Foreseeability Requirement is Essential for a Tennessee Negligence Cause of Action

A recent Tennessee Court of Appeals decision considered the essential requirement of foreseeability for a negligence cause of action.  This case, Keane v. Campbell, III, No. M2016-00367-COA-R3-CV, 2017 WL 417220 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2017) was about a premises liability cause of action.  The facts of this case are interesting.  It involves a party hosted for high school students at the home of the Defendant.  At that party approximately 40 – 70 minors attended the party and were dancing and jumping on an elevated wooden deck attached to the Defendant’s house.  During this party, the deck suddenly collapsed and resulted in Plaintiffs’ injuries.  The Plaintiffs’ theory was basically there was a failure of the Defendant to adequately monitor and supervise the minors, failure to warn the minors of the danger on the deck, failure to take action to prevent the collapse of the deck and failure to observe what could have been observed exercising reasonable care regarding the flexing of the deck.  Essentially, the assertions in this case were that the Defendants knew or should have known of the potential issues with the deck that ultimately caused the injury to the plaintiff. 

At the end of the day, the decision of the trial court was based on the foreseeability requirement for a Tennessee negligence cause of action.  The trial court found the Plaintiff could not establish that the incident of the collapsing of the deck was foreseeable simply because there were individuals dancing and jumping on the deck.  In a Tennessee negligence cause of action, foreseeability is one of the required five elements to establish the cause of action.  “A plaintiff is required to prove that the injury was a reasonably foreseeable probability and that some action within the defendant's power more probably than not would have prevented the injury.  Foreseeability is thus linked with probability—the possibility of injury cannot be remote.  The fact that an injury might be conceivable is not sufficient to create a duty. If the injury which occurred could not have been reasonably foreseen, the duty of care does not arise, and even though the act of the defendant in fact caused the injury, there is no negligence and no liability.”  Keane at 3. 

The Court therefore reviewed the only testimony that was submitted by the Plaintiff on this issue. It was an affidavit of an individual who attended the party.  That individual asserted that he “had a premonition that something was going to happen because there was a ridiculous amount of people on the deck and it was going up and down as people were jumping/dancing.” Keane at 4. He further claimed in his affidavit, that he “imagined the deck falling because the deck continued going up and down as people were jumping/dancing and the deck looked overloaded and old, and [a]s a result of [his] premonition, [he] got off of the deck and went inside of the house, which is where [he] was at the time of the collapse.” Keane at 4.  The Defendant asserted that there was no foreseeability that the deck would actually collapse and in fact they had previously had even larger parties on the deck and there were no signs of instability.  Further, they had the deck inspected on multiple occasions and no deficiencies were noted. Keane at 4.

At the end of the day, the appellate court agreed with the trial court and found this event was not reasonably foreseeable.  As a result, no duty existed under Tennessee law and therefore the negligence claim failed.  The evidence submitted by the Plaintiff was simply insufficient to establish the foreseeability of the collapse of the deck.  It is important to keep in mind, this is a key element of a Negligence cause of action and must be established of the claim will fail.