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Statistics Show Damages Awarded in Tennessee Personal Injury Cases

Posted on Nov 13 2016 7:07PM by Attorney, Jason A. Lee

The most recent Tennessee judiciary annual report provided many interesting statistics on personal injury cases in Tennessee.  The most recent report covered the 2014 – 2015 fiscal year (July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015).  Incredibly, there were only 367 total personal injury or death cases that proceeded to trial in the 2014 – 2015 fiscal year.  Of those cases, only 116 of them resulted in damages.  The total monetary award for these 116 cases that resulted in damages was $46,901,449.00.  This constitutes an average award of $404,323.00 per case where damages were awarded.  However, like in most years, these statistics are very deceiving.  Specifically, this statistic was significantly warped by one single award in Shelby County totaling $30,000,000.00.  When this one award is removed, the total damages awarded in personal injury or death trials in Tennessee for the 2014 – 2015 fiscal year totals $16,901,449.00.  This results in average award of $146,969.12. 

 

Interestingly, out of the 116 cases where damages were awarded, only 14 cases resulted in awards of $100,000.00 to $1,000,000.00.  There were only 7 cases that were awarded over $1,000,000.00 in the State of Tennessee for 2014 – 2015.  This is actually a large number of million dollar verdicts when compared to recent prior years.  The remaining 95 cases were all awarded damages somewhere between $1 and $99,999.99.  Obviously, I am sure there are very significant cases that never go to trial and are instead are settled due to apparent risks to both parties.  However these statistics show how few large jury verdicts there are in Tennessee each year.  Further, like I have discussed before, cases simply do not go to trial like they used to do.  This is unfortunate because it inhibits the ability of young litigation attorneys to gain valuable trial experience.  Fewer and fewer attorneys are obtaining real jury trial experience.  This makes is even more important to make sure you hire attorneys with real jury trail experience whether you are on the defense or plaintiff side of the case.  Also, these numbers show, once again, how favorable things are for the defense in Tennessee as Tennessee has become a more and more conservative state from a legal and political perspective. 

 

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Jason A. Lee is a Member of Burrow Lee, PLLC. He practices in all areas of defense litigation inside and outside of Tennessee.

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Tennessee Defense Litigation Blog
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