Day on Torts
Where a surviving spouse gave pre-suit notice under the HCLA of a wrongful death claim, but the surviving spouse was later found to have abandoned the decedent, the correct party plaintiff could rely on the pre-suit notice sent previously by the surviving spouse.
In Anderson v. Saint Thomas Midtown Hospital, No. M2024-00687-COA-R9-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 21, 2026), the decedent died after receiving care at defendant hospital. After the death, the decedent’s mother attempted to give pre-suit notice of a potential HCLA claim to the hospital, but the hospital refused to identify other potential defendants because it could not confirm that the mother was authorized to act on behalf of the decedent.
The decedent had a surviving spouse, who gave timely pre-suit notice of a wrongful death claim under the HCLA. The decedent’s mother filed a motion to replace the surviving spouse as administrator of the estate, asserting that the decedent was abandoned by the surviving spouse. The probate court did not grant the mother’s motion until after the one-year statute of limitations for the medical malpractice claim had expired.
Just two days after being appointed administrator (but more than one-year after the HCLA claim arose), the mother sent pre-suit notice to the potential HCLA defendants. She subsequently filed suit, filing the complaint less than 120 days after the expiration of the statute of limitations. The defendants moved to dismiss, asserting that the pre-suit notice was late and that the HCLA claim was therefore time-barred. The trial court denied the motion to dismiss, ruling that the mother could rely on the pre-suit notice sent by the surviving spouse, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
The mother argued that “under the statutes governing wrongful death actions, the pre-suit notice served by the decedent’s estranged husband extends the limitations period for the subsequent wrongful death action, even when such an action passes to a new beneficiary.” The Court of Appeals agreed.
The Court reviewed caselaw interpreting wrongful death actions in Tennessee and the effects of substituting the correct party in wrongful death cases. The Court pointed out that the “Tennessee Supreme Court has held that when the incorrect party under the statute files a wrongful death action, the correct party can be substituted even if the statute of limitations has expired in the intervening time.” (internal citation omitted). When the proper party is substituted, “the cause of action is not changed by the substitution of the property party plaintiff for the improper plaintiff, and such a substitution does not prejudice the defendant who has had notice from the beginning of the suit…” (internal citation and quotations omitted).
In reviewing the relevant case law, the Court noted that “the wrongful death claim is singular and indivisible,” and that there is “one wrongful death action which may pass among beneficiaries as designated by the statute.” (internal citations omitted). The Court wrote:
Ultimately, because a Tennessee wrongful death action is one, indivisible claim, and because Defendants do not dispute that they received pre-suit notice of that one, indivisible claim, we conclude that the pre-suit notice sent by [spouse] was sufficient as to [mother] when the cause of action passed from him to her. [Mother] is not a separate claimant in her own right, …; rather, the single, indivisible claim simply passed to [mother] once [spouse] had been disqualified, the same way that the claim passed to [spouse] upon the decedent’s death.
The Court explained that any other conclusion would “directly contradict the statutory mandate that the statute of limitations shall not bar a wrongful death action solely due to a finding that the surviving spouse’s rights were waived.”
Holding that “the pre-suit notice provided by the estranged spouse was adequate to satisfy the mandatory notice provisions of Tennessee Code Annotated section 29-26-121(a)(1) with regard to the beneficiary who succeeded in interest to the single, indivisible wrongful death action,” the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s ruling.
The Court came to the correct conclusion here. The substitution of the proper party plaintiff after the finding that the surviving spouse had abandoned the decedent should not have barred this wrongful death claim from moving forward. The Court elevated substance over form.
This opinion was released thirteen months after oral arguments.