Tennessee Injury Lawyer Blog

If covered under Tennessee’s workers’ compensation system, your employer must furnish you, free of charge, with reasonably required medical treatment, surgical treatment, medicine, medical supplies and other medical necessities including hospitalization costs and reasonably necessary dental care.

When needing further medical treatment after injury, the employee is required to select from a list (panel) of three physicians provided by your employer. The selected physician will be your primary physician, who can, if necessary, refer you to a specialist. If you are not happy with your selected physician, you can request a new panel or you can seek a second opinion or obtain treatment with another healthcare provider at your own expense. However, only the authorized panel physician can set work restrictions to be followed by your employer.

As noted, the employer is required to pay for most “reasonably required” medical treatments and services. Sometimes, however, the value of services is disputed. When the value of services is in dispute, it must be determined by a court that has jurisdiction over the claim. In these instances, it is highly suggested that the employee seek out competent representation, particularly because a court can deny payment of physicians’ fees and hospital charges for failure to submit necessary reports.

Continue reading " Medical Treatment When Injured on the Job in Tennessee " »

Every year, Tennessee hosts about eight football games at Neyland Stadium. Over 100,000 people from all over Tennessee and alumni across the nation make their annual homage to Big Orange country. An unfortunate consequence, however, is heavy traffic congestion and reckless driving. While most drivers exercise care on game day, some drivers unfamiliar with the area make bad driving decisions, putting themselves and other drivers at risk for a Tennessee car wreck. There are also many young and inexperienced drivers and inebriated and impaired drivers on the road on game day that fail to exercise caution and fail to obey Tennessee’ rules of the road. As a result, downtown drivers are often involved in major motor vehicle wrecks.

Here is the Tennessee football schedule for home games this year:

• September 5 (Western Kentucky)


• September 12 (UCLA)


• September 26 (Ohio)


• October 3 (Auburn)


• October 10 (Georgia)


• October 31 (South Carolina)


• November 7 (Memphis)


• November 21 (Vanderbilt)

Continue reading " Game Day Driving: Use Caution to Prevent Auto Accidents " »

In just one day, September 26, 2009, more rain fell on Knoxville than the entire month of September in 2008. Thirteen East Tennessee counties were under flash flood warnings as rain covered roads, knocked out power lines and forced campers in the Smoky Mountain National Park to evacuate.

As reported on KnoxNews.com, authorities called this latest downpour “part of the wettest fall season the region's seen in years.” In fact, according to the NPDES monitoring system, the average downfall in Knoxville from 2000 to 2004 was 4.62 inches of rain in September and only 1.82 inches of rain in October.

As a result of the heavy rains, there have been several Tennessee car wrecks due to standing water on local roads and highways. According to KnoxNews, standing water on Interstate 75 led to several cars and trucks hydroplaning in Anderson and Campbell counties. There was also a report of a fatal car accident on Friday along I-640 in which a woman lost control of her vehicle and hit a tree.

Heavy rains present greater risk to Tennessee drivers. Hydroplaning is a particular risk and occurs when a driver loses steering control because a layer of water on the road prevents the tire from making direct contact with the road surface. The loss of road contact causes the driver to lose braking and steering ability. Without control, the vehicle slides until it hits something else—namely a tree, pedestrian or another driver.

Continue reading " Heavy Rains Fall on East Tennessee " »

A voluntary recall for Oval Roll-up Blinds without release clips and all Woolrich Roman Shades, imported by Lewis Hyman, Inc. of Carson, California, has been announced by the CPSC due to the potential risk of strangulation to young children. About 4.2 million of the blinds and 600,000 of the Roman Shades have been sold nationwide. To see pictures of the blinds and shades, visit the CPSC website. (Specific web address posted below.)

The roll-up blinds were sold from January 1999 through December 2003 from between 6 and 20 dollars. They were sold at several retail stores nationwide. The Roman Shades were sold exclusively at Target stores from March 2006 to December 2009 at a cost between 25 and 43 dollars.

The oval roll-up blinds specifically create a risk of strangulation because the lifting loops can slide easily off the side of the blind, exposing a loose loop. The Roman Shade poses a similar risk in which strangulation can occur when a child places his/her neck between the exposed inner cord and the fabric on the backside of the blind. A child can also get entangled by pulling the cord out and wrapping it around his/her neck.

Continue reading " Blinds and Shades with Pull Cords, Exposed Inner Cords and Exposed Lifting Loops Risk Strangulation for Children in Tennessee " »

How often have you had to slam on your breaks, honk your horn, or veer into another lane because someone veered into your lane? Anyone who has spent much time on Tennessee roads—particularly on I-40, I-75, I-140 or I-640—will likely answer, “Too many.”

