Tennessee Car Accident Settlement Calculator
Estimate a car accident settlement under Tennessee law. The calculator applies this jurisdiction's own comparative fault rule and damages ceilings, and every figure below is the one our verified data holds, with the statute behind it and the date we checked it.
What Tennessee law does to your claim
Three things in state law open a gap between two identical injuries in two different states: how long you have to file, what happens if you were partly at fault, and whether the state puts a ceiling on what a jury can award. Here is what we hold for this one.
The 1 year shown is the earliest a Tennessee deadline for this claim can fall, not the deadline itself, because the same statute gives two years where the conditions it sets out, which turn on a criminal prosecution, are met. Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(2) reads: "A cause of action listed in subdivision (a)(1) shall be commenced within two (2) years after the cause of action accrued, if: (A) Criminal charges are brought against any person alleged to have caused or contributed to the injury; (B) The conduct, transaction, or occurrence that gives rise to the cause of action for civil damages is the subject of a criminal prosecution commenced within one (1) year by: (i) A law enforcement officer; (ii) A district attorney general; or (iii) A grand jury; and (C) The cause of action is brought by the person injured by the criminal conduct against the party prosecuted for such conduct." Subsection (a)(3) adds: "This subsection (a) shall be strictly construed." Which charges meet those conditions is not established here. Work inside the one year, and ask a licensed Tennessee attorney whether the two-year period applies to your claim.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(1)(A)·Last reviewed 2026-09-24
Tennessee bars recovery if plaintiff is 50% or more at fault.
McIntyre v. Balentine, 833 S.W.2d 52 (Tenn. 1992)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-39-102·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-39-104·Last reviewed 2026-07-30
Tennessee car insurance law: minimums, PIP and uninsured motorist coverage
What Tennessee's provisions say about the insurance behind a car accident claim, in their own words, with the copy read named under each.
Tennessee: Minimum liability coverage
The Tennessee Department of Revenue's Drive Insured Tennessee help page, "DIFD-1 - Insurance Verification Overview" states:
“Tennessee law requires motorists to carry proof of financial responsibility. The most common way to meet this requirement under the law is to carry a minimum amount of auto liability insurance. The required minimum limits of your liability car insurance are: $25,000 for each injury or death per accident. $50,000 for total injuries or deaths per accident. $25,000 for property damage per accident.”
The Tennessee Code was not read for this page.
A minimum is a floor on what a policy must carry. It is not a limit on what a claim is worth, and it does not tell you what the at-fault driver carries.
Tennessee: No-fault, personal injury protection and the right to sue
Not established here. Tennessee's code is published online through a LexisNexis site the research behind this page could not open, so no statute is quoted and nothing is inferred.
Tennessee: Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage
Not established here. Tennessee's code is published online through a LexisNexis site the research behind this page could not open, so no statute is quoted and nothing is inferred.
Tennessee: Medical payments coverage
Not established here. Tennessee's code is published online through a LexisNexis site the research behind this page could not open, so no statute is quoted and nothing is inferred.
What partial fault costs you in Tennessee
The same claim, fracture with surgery, several months of recovery, run through the calculator above four times, with nothing changed but the share of fault assigned to the claimant. The numbers are the engine's output, not an editorial claim about what these cases are worth.
One case, run through the calculator above four times with only the claimant's share of fault changed, under Tennessee law. No coverage ceiling is applied, because we would be inventing the at-fault party's policy. These shares illustrate the rule; they are not an estimate of your own fault.
Every Tennessee deadline we hold
A claim can be more than one kind of case, and the clock is different for each. These are the Tennessee periods in our verified data, with the statute behind each one. A deadline is the outside limit, never a target, and other rules can shorten it.
