One in five girls and one in 20 boys are sexually assaulted. Sexual abuse of children is not only a crime, but also a tort that gives rise to compensatory and punitive damages.
Until recently, the general rule was that minors who were victims of sexual abuse had to sue their abusers before the victim’s 19th birthday.

The statute of limitations applicable to personal injury claims filed on behalf of persons with mental impairments has changed twice in five years. The first change was a draconian measure that put persons with an unsound mind at a severe disadvantage. The new law, effective for claims arising as of April 27, 2016, fixes the prior error but then reverses prior case law protecting the mentally impaired.

The new legislation is codified at Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-1-106 (b) – (d). The previous language of § 28-1-106 is now designated as subsection (a).

Tort lawyers come upon the issue of “forum not agreeing”[1] a couple times a year. A typical scenario: Innocence Jones, a resident of Bucksnort, Tennessee, is horrifically hurt while vacationing in Panama City, Florida. The harm was caused by a truck driven by an employee (Darren Ulysses Inkama) of CareLess LLC, a Delaware entity with significant operations in Orange Seed, Florida. CareLess is a large entity that does business in many states, including owning and operating a manufacturing plant with more than 100 employees in Nashville, Tennessee.

Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 20-5-106(a) and 20-5-110(a) tell us that the surviving spouse has the superior right to bring a wrongful death case.[1] Absent the surviving spouse’s affirmative waiver of that right or the circumstances discussed below, the spouse’s right trumps any right of the decedent’s executor, administrator or children to file a wrongful death action and control the litigation. But under what circumstances does a surviving spouse lose the right to bring and maintain the action?

To the three readers of this column who have not watched Breaking Bad, consider this your partial spoiler alert.

Tennessee law permits the spouse of an injured person to seek an award of damages for loss of consortium from the tortfeasor.

To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan: You are entitled to your own opinion about why the number of tort filings and trials are decreasing in Tennessee. You are not entitled to your own facts.

And here are some of the facts. Tort filings in Tennessee continue to decline, despite an increase in the population that, other things being equal, would tend to cause an increase in the number of incidents causing personal injury and death.

Most lawyers know that the General Assembly has determined that Tennessee juries cannot be trusted with determining compensatory damages in tort cases involving serious injury or death.[1] And that employers rarely should be held responsible for even capped punitive damages arising from reckless conduct of their employees.[2] And that beekeepers[3] and those engaged in bovine activity[4] and agritourism[5] need protection from lawsuits.

But many lawyers do not know that the tort reform legislation also includes new rules for determining where many civil cases can be filed.

The federal courts have misconstrued Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-1-119 (2009) for almost two decades. The Tennessee Supreme Court finally got an opportunity to set the record straight, and it did so in Becker v. Ford Motor Co.[1]

Certain folks have persuaded the General Assembly that they are entitled to special treatment in our court system. Statutes of limitation mandate that every dispute be presented to a court within a certain period of time, and, while reasonable minds can differ about whether the given time period is too short, too long or too ill-defined, reasonable minds agree that there has to be some deadline for bringing legal action.