As East Tennessee motor vehicle accident attorneys, we see a lot of wrecks (or, more precisely, paperwork resulting from a wreck) and are asked to investigate potential claims for compensation. One of the first steps we make is to procure an accident report. All too often, these reports list “unlawful lane change” or language of similar import as a basis for a citation issued to one of the parties involved in the accident.

Liability for unlawful lane change proceeds based on two theories: negligence per se and simple negligence. Negligence per se is a legal doctrine imposing liability on violators of laws that contain within their language specific standards of care. Under a negligence per se theory, breaking the law is conclusive evidence of a breach of a duty of care. Liability therefore attaches upon proof of the violation and proof that the violation proximately caused the plaintiff’s injuries.

A good example of negligence per se in the unlawful lane change context is a violation of TCA 55-8-143, “Signals for Turns.” The statute reads, “[e]very driver who intends to…turn or partly turn from a direct line, shall first see that the movement can be made in safety, and whenever the operation of any other vehicle may be affected by such movement, shall give a signal…plainly visible to the driver of the other vehicle of the intention to make such movement.” Based on this statute and applying the negligence per se doctrine, a driver may be automatically liable for injuries proximately caused by the driver’s lane change if the driver either:

1. Failed to ensure that the movement could be made safely


2. Failed to turn on his/her blinker.

Continue reading " Unlawful Lane Changes Leading to Accidents in Tennessee " »

Under Tennessee workers’ compensation law, the employer (and/or workers’ compensation carrier) and the employee have the right to settle a workers’ compensation claim without having to go to trial. However, the settlement must be reduced to writing and must be approved by a judge in either chancery or circuit court of the county in which the claim is entitled to be made.

Approval of the settlement rests on the trial court judge’s examination of the proposed settlement to determine whether the employee is substantially receiving the benefits that he/she would be entitled to under the compensation laws. If the judge approves, the judge will enter an order approving the settlement and binding the parties to the terms of the settlement agreement.

Before agreeing to settle, you should know that once the order is issued it is generally final. This means that the terms of settlement cannot be adjusted, according to the provisions of TCA 50-6-230. There is however an exception for awards payable periodically for more than six months, as outlined in TCA 50-6-231. This exception typically comes up when a settlement is approved and finalized, but, sometime later, the employee’s work-related injury worsens and produces greater incapacity than originally anticipated. In this instance, the employee has two choices: The employee can seek agreement to modify the award with the employer (or comp carrier), or, if the employer does not agree, the employee can petition the court to modify the settlement based on the ground of “increase or decrease of incapacity due solely to the injury.”

Continue reading " Settling a Workers’ Compensation Case in Tennessee " »

A vehicle back-up or backover accident occurs when a driver backs up his/her vehicle and unintentionally hits a pedestrian located behind the vehicle, resulting in injury or death. Typically, these accidents involve children under the age of 14, since they are often too small to be seen in a driver’s rearview or side mirrors. Accidents occur most frequently in driveways and parking lots, and drivers are often neighbors or relatives.

The June 2009 issue of NHTSA’s “Crash*Stats” summarizes the scope of the problem. According to the report, there were approximately 262 fatalities and 115,000 injuries to children 14 and younger from non-traffic/non-crash motor vehicle accidents in 2007. Almost half of the fatalities resulted from a backover accident.

Tennessee backover accidents are almost entirely preventable, provided drivers abide by their duty to keep a proper lookout. A good rule of thumb for Tennessee drivers is to always assume children could be present and to check the street, driveway and area around the vehicle before backing up. Failure to adhere to this general rule may expose the careless driver to liability should an unfortunate accident result. In fact, Tennessee law requires drivers to exercise reasonable care while operating a motor vehicle, including maintaining a careful lookout for children while backing up.

The level of care owed varies based on circumstance. SUVs and other large vehicles, for instance, have larger blind spots than smaller vehicles, therefore, operators of these vehicles should take extra precautions to prevent a possible backover accident. These precautions may include rolling down windows to listen for children and backing the vehicle up extra slowly.

Continue reading " Vehicle Back-up and Backover Accidents " »

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (“CPSC”) announced on Tuesday that several firms agreed to pay substantial penalties in exchange for not having to acknowledge that they knowingly violated the law regarding reporting product defects to the CPSC.

According to federal law, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers must report to the CPSC any product that contains a defect creating an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death or fails to comply with any consumer product safety guideline or rule. In fact, the CPSC issued drawstring guidelines in 1996 to help prevent children from strangling or getting entangled.

