No judgment or award rendered against a governmental entity may exceed the minimum amounts of insurance coverage for death, bodily injury and property damage liability specified in § 29-20-403, unless such governmental entity has secured insurance coverage in excess of such minimum requirements, in which event the judgment or award may not exceed the applicable limits provided in the insurance policy.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-311
Judgment over limits of insurance policy prohibited
Known as the Tennessee Governmental Tort Liability Act
The act spans §§ 29-20-101 to 29-20-408 (44 sections).
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Metaljan v. Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority (1990)
Most recently applied in Lemons v. Cloer (April 2006)
Acts 1973, ch. 345, § 28; 1976, ch. 656, § 1; T.C.A., § 23-3323.
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.