Brown Ex Rel. Brown v. Wal-Mart Discount Cities
2000 WL 99963, 2000 Tenn. LEXIS 53, 12 S.W. 3d 785 (2000)
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Rule of Law:
Under Tennessee's comparative fault system, a defendant may not attribute fault to a nonparty tortfeasor who is not identified sufficiently to allow the plaintiff to plead a cause of action against and serve process on that person.
Facts:
- Three-year-old Mitchell Brown was in a Wal-Mart store with his mother, Lisa Brown.
- An unidentified person spilled ice and water from a Wal-Mart self-serve fountain drink dispenser on the floor in the store's vestibule.
- Mitchell Brown slipped on the spilled ice and water, which resulted in a broken ankle.
- Lisa Brown noticed a Wal-Mart employee standing near the vestibule door when she first entered the store.
- Wal-Mart had a policy restricting drinks to the snack area, but management acknowledged that customers often carried drinks throughout the store.
- An employee responsible for maintaining the vestibule, Kevin Brewer, testified he had walked through the area approximately five minutes before the accident and had not seen any spill.
Procedural Posture:
- Mitchell Brown's family sued Wal-Mart in a Tennessee trial court for negligence.
- The trial judge instructed the jury that it could assign a percentage of fault to the unknown person who spilled the ice and water.
- The jury found Brown's total damages were $2,625.00 and allocated 70% of the fault to the 'unknown person' and 30% to Wal-Mart.
- Upon the plaintiff's motion for a new trial, the trial judge found it had erred and entered a new order assigning 100% of the fault and the full $2,625.00 judgment to Wal-Mart.
- Wal-Mart, as appellant, appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, the state's intermediate appellate court.
- The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's judgment but held that fault could be attributed to a phantom tortfeasor if its existence was proven by 'clear and convincing evidence,' which it found Wal-Mart had failed to do.
- The Tennessee Supreme Court, the state's highest court, granted Wal-Mart's application for permission to appeal.
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Issue:
Does Tennessee's comparative fault doctrine permit a defendant to attribute fault to an unidentified, or 'phantom,' nonparty tortfeasor?
Opinions:
Majority - Chief Justice Riley Anderson
No. A defendant may not attribute fault to an unidentified nonparty. The state's comparative fault framework, particularly Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-1-119, contemplates that a plaintiff must be able to sue any nonparty to whom a defendant seeks to assign fault. This statute allows a plaintiff to add a 'person'—defined as an 'individual or legal entity'—identified by the defendant, which presupposes the nonparty is known and can be served with process. The court rejected the lower appellate court's standard that a defendant need only prove the phantom's existence by clear and convincing evidence. Adopting the policy reasoning from a New Jersey case, the court concluded that the defendant has the incentive and the burden to identify other tortfeasors to reduce its own liability. Allowing a defendant to blame a 'phantom' would improperly diminish this incentive and unfairly require the plaintiff to 'defend' an unknown party, frustrating the goal of making the plaintiff whole.
Analysis:
This decision resolves a key ambiguity in Tennessee's comparative fault doctrine by establishing a bright-line rule against attributing fault to 'phantom' tortfeasors. It clarifies that the primary goal of making an injured plaintiff whole outweighs a defendant's interest in paying only for its precise percentage of fault when other contributors are unidentifiable. The ruling places a clear burden on defendants to investigate and specifically identify any other potentially liable parties if they wish to reduce their share of damages. This precedent strengthens the position of plaintiffs by preventing their recovery from being diminished by the fault of an unknown and unreachable party.
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