Day on Torts
Where a jury awarded a car accident plaintiff damages related to the first portion of her medical treatment only, the award was withing the range of reasonableness and was affirmed.
In Adams v. Fields, No. W2025-00311-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 13, 2026), the defendant rear-ended the plaintiff on an interstate entrance ramp. The plaintiff claimed she was stopped on a single lane ramp waiting for traffic to clear when she was struck. The defendant claimed that the plaintiff suddenly stopped on a two-lane ramp for no reason. Google maps confirmed that the ramp consisted of two lanes.
During a jury trial, the plaintiff presented evidence regarding lengthy medical treatment, including a back surgery that occurred approximately eighteen months after the accident. The plaintiff relied on testimony from both her treating physician and an expert witness. The testimony showed that the plaintiff received initial treatment in the few months following the accident with a cost of around $8,000, and then additional treatment some months later with a cost of around $40,000.
During cross examination, the plaintiff admitted that she had a back injury requiring a nerve block in 2004, and that this prior injury had caused her pain since then. She also admitted that she did not tell her treating physician or her expert witness about this injury. With this additional information during cross examination, the “medical experts indicated that there were limitations in their ability to definitively link [the plaintiff’s] ongoing pain to the accident, due to assumptions, preexisting conditions, and gaps in medical history.” One expert noted that without the full history, a doctor could attribute “causation to the wrong incident.” Both experts agreed that the plaintiff had a pre-existing degenerative back disease, and one of the experts opined that, without this condition, “a typical recovery should have lasted only six to twelve weeks.”
The jury ultimately found the defendant 52% at fault and the plaintiff 48% at fault for the accident. The jury awarded the plaintiff damages of $14,745.00, which included $8,063.00 for past medical expenses. This amount was reduced by the comparative fault apportionment. The plaintiff appealed, arguing that the damages awarded were below the range of reasonableness, and that the apportionment of fault created a presumption that the verdict was one of compromise. The Court of Appeals rejected both arguments and affirmed the jury’s verdict.
The Court of Appeals first considered whether the award of $8,000 in medical expenses was reasonable. The plaintiff argued that the amount “irrationally disregard[ed]” the testimony of her expert regarding her surgery, but the Court pointed out that the medical testimony the plaintiff presented was challenged. The plaintiff admitted on cross examination that she failed to tell the medical experts about a prior back condition, and the experts both admitted that such information could affect their opinions. Further, the experts admitted that the plaintiff had a degenerative condition, and that without that condition recovery would have likely lasted six to twelve weeks. The amount awarded closely correlated to the amount of the plaintiff’s first round of treatment, which took place in the few months following the accident. The Court wrote that it did not “appear to be an arbitrary fraction indicative of a compromise,” and ruled that it was not “outside the range of reasonableness.”
Regarding the fault allocation, the Court noted that the plaintiff admitted on cross that she did not disclose her full medical history to her experts. Further, the Google map image supported the defendant’s assertion that the entrance ramp had two lanes. The Court found that “the apportionment of fault [had] support in the conflicting testimony” here, and that it did not create a suspicion of a compromise verdict.