Articles Posted in Claims Against Local Governments

A plaintiff’s verdict in a slip-and-fall case against the county school board was recently overturned by the Tennessee Court of Appeals in Traylor v. Shelby County Board of Education, No. W2013-00836-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 27, 2014). Plaintiff was a sophomore at Bolton High School in Shelby County when he slipped on a patch of black ice on the school’s sidewalk and broke his ankle. The incident occurred on a Thursday morning while plaintiff was walking to his next class on a normal route that received heavy foot traffic. The school had been closed the previous Monday and Tuesday due to freezing temperatures and an inch and half of frozen precipitation. There were no reports of ice on the sidewalk and no incidents during the preceding Wednesday or on Thursday morning before plaintiff’s fall.

Plaintiff’s case was tried before a judge and not a jury, just like all cases against local governmental entities under Tennessee’s Governmental Tort Liability Act (“GTLA”). The trial judge ruled that the school did not fulfill its duty to maintain a safe premises after having constructive knowledge of the unsafe condition and therefore awarded the plaintiff and his father a total of $76,000 in compensatory damages.

There were three ways that the plaintiff could prove that the school had constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition that was the ice on the sidewalk leading to plaintiff’s fall. First, the plaintiff could have established that the school caused or created the condition. Second, the plaintiff could have proven that the condition existed for a sufficient amount of time that the school should have become aware of it (“the passage of time theory”). Third, and finally, the plaintiff could have shown that the ice was a common occurrence, recurring condition, or a generally continuing dangerous condition of which the school should have been aware (“common occurrence theory”).

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 of its employees, the plaintiff, who was seriously injured when he was hit by a Metro school bus driven by another Metro employee who tested positive for marijuana and cocaine after the incident. 

As a local governmental entity, Metro is generally immune from suit. Tennessee’s Government Tort Liability Act (“GTLA”) sets forth specific exceptions when immunity can be removed. One situation is for claims brought by those who are injured by the negligent acts of governmental employees. Another instance is when a person is injured by a governmental employee’s negligent operation of a vehicle. The plaintiff in Harp argued that both exceptions applied to remove Metro’s immunity.

There are many hurdles to successfully bringing a premises liability case in Tennessee, and often the most difficult of which is  proving that the defendant had notice of the dangerous condition allegedly responsible for causing the plaintiff’s injuries.

In Merrell v. City of Memphis, Tennessee, No. W2013-00948-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 16, 2014), the court of appeals affirmed a bench verdict in favor of the defendant in a case where the plaintiff sued the City of Memphis for negligently failing to fix or warn about a pothole in the City’s road that caused the plaintiff’s motorcycle to crash.

Cases against local governmental entities are brought under Tennessee’s Governmental Tort Liability Act (“GTLA”), and they are decided by judges instead of juries. Further, the City, just like in all GTLA claims, was protected from suit under the doctrine of sovereign immunity unless the plaintiff was able to successfully argue that an exception to immunity applied. Here, the plaintiff was required to show, under Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-203, that the City’s had actual or constructive notice of the pothole.