The 1 year shown is the earliest a Tennessee deadline for this claim can fall, not the deadline itself, because the same statute gives two years where the conditions it sets out, which turn on a criminal prosecution, are met. Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(2) reads: "A cause of action listed in subdivision (a)(1) shall be commenced within two (2) years after the cause of action accrued, if: (A) Criminal charges are brought against any person alleged to have caused or contributed to the injury; (B) The conduct, transaction, or occurrence that gives rise to the cause of action for civil damages is the subject of a criminal prosecution commenced within one (1) year by: (i) A law enforcement officer; (ii) A district attorney general; or (iii) A grand jury; and (C) The cause of action is brought by the person injured by the criminal conduct against the party prosecuted for such conduct." Subsection (a)(3) adds: "This subsection (a) shall be strictly construed." Which charges meet those conditions is not established here. Work inside the one year, and ask a licensed Tennessee attorney whether the two-year period applies to your claim.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(1)(A)·Last reviewed 2026-09-24
Open the personal injury calculatorTenn. Code Ann. § 29-26-116·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the medical malpractice calculatorThe 1 year shown is Tennessee's published wrongful-death period, and whether a two-year period in the same section can reach a wrongful-death claim is not established here. Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(2) begins: "A cause of action listed in subdivision (a)(1) shall be commenced within two (2) years after the cause of action accrued, if:" Its last condition, (a)(2)(C), reads: "The cause of action is brought by the person injured by the criminal conduct against the party prosecuted for such conduct." A wrongful-death claim arises from a person's death, and nothing we have read says whether (a)(2) reaches one. Work inside the one year, and ask a licensed Tennessee attorney whether the two-year period can apply to your claim.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(1)(A)·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the wrongful death calculatorTenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-203·Source retrieved 2026-07-27
Open the workers compensation calculatorThe 1 year shown is the earliest a Tennessee deadline for this claim can fall, not the deadline itself, because the same statute gives two years where the conditions it sets out, which turn on a criminal prosecution, are met. Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(2) reads: "A cause of action listed in subdivision (a)(1) shall be commenced within two (2) years after the cause of action accrued, if: (A) Criminal charges are brought against any person alleged to have caused or contributed to the injury; (B) The conduct, transaction, or occurrence that gives rise to the cause of action for civil damages is the subject of a criminal prosecution commenced within one (1) year by: (i) A law enforcement officer; (ii) A district attorney general; or (iii) A grand jury; and (C) The cause of action is brought by the person injured by the criminal conduct against the party prosecuted for such conduct." Subsection (a)(3) adds: "This subsection (a) shall be strictly construed." Which charges meet those conditions is not established here. Work inside the one year, and ask a licensed Tennessee attorney whether the two-year period applies to your claim.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(1)(A)·Last reviewed 2026-09-24
Open the slip and fall calculatorThe 1 year shown is the earliest a Tennessee deadline for this claim can fall, not the deadline itself, because the same statute gives two years where the conditions it sets out, which turn on a criminal prosecution, are met. Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(2) reads: "A cause of action listed in subdivision (a)(1) shall be commenced within two (2) years after the cause of action accrued, if: (A) Criminal charges are brought against any person alleged to have caused or contributed to the injury; (B) The conduct, transaction, or occurrence that gives rise to the cause of action for civil damages is the subject of a criminal prosecution commenced within one (1) year by: (i) A law enforcement officer; (ii) A district attorney general; or (iii) A grand jury; and (C) The cause of action is brought by the person injured by the criminal conduct against the party prosecuted for such conduct." Subsection (a)(3) adds: "This subsection (a) shall be strictly construed." Which charges meet those conditions is not established here. Work inside the one year, and ask a licensed Tennessee attorney whether the two-year period applies to your claim.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-3-104(a)(1)(A)·Last reviewed 2026-09-24
Open the dog bite calculatorTennessee against the rest of the country
Every count below is read from our state-law data across all 51 jurisdictions, so it moves when the data does. What you will not find here is an average settlement figure: the only one we could compute is a model, and a model presented as a measurement is not a fact.
- 10 of the 51 jurisdictions we track apply modified comparative negligence with a 50% bar, and Tennessee is one of them.
- Tennessee allows at least 1 year to file, and that is the earliest its deadline can fall rather than a fixed limit, because the governing statute gives a longer period where conditions it sets out are met. This page does not set that against the 2 years that 25 jurisdictions publish, because for those we hold a period and no condition that lengthens it, which is a different claim. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 6 years.
- 7 of the 51 jurisdictions limit non-economic damages (pain and suffering) in our data, and Tennessee is one of them at $750,000, so a large non-economic award can be reduced to it.
Comparisons are drawn from the legal levers that actually move a case value, not from closed-case data, which we do not hold. See the full methodology