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Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-14-117

Usury or excessive charges — Contracts

Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Craig v. Union County Bank (In Re Crabtree) (1985)

Most recently applied in Foster Business Park, LLC v. J & B Investments, LLC (January 2008)

Acts 1979, ch. 203, § 16.

How often courts cite this section

198519902000200810
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) Any contract which on its face requires the payment of usury or excess loan charges, commitment fees, or brokerage commissions shall not be enforceable; but the original lender or creditor may sue to recover the principal actually advanced, plus lawful interest, loan charges, commitment fees, and brokerage commissions.

(2) Where usury or excess loan charges, commitment fees or brokerage commissions do not appear on the face of the contract, but are proved, only the principal, plus lawful interest, loan charges, commitment fees, and brokerage commissions may be recovered.

(3) Where, however, the court finds that the lender or creditor has been guilty of unconscionable conduct in a transaction by taking interest, loan charges, commitment fees, or brokerage commissions in excess of the limitations fixed by statute, that lender or creditor shall not be entitled to recover any interest, loan charges, commitment fees, or brokerage commissions with respect to that transaction, and shall be required to refund to the borrower or debtor any loan charges, commitment fees, or brokerage commissions, and twice the amount of any interest collected with respect to that transaction, and the borrower shall be entitled to recover reasonable attorneys' fees from the lender.

(4) As used in this subsection (c), “unconscionable conduct” includes, but is not limited to, any calculated violation of statutory limitations on interest, loan charges, commitment fees, or brokerage commissions with full awareness of those limitations.

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.