In 1997, the clothing industry adopted a voluntary standard for drawstrings, incorporating these guidelines, and, in May 2006, the CPSC announced that children’s sweaters and jackets (“upper outerwear”) with drawstrings at the hood or neck will be regarded as defective and as presenting a substantial risk of injury to young children.

Continue reading " Drawstring Settlements " »

You may be thinking that failure to wear a seat belt bars recovery in a Tennessee motor vehicle accident. This might seem reasonable given the fact that wearing a seat belt is mandatory, and injuries can be avoided by buckling up. In Tennessee, however, the seat belt defense is unavailable in most personal injury actions; therefore, you may be able to recover in full even if you were not wearing a seatbelt.

What is the seat belt defense? In some jurisdictions, a defendant can introduce evidence of the plaintiff’s failure to wear a seat belt in order to prevent or limit the amount of damages he/she can recover. In these jurisdictions, the defendant can introduce this evidence in all cases provided the evidence is relevant.

The seat belt defense is available in Tennessee but only for purposes of proving causation in a products liability case. To raise the defense, the defendant must allege in its answer that the plaintiff failed to wear a seatbelt. Accordingly, the defendant has the burden of proving that the plaintiff failed to buckle up, that such failure caused or increased the injuries, and the extent of those increased injuries caused by the plaintiff’s failure to wear a seatbelt.

Continue reading " What If I Wasn’t Wearing a Seat Belt? Tennessee Motor Vehicle Accidents and the Seat Belt Defense " »

Compensation for permanent partial disability in a Tennessee workers’ compensation case is capped at 1.5 times the worker’s impairment rating if the worker sustained an injury after June 30, 2004, and made a “meaningful return to work” at the same rate of pay or more. This limitation can significantly limit the amount of benefits an injured worker can recover. As such, there is much litigation over what constitutes a “meaningful return to work”, particularly on allegation that the worker could physically return to work but failed or refused to do so.

The determination of meaningful return to work rests on the reasonableness of the employer in attempting to return the employee to work and the reasonableness of the employee in failing to either return to or remain at work. Thus, if a worker is physically able and permitted to return to work but refuses to do so, a court may cap her benefits according to law. For example, in Newton v. Scott Health Care, the worker refused to return to work after injury because he was not given special consideration as to shift hours. The court didn’t buy this excuse and limited his recovery.

However, in Haney v. Five Rivers Elec. Innovations, the court found unreasonable the employer who allowed the worker to return to work but then later terminated the employment due to no fault of the employee’s and with no assurance the he would be re-employed in the future.

Continue reading " Injured and Wanting to Return to Work in Tennessee? " »

Two outbreaks of E-Coli infections swept the nation in the summer months of 2009. One outbreak involved Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough and another involved beef sold by SBS Swift Beef Company. These products were tainted with E-Coli O157:H7. Thankfully, no Tennessee consumers are known to have fallen ill; but, across the nation, over 100 people became sick as a result of consuming these products. It is likely, however, many more infections went unreported.

According to reports by the CDC, most infections resulted from eating raw or undercooked beef or cookie dough. Eating such products raw could limit or void any potential recovery. Facts and circumstances vary from case to case, so don’t assume-away your potential claim. Call an experienced East Tennessee personal injury attorney.

Symptoms of E-Coli poisoning include fever, abdominal cramping, diarrhea, vomiting, bloody stool, urinary tract infections, respiratory illness and pneumonia. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, contact a medical professional immediately.

Continue reading " Recent E-Coli Outbreaks " »

The first question in a negligence suit is whether the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of care. In most cases, duty is not an issue because, under most circumstances, duty has previously been decided according to judicial or legislative ruling. However, some cases offer the courts unique opportunities to clarify the duties a person or business owes to others. Satterfield v. Alcoa is such a case.

In Satterfield v. Alcoa, the daughter of an Alcoa employee claimed that she developed mesothelioma as a result of regular and long term exposure to asbestos fibers. She alleged that, after leaving work, her father would come home in his work clothes not knowing that they were contaminated with asbestos fibers. She further alleged, among other things, that Alcoa failed in its duty to protect her from harm created by its negligent acts—in particular, the failure to inform the father of the dangers of wearing work clothes home. (Soon after transferring the case to the Knox County Circuit Court, the daughter succumbed to the illness.)

