Day on Torts
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.