Last Updated: Aug 25, 2026
Read Time: 2 mins
Our friend John Day posted an informative blog post about Misinformation About Malpractice Litigation in Tennessee. John points out:
[an article] purports to list the number of filings per state per 100,000 residents and ranks Tennesseans as the 5th highest filers of malpractice lawsuits – at the rate of 33 per 100,000 people. That would mean that Tennesseans file about 2145 such lawsuits per year (we have a little over 6,500,000 people living here).
But that number is wrong. Information compiled by Tennessee’s Administrative Office of the Courts demonstrates that there were 374 medical malpractice suits filed in 2013-2014 and 356 suits filed in 2014-2015. (Data is kept on a July 1 – June 30 fiscal year; 2015-2016 data is not yet publicly available). My guess is that the number of suits filed in all of 2015 was down from what it was in fiscal year 2014-2015, but even assuming that it was the same (356), the rate of filed suits was less than 5.5 per 100,000. That simply didn’t happen.
Lesson: Don’t believe everything that you read. Some people would like for you to believe that Tennessee residents are “lawsuit happy” and that there are tons of frivolous lawsuits filed against our physicians. And it’s not true.
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