RICKY LEE JOHNSON v. KNOXVILLE HMA CARDIOLOGY PPM, LLC D/B/A EAST TENNESSEE HEART CONSULTANTS, INC. D/B/A TENNOVA HEART-NORTH ET AL. - Articles

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RICKY LEE JOHNSON v. KNOXVILLE HMA CARDIOLOGY PPM, LLC D/B/A EAST TENNESSEE HEART CONSULTANTS, INC. D/B/A TENNOVA HEART-NORTH ET AL.

Posted by: Karen Belcher on Mar 24, 2020

Court: TN Court of Appeals

Attorneys 1: Mark E. Brown, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Ricky Lee Johnson.

Attorneys 2: C.J. Gideon, Jr.; J. Blake Carter; and Jed S. Crumbo, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellees, Knoxville HMA Cardiology PPM, LLC d/b/a East Tennessee Heart Consultants, Inc. d/b/a Tennova Heart-North and Charles B. Treasure, M.D., as an employee/agent and/or Charles B. Treasure, M.D., individually.

Judge(s): FRIERSON

In this action involving injuries allegedly caused by the defendant medical providers’ failure to provide a safe examination table, the trial court determined that the plaintiff’s negligence claim was actually a health care liability claim and granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint with prejudice for failure to provide written pre-suit notice to the defendants within the one-year statute of limitations pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated § 29-26-121(a) (Supp. 2019) of the Tennessee Health Care Liability Act (“THCLA”). The plaintiff has appealed, conceding that he failed to provide written pre- suit notice but asserting that his claim should not have been dismissed because it was not a health care liability claim. Having determined that the trial court properly found that the plaintiff’s claim was a health care liability action, we affirm the dismissal of this matter. However, having also determined that the proper sanction for the plaintiff’s failure to provide pre-suit notice under the THCLA was dismissal without prejudice, we modify the trial court’s dismissal of the claim to be without prejudice.

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