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Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-11-138

Contractor's misapplication of payments — Violation

Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case Wilson v. Mettetal (In Re Mettetal) (1984)

Most recently applied in State v. Gene Ivan Amanns (March 1999)

Code 1932, § 7944 (Williams, § 7944a); T.C.A

How often courts cite this section

19831990199920
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 prime contractor or remote contractor who, with intent to defraud, uses the proceeds of any payment made to that contractor on account of improving certain real property for any purpose other than to pay for labor performed on, or materials, services, equipment, or machinery furnished by that contractor's order for the real property, and overhead and profit related thereto, while any amount for the labor, materials, services, equipment, machinery, overhead, or profit remains unpaid shall be liable to an injured party for any damages and actual expenses incurred, including attorneys' fees, if the damages and expenses incurred are the result of the misapplication of the payment.

(2) A violation of subdivision (a)(1) is a Class E felony.

(3) Notwithstanding subsection (a), there is no violation of this section when: Funds are disbursed pursuant to written agreement; or

(4) The use of funds received and deposited in a business account for use on multiple construction projects is based on the allocation of costs and profits in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles for construction projects.

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.