The collateral source rule in personal injury actions had remained unchanged in this state for years. That changed when the Tennessee Supreme Court issued its opinion in West v. Shelby County Healthcare Corp., 459 S.W.3d 33 (Tenn. 2014). Despite West having to do with hospital liens and the reasonableness of the charges for the medical expenses that comprised those liens, certain factions of the bar took the position that West supported their arguments that the collateral source rule had somehow been abrogated (or at least augmented), which caused great confusion in our state's trial courts as to how a plaintiff's medical expenses could be presented as evidence of damages in personal injury actions. As such, the Tennessee Supreme Court took up this issue as soon as possible in Dedmon v. Steelman, 535 S.W.3d 431 (Tenn. 2017), which was decided on November 17, 2017. Dedmon resolved the issue in favor of the law as it was understood prior to West. As such, we have gone back to the future.

This program will briefly track the history of the collateral source rule in Tennessee, analyze how the post-West confusion arose, breakdown Dedmon, and will offer suggestions as to how Dedmon will be applied in the future. It will benefit the general practitioner who dabbles in personal injury cases, those who handle personal injury actions exclusively, and all those in between.

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