Times. An excerpt from Jim’s op-ed piece: Because American medicine accepts error as an inevitable consequence of treatment, our hospitals, insurers and government do little to respond to unnecessary deaths. If we are to address the problem…
This post is a first in a series of posts that will address new laws passed by the 106th General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Bredesen. The posts will run two or three days per week over the next several weeks. The first post is a change to…
Texting while driving is now illegal in Tennessee, and a study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute reaffirms why the law is necessary. For truck drivers, the risk of a crash or near-crash event increases by a 23.2 times as compared with non-distracted driving. Read the entire study here. UPDATE: …