Personal Injury Law

New Tennessee Legislation of Interest to Tort Lawyers - Post 7

By John A. Day

Here is Post 7 of recent changes to statutory law in Tennessee that I think will be of interest to tort lawyers.  As I have said in the last six posts,  you can read about additional changes in the law under the Legislation 2009 category.

Public Chapter 206  changed the Governmental Tort Liability Act to include Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 29-20-101  et seq, to   specifically include "community action agenc[ies] [and] nonprofit corporation[s] which administer[] the Head Start or Community Service Block Grant programs" as entities covered under the Act.

I believe that this legislation is a result of a case our firm handled against such an organization in East Tennessee earlier this year.  We argued that the entity was not covered by the Act (and therefore the damage caps did not apply) because the type of entity was not specifically mentioned in the Act.  I predicated at the time we identified the issue that a legislative change would be forthcoming, and this is it.

Click at the link to read Public Acts, 2009 Public Chapter 206.

Full post as published by Day on Torts on August 11, 2009 (boomark / email).