Day on Torts
Where an HCLA (medical malpractice) plaintiff sent pre-suit notice to an address that was neither the defendant doctor’s business address nor the place where the plaintiff received treatment, dismissal based on the failure to comply with the pre-suit notice requirements was affirmed.
In Springfield v. Eton, No. W2024-01024-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 3, 2025), the plaintiff filed suit against the defendants based on a failed surgical artery graft which eventually necessitated the amputation of her right leg. Defendant Dr. Eton was the surgeon, who at the time had been placed with UT Regional One Physicians (“UTROP”) through a placement company. Dr. Eton was from Chicago, but he was working with UTROP in Memphis at the time.
The plaintiff sent pre-suit notice to both Dr. Eton and UTROP, with the claim against UTROP based solely on vicarious liability. At the time, Dr. Eton’s address on the Tennessee Department of Health’s website only listed “Chicago, IL 60614.” The plaintiff sent Dr. Eton’s pre-suit notice to the address in Memphis “for an ambulatory outpatient surgery center owned by Regional One.” This was not the address at which the plaintiff had received treatment.
After different entities and employees forwarded the pre-suit notice, the notice did eventually reach Dr. Eton. After the plaintiff filed her suit, however, Dr. Eton moved to dismiss based on the plaintiff’s failure to comply with the pre-suit notice requirements. The trial court granted the motion, finding that the plaintiff was not entitled to the 120-day extension of the statute of limitations and that her claims were thus time-barred. The trial court also granted UTROP’s motion for judgment on the pleadings, finding that any claims arising out of vicarious liability were “abrogated by operation of law.” The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Before filing an HCLA suit, a plaintiff must send pre-suit notice to potential defendants pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-26-121(a). Subsection (a)(3)(B)(i) of the statute states that if there is no address listed on the Tennessee Department of Health website (or in certain other circumstances), the pre-suit notice should be mailed to “the provider’s office or business address at the location where the provider last provided a medical service to the plaintiff[.]” Importantly, it is not enough that a defendant actually receive the notice through some chain of events. The notice must be sent in accordance with the HCLA requirements.
Here, it was undisputed that the Department of Health website provided an incomplete address which mentioned Chicago for Dr. Eton. The statute therefore required the plaintiff to send pre-suit notice to Dr. Eton’s “current business address.” The Court wrote that the website should have alerted the plaintiff to the fact that Dr. Eton’s business address was in Chicago. Instead, pre-suit notice was sent to an address associated with UTROP in Memphis, but not an address at which the plaintiff received medical treatment and not an address that was associated in any way with Dr. Eton. Mailing the pre-suit notice to this address did not satisfy the HCLA requirements.
The plaintiff argued that compliance should be excused based on extraordinary cause, but the Court quickly rejected this assertion. While the plaintiff argued that the lack of address on the website constituted extraordinary cause, the Court wrote that “it is far from unusual that a physician might move or that an address on the Tennessee Department of Health website might not be correct.” Further, there was no evidence that the plaintiff did any investigation whatsoever to find Dr. Eton’s business address.
Because the pre-suit notice was not sent according to the statute, dismissal of the claims against Dr. Eton was affirmed.
The Court also affirmed judgment on the pleadings for the vicarious liability claims. The defendants argued that “the common-law operation-of-law exception prohibited [the plaintiff] from bringing a vicarious liability claim against UTROP for the actions of Dr. Eton when [the plaintiff’s] claims against Dr. Eton were procedurally barred by the statute of limitations,” and the Court agreed. While the plaintiff relied on two Tennessee Supreme Court cases involving the interaction of the HCLA and the operation-of-law exception, the Court found those cases narrow and distinguishable. Here, the plaintiff had chosen to sue both the agent and the principal (based on vicarious liability), and the claims against the agent were deemed time-barred. In this situation, the Court wrote that common law operation-of-law exception still applied, and judgment on the pleadings was affirmed.
This opinion underscores the importance of sending HCLA pre-suit notices to the address required by the statute.
This opinion was released 3.5 months after oral arguments.