The circuit courts shall have exclusive original jurisdiction over any action brought under this chapter and shall hear and decide such suits without the intervention of a jury, except as otherwise provided in § 29-20-313(b); provided, that in counties having a population of more than eight hundred fifty thousand (850,000), according to the 2000 federal census or any subsequent federal census, the general sessions court shall have concurrent original jurisdiction with such circuit court over any action brought under this chapter; and provided further, that the jurisdiction conferred upon the general sessions court by this section shall not extend beyond the jurisdictional dollar limit provided in § 16-15-501(d) for such general sessions courts in civil cases generally.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-307
Exclusive jurisdiction — No jury
Known as the Tennessee Governmental Tort Liability Act
The act spans §§ 29–29 (44 sections).
Applied in 25 court decisions — leading case Mickey Gregory, As Administrator of the Estate of Gerald Gregory,/cross v. Shelby County, Tennessee (2000)
Most recently applied in Brian Devereux v. Knox Cnty., Tenn. (September 2021)
Acts 1973, ch. 345, § 16; T.C.A., § 23-3319; Acts 1981, ch. 527, § 4; 1994, ch. 789, § 1; 2011, ch. 180, § 2.
How often courts cite this section
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.
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.