Alcoa then filed a motion to dismiss, asserting that Ms. Satterfield had no legal basis for her claim. Specifically, Alcoa alleged that it had no duty to protect employee’s family members. The Circuit Court for Blount County agreed and dismissed the case. Plaintiffs appealed and the case eventually worked its way to the Tennessee Supreme Court to decide whether, by law, Alcoa had a duty of reasonable care to avoid the risk of harm to Mr. Satterfield’s daughter. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that Alcoa owed a duty to the Plaintiff. (The parties have since settled as of September 3, 2009).

Continue reading " Employer's Duty to Protect Third Persons from Asbestos Exposure: Satterfield v. Alcoa " »

Under TCA 55-8-136, drivers have legal duty to maintain a safe lookout to help prevent auto accidents in Tennessee by “keeping the motor vehicle under proper control and by devoting full time and attention to operating the motor vehicle, under the existing circumstances to avoid endangering life, limb or property.”

Keeping a proper lookout means keeping a watchful eye for reasonably foreseeable dangers and hazardous conditions. As such, drivers are not responsible to see all known and unknown dangers—only those that can be expected within reason, considering all the circumstances. While a person may have a duty to keep a lookout for pedestrians crossing the street, he/she may not have a similar duty to keep a look out for things falling out of the sky. Again, courts apply a reasonableness standard, which only requires a driver to keep a reasonable lookout under all the circumstances. What is reasonable is a question for a jury.

What typically must a driver watch out for? Examples include:

• Pedestrians crossing the street;


• Children playing in the road;


• Drivers failing to stop at a traffic light or stop sign;


• Drivers pulling out onto oncoming traffic;


• Hazardous road conditions, such as rain, sleet or snow;


• The presence of children; and


• Any other potential problems or hazards that are in plain view and readily apparent.

Continue reading " The Duty to Keep a Proper Look Out While Driving in Tennessee " »

The numerous media reports of exploding iPods and iPhones, overheating X-Boxes, Dell laptop batteries catching fire, and now, a CPSC recall on ignitable Durabrand DVD players are enough to destroy whatever expectation we Tennesseans had about the safety of electronic devices that we use every day. The good news is that the chances of you getting harmed or your property damaged is very miniscule.

Take for instance a recent investigation into exploding iPods by a Seattle news station. The news station found after receiving information produced as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request that there have been 15 incidents in the United States of iPods overheating, sparking and bursting into flames. Although the number of incidents was reported as an "alarming number", one Business Week analyst put the risk of danger in perspective, providing the following reasoning:

“Apple has sold 218 million iPods worldwide. Let's say there were 1,500 documented cases of these incidents—100 times the number cited in the news report. That would still amount to only 0.000007% of the devices sold. Fifteen cases amounts to a minute fraction of 1% of the devices in circulation. And it's certainly not enough of a problem to warrant a recall by the CPSC.”

Even so, the level of risk does not relieve manufacturers from liability for manufacturing defects. Under TCA 29-28-105, a manufacturer or seller of a product is strictly liable for a defective product in Tennessee found to be “unreasonably dangerous” at the time that it left the manufacturer’s or seller’s control. “Unreasonably dangerous”, according to the code, means that the product is “dangerous to an extent beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary consumer who purchases it…” Certainly, an exploding MP3 player is not something your ordinary Tennessee consumer would expect to happen!

Continue reading " Defective Electronic Devices in Tennessee " »

A Tennessee appeals court recently held that a security company can be civilly liable if it fails in its voluntarily assumed duty to reasonably protect patrons and employees from foreseeable risks of harm.

In a suit against Old Hickory Mall in Jackson, Tennessee, the plaintiff employee alleged that she was abducted by two juveniles in a mall parking lot and forced into the backseat. The juveniles took a joy ride, and, several hours and one wreck later, decided to ditch the stolen vehicle. The plaintiff and her husband then brought suit against the Mall and the Mall’s contracted security company.

In the complaint, the plaintiff alleged that the security company was “responsible for providing security and protection to the general public and employees of the mall” and that it failed, among other things, to provide sufficient security to protect her from harm. The defendant security company then motioned the court for a dismissal, arguing that it owed no duty to the plaintiff under any circumstances. The trial court agreed.

The appeals court, however, remanded the case for further proceedings, finding that the trial court erred in its dismissal. The court held that the security company could be subject to liability if it assumed the duties the Mall owed to the public—that is, to protect the public from foreseeable criminal acts that could reasonably be prevented by providing adequate security. The court qualified the holding, however, by indicating that the security company’s duty would be no greater than that assumed. In other words, the Mall and the security company could contractually limit the duty the security company owed to the public and mall personnel.

Continue reading " Mall Security in Tennessee Parking Lot: Can a Security Company Be Civilly Liable for the Criminal Activities of Others? " »