Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-5-103

Causes surviving death of tort-feasor

Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Timmins v. Lindsey (2009)

Most recently applied in Julia Putman v. John W. Leach Administrator Ad Litem of the Estate of Bryane R. Litsinberger (January 2018)

Acts 1935, ch. 104, § 1; mod

How often courts cite this section

citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) In all cases where a person commits a tortious or wrongful act causing injury or death to another, or property damage, and the person committing the wrongful act dies before suit is instituted to recover damages, the death of that person shall not abate any cause of action that the plaintiff would have otherwise had, but the cause of action shall survive and may be prosecuted against the personal representative of the tort-feasor or wrongdoer.

(2) The common law rule abating such actions upon the death of the wrongdoer and before suit is commenced is abrogated.

(3) This section shall not apply to actions for wrongs affecting the character of the plaintiff.

Current official text: Tennessee Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Tennessee statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.