VERDICTS & SETTLEMENTS

Since 1997, the firm has recovered over one hundred million dollars ($100,000,000.00) for clients of the firm, in cases involving personal injuries and losses from medical malpractice, defective products, accidents and injuries. Case results depend upon a variety of factors unique to each case. Indications of past case results do not guarantee or predict a similar result in future cases.

• NHC Nursing Home Fire Litigation
  • Lead Counsel for 32 families in consolidated cases arising from fatal 2003 fire at National Health Corporation's Nashviile nursing home. Obtained significant (confidential) settlements in October, 2004.

• Jordan v. Baptist Three Rivers Hospital, 984 S.W.2d 593 (Tenn. 1999)
  • Changed 100 years of Tennessee wrongful death law by recognizing the right to recover damages for the loss of the deceased's love, affection, companionship and consortium.
  • The defense bar acknowledges that: "In 1999, the value of every wrongful death case in the State of Tennessee increased dramatically when the Supreme Court held that a surviving spouse and adult children could recover for loss of consortium damages in a wrongful death case See Jordan v. Baptist Three Rivers Hospital, 984 S.W. 2d 593 (Tenn. 1999). Plaintiffs who are children or the spouse of the deceased may now recover for damages such as loss of companionship, comfort, society, attention, cooperation, affection, care and love, and in the case of the spouse, sexual relations. Prior to this ruling, the Tennessee courts only allowed plaintiffs to recover certain damages on behalf of the deceased. Specifically, plaintiffs could recover the mental and physical suffering, loss of time, and necessary expenses resulting to the deceased from the personal injuries."

• Cases Televised on:
  • ABC television, 20/20 "When Death Seeps In", a fatal case of carbon monoxide poisoning at a hotel
  • NBC Nightly News (mercury poisoning)

• Ashe v. Radiation Oncology Associates, 9 S.W. 3d 119 (Tenn. 1999)
  • Established causation standard in medical malpractice informed consent cases.

• Steele v. Industrial Development Bd. of Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, 117 F.Supp.2d 693, 148 Ed. Law Rep. 287, M.D.Tenn., Oct 24, 2000, rev'd 301 F.3d 401 (6th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1188, 123 S.Ct. 1254 (2003)
  • Presented the constitutional question of whether the First Amendement's Establishment clause (separating church and state) prohibits government industrial revenue bonds to be used to finance a pervasively sectarian (religious) institution. The firm filed a brief in the United States Supreme Court.
    

• True Stories From the Morgue Autopsy Litigation
  • David Randolph Smith represented the parents of two families whose deceased adult child's autopsy was shown on national television without the consent of the surviving parents.The broadasts were part of a TLC network television reality series, True Stories From the Morgue

• Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant Radiation Litigation
  • Representing 82 landowners in a federal court lawsuit against Lockheed Martin and Union Carbide seeking compensation for contamination and reduced property values from the operations of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah Kentucky.