Tennessee Medical Malpractice Settlement Calculator
Estimate a medical malpractice 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
Four things in state law shape a malpractice claim: how long you have to file, what must happen before you 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.
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
The Tennessee Code is published only through LexisNexis, and R1's source for it was a court opinion, not the statute. So this page does not say whether Tennessee requires a notice to the provider, an expert's affidavit or a review panel before a malpractice suit. That is a gap in our research, not a finding that nothing is required. Ask a licensed Tennessee attorney before you file.
None on record means our verified data holds no figure of this kind for this state. It is not a finding that no limit could apply to your claim.
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.
- Its 1 year to file is shorter than the 2 years that 31 jurisdictions use, so there is less time than a reader comparing states might expect. Across the 51 jurisdictions the deadline for this case type runs from 1 year to 4 years.
- We have read the official text of 26 jurisdictions' rules on what must come before a malpractice suit, and 25 of them require something: a notice to the provider, an expert's affidavit, certificate or opinion, or a review panel. We have not read Tennessee's.
- 23 of the 51 jurisdictions limit medical malpractice non-economic damages 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
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Tennessee Medical Malpractice questions
Every document behind our state injury law figures, each linked with the date we last read it, is listed on our State Injury Law research sources page.