The Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) collects data on civil and criminal filings and outcomes in the state court system. The data is collected on a fiscal year basis (July 1–June 30) and is published on the AOC website in the late winter of the following year.¹

The data collected includes information on the filing and disposition of personal injury and wrongful death cases on a county-by-county basis. Data concerning health care liability cases is collected separately. Let us examine the 2023-2024 data.

Last year, 10,785 personal injury and wrongful death cases were filed in Tennessee, and 10,665 were resolved.² The number of filings is up about 10% from the filings 10 years earlier (FY 2014-15), when there were 9,777,³ an unsurprising figure considering the similar increase in Tennessee’s population during the same period.⁴

Cases are disposed of in multiple ways, the most frequent of which is by settlement. The report does not share the number of cases resolved by settlement, but it does share trial data. Of the 10,665 case dispositions last year, 260 were resolved by a trial.⁵ The trial figure includes jury (81) and non-jury trials (179).⁶ Sixty-seven Tennessee counties did not have a jury trial and 66 did not have a nonjury trial in a personal injury or wrongful death case in FY 2023-24.⁷ Thus, the personal injury or wrongful death (trial?) lawyer can reliably tell their client that statistically, 2.44% of previously filed cases resulted in a trial during FY 2023-24.

Compare this figure with that of a decade ago. Then, there were 9,695 dispositions; 367 of the cases went to trial, including 183 jury trials and 184 bench trials.⁸ In other words, in FY 2014-15, 3.8% of personal injury and wrongful death cases went to trial, a trial rate about 30% percent higher than in FY 2023-24. Ten years earlier (FY 2004-05), the trial rate (324 jury trials and 298 bench trials) was about 5% of dispositions.⁹

What happened at these trials? Unfortunately, the reported data do not distinguish verdict or judgment results between jury and non-jury trials. We know that of the 260 personal injury and wrongful death cases that went to trial in FY 2023-24, the plaintiff recovered money in 87 (33% of cases).¹⁰ We also know that (a) 62 of the awards were $99,999 or less; (b) 23 were between $100,000 and $999,999; (c) 3 were over $1,000,000; and (d) the total amount of the awards was $23,655,525.¹¹ Almost 70% of the total damages awarded came from Shelby County, which had two of the $ 1,000,000-plus damage awards.¹² (The other $1,000,000 plus award originated in Davidson County.)¹³

Health care liability filings have remained flat or declined over the last decade. In FY 2023-24, 322 of these cases were filed.¹⁴ There were 21 health care liability trials last year, 14 of which were tried to a jury and seven to the bench.¹⁵ There were 384 health care cases disposed of in FY 2023-24, a trial rate of 5.5%.¹⁶ In other words, in FY 2023-2024, a health care liability case was more than twice as likely to be resolved at trial than the typical personal injury or wrongful death case.

Only 10 of Tennessee’s 95 counties held a health care liability trial in FY 2023-2024.¹⁷ The plaintiff recovered damages in six of the 21 trials (29%), resulting in (a) three awards between $100,000 and $999,999, (c) three awards over $1,000,000, and (c) total damage awards of $21,108,215.¹⁸ Plaintiffs recovered damages in only three counties — Knox (1), Davidson (2) and Shelby (3).¹⁹ The lion’s share of the damages awarded was in Davidson County ($18,079,010), where both plaintiff verdicts were over $1,000,000.²⁰

The Takeaways

So why is this data important? As someone who has been following publicly available data for over 30 years, here are my thoughts.

First, tort filings are, at best, keeping up with population growth. The idea that there is an explosion of tort litigation in Tennessee is fiction. Health care liability filings are generally down over the last two decades. For example, in FY 2004-2005, there were 715 cases filed, which is almost twice as many as were filed in 2023-2024.²¹  The decrease in filings is due to a combination of tort reform in 2011, coupled with increased awareness by plaintiffs’ lawyers that these cases require substantial experience and financial wherewithal.

Second, the courts are disposing of cases at about the same rate as they are being filed, meaning that, looking at the state, our courts are maintaining a steady “inventory” of tort cases. It is essential to note, however, that we do not have data on the “average time on docket” for cases and therefore cannot determine whether case disposition times meet suggested standards, are increasing or decreasing.²²

Third, it is challenging to obtain an accurate sense of verdicts from this data, except to note that a small percentage of cases result in a million-dollar verdict, while the vast majority result in a judgment of under $100,000. One cannot truly say whether the judgment-for-the-plaintiff results in 33% of the cases (or the amount of those judgments) is fair without knowing the facts of all tried cases. The data reveal higher average judgments in health care liability trials than in other injury and death tort trials; however, any comparison is flawed because the time and expense devoted to health care liability cases mean that only significant cases can be pursued, thereby impacting the “average.”²³

Fourth, the continued decline in the number of jury trials would be surprising to many lawyers and to the public. We do not know the exact number of tort cases where a jury is demanded, but it is not unreasonable to estimate that a jury is demanded in over 90% of injury, death and health care liability cases where a jury is permitted.²⁴ If that educated guess is correct, then a jury trial disposes of 1% (or less) of such cases. Other things being equal, fewer jury trials result if one side or the other (or both) is uncomfortable in that arena.

