A claimant cannot take direct action against an insurance company for the wrongdoing of its insured in Tennessee.

In Johnson v. Tennessee Farmers Mutual Insurance Company, No. W2024-01791-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Aug. 26, 2025), the decedent was struck by a car. The car’s driver was insured by defendant insurance company.

The insurance company settled the claim with decedent’s family members for $50,000, who executed a release and settlement. Several months later, however, the family members filed this pro se case against the insurance company related to the accident. The trial court granted defendant’s motion to dismiss, ruling that the case was “an improper direct action against an insurance company,” and the Court of Appeals affirmed.

Where plaintiffs, who were mother and daughter, were injured by gunfire by police, but the police were aiming the gunfire at the father, the plaintiffs’ GTLA claims were rightly dismissed because the claims involved civil rights, and governmental immunity was therefore not removed.

In Guirguis v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, No. M2024-01310-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Sept. 5, 2025), the police were called to plaintiffs’ residence. When they arrived, a mother and father were engaged in a struggle on the front porch, and a minor child was also present. The police saw that the father had a gun. After being told to drop the gun, the father aimed the gun at the police, and the police opened fire. Both the mother and child were injured by the gunfire.

The plaintiffs (mother and child) filed this complaint against the city alleging that the officers “committed negligence in firing their weapons” despite the close proximity of the plaintiffs to the father, and that the police had negligently violated police training and policy. After the case languished for six years, the city filed a motion for summary judgment, asserting that the claims sounded in civil rights and that the city’s immunity was not removed under the GTLA. The trial court agreed that the “civil rights exception to the GTLA removal of immunity was applicable” and dismissed the case. The Court of Appeals affirmed this dismissal.

I have been working on the Fourth Edition of Day on Torts:  Leading Cases in Tennessee Tort Law for several years.

It has been a massive undertaking.  First published in 2008, the new book has two volumes totaling over 1300 pages.  It summarizes the leading case on 579 different tort law topics and cites thousands of other cases.

Here is a listing of the overall topics covered in this book, each of which is broken down further into subtopics.

Where the defendant governmental entity admitted in its answer that it owned the vehicle involved in the accident, and that the driver involved was its employee and was “acting within the course and scope of his employment” at the time of the accident, the plaintiff did not have to offer evidence on this issue.

In Butcher v. Shelby County Board of Education, No. W2024-01202-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 10, 2025), the plaintiff was injured in a car accident where the other driver was 100% at fault. The other vehicle was owned by the defendant board of education. In its answer, the defendant admitted that it owned the vehicle, that the driver was its employee, and that the driver was acting within the course and scope of his employment.

At the close of the trial, the defendant moved for involuntary dismissal on the basis that the plaintiffs “failed to prove that [the driver] was an employee” of the defendant, which was a prerequisite to removing immunity under the GTLA. The trial court denied the motion and entered a verdict for the plaintiff, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.

Where the trial court granted summary judgment to the defendant in a car accident case based on the plaintiff’s lack of sufficient evidence as to breach of duty and causation, and the plaintiff’s appellate brief failed to mention duty at all, summary judgment was affirmed.

In Metcalf v. Woodard, No. W2024-01321-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 29, 2025), the plaintiff was injured in a motor vehicle collision with a UPS tractor trailer. The plaintiff filed a suit asserting several claims, although she eventually voluntarily dismissed all claims except general negligence. The trial court issued a scheduling order, and the plaintiff failed to disclose any expert witnesses by the relevant deadline. The plaintiff identified expert witnesses eleven months after the deadline, after which the defendants moved for summary judgment. The trial court held a hearing and granted summary judgment to the defendants, ruling that the plaintiff had presented insufficient evidence to establish the elements of breach of duty or causation.

The plaintiff appealed the grant of summary judgment, but in her statement of issues, she focused solely on the exclusion of her causation experts. The plaintiff’s appellate brief “fail[ed] to make any reference to ‘breach’ or ‘duty.’” By failing to make any argument that she established the essential element of breach of duty, the plaintiff waived that argument on appeal. Because summary judgment was granted on two bases, including the failure to show breach of duty, summary judgment was affirmed due to the plaintiff’s failure to address that issue on appeal.

When faced with a TPPA petition to dismiss, a plaintiff must present more than conclusory statements to establish a prima facie case for their claims.

In Blythe v. Forshythe, No. M2023-01463-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Nov. 6, 2025), the plaintiff was a surgeon and the defendant was a scrub tech. The plaintiff and the defendant had a verbal altercation during a surgery, and the defendant scrub tech stated that the plaintiff grabbed her wrist and physically knocked her off a stool in the operating room.

After the surgery, the defendant gave a statement to the hospital, filed a police report, and filed a complaint with the health board. Based on these verbal and written statements, the plaintiff surgeon filed this case asserting claims for defamation and intentional interference with a business relationship against the defendant scrub tech. The defendant filed a petition to dismiss under the Tennessee Public Participation Act (“TPPA”), which the trial court granted, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.

The Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts has released data on tort cases in Tennessee for the one-year period ending June 30, 2025.  Medical malpractice (HCLA) data is reported separately.

Some highlights:

• There were 10,980 tort claims filed for the entire year.  The number of filings have been basically flat for the last eight years (although they dropped slightly during the pandemic).

An expert witness in an HCLA case who admittedly did not know any information about the hospital that administered treatment, including what services it offered or its size, and had never spoken to anyone who worked there or been there in person, did not satisfy the locality rule.

In Bowen v. Nelson, No. W2024-00749-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. May 27, 2025), the plaintiff filed an HCLA action based on her treatment and the transfer process at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital. The plaintiff identified Dr. Jim as her standard of care and causation expert. In his deposition, Dr. Jim stated that he had spent many years working at a hospital in St. Lous, Missouri. When questioned about his familiarity with the hospital where the plaintiff was treated, he admitted to knowing very little. He did not know the population of the city, did not know how many beds were in the hospital (and guessed very inaccurately), and did not know what services the hospital offered. He stated that he had never spoken to anyone who worked at the hospital or visited the hospital.

Based on this testimony, the defendants filed a motion to exclude Dr. Jim pursuant to the locality rule, as well as a motion for summary judgment based on the plaintiff’s inability to prove the necessary elements of her HCLA claim by expert proof. The trial court granted both motions, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.