IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT KNOXVILLE

December 3, 2008 Session

JEFFERSON LEE YOUNG V. ENERPAC

Direct Appeal from the Circuit Court for McMinn County

No. 26820 Hon. John B. Hagler, Circuit Judge

No. E2008-00069-COA-R3-CV - FILED JANUARY 22, 2009

Plaintiff filed this action after the statute of limitations had run, and defendant moved to dismiss.

Plaintiff attempted to invoke the discovery rule, claiming that his injuries had required surgery and

he was sedated for a few days following the accident. The Trial Court granted the defendant

summary judgment and plaintiff has appealed. We affirm the Trial Court on the grounds that the

discovery rule was not applicable to the circumstances of this case.

Tenn. R. App. P.3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Circuit Court Affirmed.

HERSCHEL PICKENS FRANKS,P.J., delivered the opinion ofthe Court, in whichCHARLES D.SUSANO,

JR., J., and JON KERRY BLACKWOOD, SR. J., joined.

Roy P. Neuenschwander, Knoxville, Tennessee, for appellant, Jefferson Lee Young.

R. Kim Burnette, Knoxville, Tennessee, for appellee, Enerpac.

OPINION

Plaintiffs, Jefferson and Shirley Young, filed a Complaint against Enerpac, a

Wisconsin business who marketed and sold a product called Porta Power. Plaintiffs alleged that on

June 21, 2005, while Mr. Young was working at his employment with Heil Trailer International and

using the Porta Power product, a part of the product broke and struck Mr. Young with great force,

causing a deep laceration over his eye, a skull fracture, and crushing the bones around his left eye.

The Complaint charged that defendant impliedly warranted to Mr. Young and his employer that the

product was safe and fit for its intended uses. 
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Plaintiffs alleged that Young had suffered pain and permanent, disfiguring injuries,

and along with his wife asked for damages in the amount of $1,200,000. 

 

Enerpac filed a Motion to Dismiss pursuant to Tenn. R. Civ. P. 12.02(6), asserting

that plaintiffs’ Complaint was untimely because it was not filed within the one year statute of

limitations, and asserted that the Complaint was not filed until June 23, 2006, when the incident in

question occurred on June 21, 2005. The Motion explained that June 21, 2006 did not fall on a

weekend or holiday, and that the Complaint was untimely on its face. 

 

Plaintiffs responded to the Motion, relying on the discovery rule, and stated that due

to the severity of his injuries, Young was not able to know or understand the cause of his injuries for

several days. Plaintiffs filed his Affidavit which we quote in pertinent part:

I was injured on-the-job on June 21, 2005 when a portion of the porta-power that I

was using while with the exercise of due care and in the course of my employment,

broke off and with great force and velocity struck the inside of the tank where I was

working and then struck me in the face with tremendous force and pressure. . . . I was

rushed to the University of Tennessee Medical Center where I immediately

underwent plastic surgery to repair the cuts on my forehead, eyebrow and eyelid. I

underwent surgery to repair my skull very late on Thursday, June 22, 2005. For the

first several days following the accident I was heavily sedated on strong narcotics,

lotrel, oratadine, percocet, keflex, phenegran and morphin, during the times that I was

not under anesthesia from the surgeries and did not recall anything about the accident

until Saturday, June 25, 2005. I was not fully aware of what happened to me and

how it happened until many days after the accident.

An Affidavit was filed by the spouse’s father, and his wife and sister, to the effect that

Young was in the hospital for several days after his accident, and that he was not fully aware of what

happened for a few days. 

The Trial Court dismissed the action and found the Complaint should have been filed

before June 21, 2006, but it was not filed until June 23, 2006. The Court found that Young’s

medical records showed that on the day of the accident, he demonstrated an awareness of the facts

of his accident sufficient to put him on notice of a potential cause of action, and found that the

discovery rule was inapplicable to the facts of this case. Plaintiffs have appealed and raise these

issues: 

1. Whether the Trial Court erred in allowing Mr. Young’s medical records to

be admitted into evidence?

2. Whether the Trial Court erred in refusing to hear medical testimony

regarding the effect of Mr. Young’s injuries?
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3. Whether the Trial Court erred in failing to apply the discovery rule to toll

the statute of limitations?