The decrease in the number of trials also means that our trial judges, especially those who did not have jury trial experience before ascending to the bench, will have difficulty conducting such trials. There is little substitute for experience when it comes to jury trials. Diminishing trials also mean that the development of the law of evidence and trial is adversely affected.

In addition, when 10- and 15-year lawyers have fewer trials, it increases the likelihood that they will be less likely to share trial opportunities with newer lawyers, which means that the newer lawyers will be less likely to develop trial skills. This lack of experience can lead to a lack of confidence, which in turn decreases the likelihood of future jury trials.

Fifth, the statewide decrease in the number of jury trials means it is more difficult to predict what juries will do in a given case. The absence of trials in rural areas makes it even more challenging in those venues.

So, before you say to an opponent, “No jury in Burning Stump, Tennessee will ever” accept your adversary’s view of the case, it might be prudent to look at the data and see if any civil jury has been empaneled in that county in the last decade. |||

JOHN A. DAY is a plaintiff’s injury, wrongful death and health care liability lawyer with offices in Brentwood, Murfreesboro and Nashville. He does not ride bikes, hunt, fish, golf or watch other adults play sports, but he does keep up with public data on tort cases in Tennessee state courts. (This makes him a very dull person at cocktail parties, which is one reason he is rarely invited to them.) If you are interested in learning about tort case data in any of Tennessee’s 95 counties, go to www.dayontorts.com, and search for “tort case statistics” along with the county’s name.

NOTES
1. Statistical Reports going back to FY 2000-2001 can be found at tncourts.gov/media/statistical-reports. All reports cited herein will be styled as “FY 20__-20__ Report, p. _” (last visited April 2, 2025).
2. FY 2023-2024 Report, p. 434.
3. FY 2014-2015 Report, p. 387.
4. One source indicates that Tennessee’s population has increased from 6,595,534 to 7,227,750 in the last 10 years, an increase of about 10%: Macrotrends, www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/states/tennessee/population (last visited April 2, 2025).
5. FY 2023-2024 Report, p. 434.
6. Id. Why is there a relatively large percentage of nonjury trials? That information is not included in the report; however, it is reasonable to assume that most of these cases involve mandatory non-jury trials in single-defendant cases under the Tennessee Governmental Tort Liability Act. See Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 29-20-307.
7. FY 2023-2024 Report, p. 442-46.
8. FY 2014-2015 Report, p. 387-88.
9. FY 2004-2005 Report, p. 126. The data for this year includes personal injury, wrongful death and health care liability cases, although only three of the trials involved health care liability. FY 2004-2005 Report, p. 119-20.
10. FY 2023-2024 Report, p. 451-55. Is a damage award a win for the plaintiff? Not necessarily. That depends on several factors, not the least of which is the amount of the pretrial offer.
11. Id. Unfortunately, we do not know whether additurs, remittiturs or non-economic damage caps impacted any reported awards. Likewise, we do not know whether any of the tried cases were appealed or how the appeal impacted any damage award.
12. FY 2023-2024 Report, p. 455.
13. FY 2023-2024 Report, p. 453.
14. FY 2023-2024 Report, p. 447-50.
15. Id.
16. Id.
17. Id.
18. Id. at 455. As with the personal injury and wrongful death awards, we do not know whether additurs, remittiturs, non-economic damage caps or appeals impacted any reported awards.
19. Id. at 451-55.
20. Id.
21. FY 2004-2005 Report, p. 119-20.
22. Measure Three: Time to Disposition, The National Center for State Courts (NCSC), www.ncsc.org/courtools/trial-court-performance-measures/measure-three-time-to-disposition (last visited April 2, 2025). The NCSC publishes model targets for the disposition of cases in state courts.
23. To be fair, smaller cases may be economically viable if they involve “never events.” Those cases rarely reach trial. Examples of “never events” include surgery on the wrong body part, unintended retention of a foreign object and patient death or serious disability associated with a medication error.
24.  Juries are not permitted in governmental tort liability cases unless there are non-government defendants in the case. Tenn. Code Ann. §§29-20-307 and 29-20-313(b).