Case Title: Ware v. Meharry Medical College

Citation: 898 S.W.2d 181

Docket Number: 01S01-9408-CV-00078

State: tennessee

Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Date: 1995-04-24T00:00:00Z

Document:
898 S.W.2d 181 (1995) Timothy A. WARE, Plaintiff, v. MEHARRY MEDICAL COLLEGE, Defendant. No. 01S01-9408-CV-00078. Supreme Court of Tennessee, at Nashville. April 24, 1995. *182 M. Reid Estes, Jr., Stewart, Estes & Donnell, Nashville, for plaintiff. Robert L. Jones and G. Brian Jackson, Trabue, Sturdivant & DeWitt, Nashville, for amicus curiae Larry Pullen. Leroy Cain, Jr., Russell B. Ennix, Petway, Blackshear, Cain & Ennix, Nashville, TN, for defendant. DROWOTA, Justice. The plaintiff, Timothy Ware, appeals from the Court of Appeals' ruling, which reduced the $75,000 judgment awarded him by the Davidson County Circuit Court to $25,000. The issue presented for our determination can be stated as follows: in a case appealed from the general sessions court to the circuit court and subjected to de novo review, is the longstanding common-law rule limiting plaintiff's recovery in the circuit court to the jurisdictional limits of the general sessions court viable in light of the adoption of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure and the principles of judicial economy?[1] Although a majority of the Court of Appeals reduced Ware's judgment in accordance with this rule, we conclude that the rule should not be retained; and we adopt the following opinion of the dissenting judge in this case, William C. Koch, Jr., as our rationale. We agree with Judge Koch's well researched and reasoned dissent: the common-law rule limiting a plaintiff's recovery to the jurisdictional limits of the general sessions court in cases appealed to the circuit court is not compatible with the objectives of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure and modern notions of judicial economy; nor does the rule provide any benefits which offset these deficiencies. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the trial court's judgment is reinstated. ANDERSON, C.J., and REID, BIRCH and WHITE, JJ., concur. [1] Meharry Medical College, the defendant in this lawsuit, raises numerous issues regarding the propriety of the jury's finding of liability. However, by previous order we have determined that those issues have no merit; thus, our review is limited to the jurisdictional issue. [2] See 1959 Tenn. Pub. Acts ch. 109, now codified at Tenn. Code Ann. § 16-15-101, et seq. [3] Tenn. Code Ann. § 16-15-401(c) (Supp. 1993); Tenn. Code Ann. § 16-15-501(b)(2); Tenn. Code Ann. § 17-2-209(a) (Supp. 1993); Tenn. Code Ann. § 36-5-209(b)(2) (1991); Tenn. Code Ann. § 16-15-5010 app. at 236-42 (Supp. 1993) (Appendix, Jurisdiction of Courts of General Sessions). [4] Justices of the peace did not receive a fixed salary but rather derived their compensation from fees paid by the litigants. T.L. Howard, The Justice of the Peace System in Tennessee, 13 Tenn.L.Rev. 19, 22, 32-35 (1934). Some justices' fees exceeded the salary of the Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Keebler, supra, 9 Tenn.L.Rev. at 14. [5] Tenn.R.Civ.P. 1 provides in part that "... these rules shall govern the procedure in the circuit and chancery courts of Tennessee ... in all civil actions, whether at law or in equity, including civil actions appealed or otherwise transferred to these courts." [6] Cooke v. Neighborhood Grocery, 173 Tenn. 681, 684, 122 S.W.2d 438, 440 (1938). [7] Shay v. Harper, 202 Tenn. 141, 147, 303 S.W.2d 335, 338 (1957). [8] Vinson v. Mills, 530 S.W.2d at 765. [9] Clark v. Howard, 18 Tenn. (10 Yer.) 250, 251 (1837); Phillips v. Tidwell, 26 Tenn. App. 543, 554, 174 S.W.2d 472, 477 (1942). [10] One author has incorrectly speculated that the wording of the 1985 legislation, at least by implication, permits amendments in the circuit court that exceed the general sessions court's monetary limits even in the absence of a nonsuit. Pivnick, supra, § 3-10 n. 28. The language of the statute does not support this conclusion, and the legislation's House sponsor informed the House Judiciary Committee and the House Calendar Committee that it applied only to nonsuited cases and not to de novo appeals to the circuit court after the general sessions court had decided the case on the merits. [11] Prior decisions have alluded to the problems with counterclaims, cross-claims, and third-party claims resulting from imposing monetary limits on the circuit court's jurisdiction. See Sale v. Eichberg, 105 Tenn. at 346, 59 S.W. at 1024; Riden v. Snider, 832 S.W.2d at 343.