Plaintiff argues that the discovery rule is applicable to the facts of this case to toll the

statute of limitations. He states that he underwent surgery and was under anesthesia, and could not

appreciate his injuries nor the cause thereof until a few days after his accident. Both parties agree

that Woods v. Sherwin-Williams, 666 S.W.2d 77 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1983), appropriately presents the

history of the discovery rule as it has developed in this state.

In Woods, this Court explained that the discovery rule was developed to prevent

plaintiffs from being barred from filing a claim before they even knew it existed. Id. This Court

further stated the substance of the rule as:

the cause of action accrues and the statute of limitations commences to run when the

injury occurs or is discovered, or when in the exercise of reasonable care and

diligence, it should have been discovered. 

Id., quoting McCroskey v. Bryant Air Conditioning Company, 524 S.W.2d 487 (Tenn.1975).

The Supreme Court has expounded on the rule as follows:

. . . the one-year statute of limitations begins to run when a plaintiff discovers, or in

the exercise of reasonable care and diligence, should have discovered, the existence

of a legal cause of action. This so-called “discovery rule” prevents the anomaly of

requiring that a plaintiff file suit “prior to knowledge of his injury or ... that he sue

to vindicate a non-existent wrong, at a time when injury is unknown and

unknowable.” As we have explained:

[A] cause of action in tort does not accrue until a judicial remedy is available. A

judicial remedy is available when (1) a breach of a legally recognized duty owed to

plaintiff by defendant (2) causes plaintiff legally cognizable damage. A breach of a

legally cognizable duty occurs when plaintiff discovers or ‘reasonably should have

discovered, (1) the occasion, the manner and means by which a breach of duty

occurred that produced ... injury; and (2) the identity of the defendant who breached

the duty.’

We further stated in Carvell v. Bottoms, 900 S.W.2d 23 (Tenn.1995):

It is not required that the plaintiff actually know that the injury constitutes a breach

of the appropriate legal standard in order to discover that he has a right of action; the

plaintiff is deemed to have discovered the right of action if he is aware of facts

sufficient to put a reasonable person on notice that he has suffered an injury as a

result of wrongful conduct.
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Id. at 29 (quoting Roe v. Jefferson, 875 S.W.2d 653, 657 (Tenn.1994)).

Terry v. Niblack, 979 S.W.2d 583 (Tenn. 1998)(internal citations omitted). 

The Supreme Court has also expressed that “the statute of limitations is tolled only

during the period of time when the plaintiff has no actual knowledge of the injury and, as a

reasonable person, would not be placed on inquiry notice.” Potts v. Celotex Corp., 796 S.W.2d 678,

680-81 (Tenn. 1990).

The discovery rule is designed to shield a plaintiff from the unjust result of being

barred from filing a claim before he even knew that he had been wrongfully injured, i.e. an injury

that is latent in nature. In this case, the plaintiff alleges that he was disoriented for a few days after

his injury, but there was no proofthat the injury rendered him incompetent or otherwise disabled him

for any significant period of time such that he would have been barred from filing his claim in a

timely fashion absent application of the discovery rule. Clearly, the record establishes his injury was

not latent, and assuming arguendo, as we must, that plaintiff suffered a temporary loss of full mental

reasoning ability, he was not thereby prevented from filing his claim within the statute of

limitations, and was on inquiry notice during that period. In our view, the discovery rule is not

designed to “tack on” days or weeks to the statute of limitations for short periods of time when a

plaintiff might not be fully aware of what had occurred. If such were the case, the statute of

limitations would become a nebulous rule with difficult application, which could be arbitrarily

lengthened each time a plaintiff had a temporary difficulty, but was fully competent to file his claim

within the statutory period. We agree with the Trial Court that on these facts, the discovery rule is

not applicable.

Our ruling renders moot the issue as to consideration of the medical records, which

the record demonstrates the plaintiff did not object at the time to their admissibility.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the Judgment of the Trial Court and remand,

with the cost of the cause assessed to Jefferson Lee Young. 

______________________________

HERSCHEL PICKENS FRANKS, P.J.