Summary Judgment Is Revived in Tennessee
By Last month, Governor Haslam signed into law two bills that have returned Tennessee summary judgment jurisprudence back to the federal standard. These laws overruled two landmark decisions by the Tennessee Supreme Court - Hannan v. Alltel Publishing Co., 270 S.W.3d 1 (Tenn. 2008), and Gossett v. Tractor Supply Co., Inc., 320 S.W.3d 777 (Tenn. 2010) - which created a significantly different standard for summary judgment motions in Tennessee.
In Hannan, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that Tennessee did not, like the federal judiciary, follow the “put up or shut up” approach to summary judgment. Instead, to properly satisfy Rule 56, the moving party had to affirmatively negate an essential element of the plaintiff’s claim or show that the plaintiff could not prove an essential element at trial. Either way, relying solely on an absence of evidence would not be enough to prevail. This new standard departed radically from the previous standard, which mirrored the federal rule, and made obtaining summary judgment in Tennessee a very difficult proposition.
Employment discrimination cases presented a unique challenge under this new approach. Previously, these cases were analyzed under the federal McDonnell-Douglas framework, which requires a plaintiff to prove that the reason given for the defendant’s employment action is a mere pretext for discrimination. If the plaintiff fails to raise a genuine issue of fact in that regard, the claim cannot survive summary judgment. To the Tennessee Supreme Court, this analytical approach was inconsistent with its new summary judgment standard, primarily because it placed the burden of proof on the nonmoving party. Accordingly, in Gossett, the Court held that the McDonnell-Douglas framework did not apply in Tennessee courts, as it was “incompatible with Tennessee summary judgment jurisprudence.” Any plaintiff who had a glimmer of causation evidence, therefore, could theoretically survive summary judgment and get to trial. This ruling encouraged many plaintiffs to file discrimination or retaliation claims in state, rather than federal, court.
The Tennessee General Assembly legislatively reversed these two rulings in late June 2011. Hannan was supplanted by Public Chapter No. 498, which reinstates the federal rule as Tennessee’s summary judgment standard for “any civil action.” A moving party under Rule 56, therefore, can prevail by demonstrating as a matter of law that the plaintiff’s “evidence is insufficient to establish an essential element of the … claim.” Likewise, Public Chapter No. 461 reestablished McDonnell-Douglas as the guiding framework for all discrimination and retaliation claims filed in Tennessee. While the forum-shopping encouraged by the previous standard has consequently come to an end, these laws apply only to actions that were filed on or after July 1, 2011.** There now is some question as to whether courts will continue to apply Hannan for the relatively small number of “gap” cases given its repudiation by the legislature.
These new laws are good news for Tennessee employers and for the dockets of our state courts. Without them, many more claims would go to trial, which would only drive up the cost of litigation and further crowd Tennessee courtrooms.
**Public Chapter No. 461 applies to all actions that accrue on or after its effective date, which was technically June 10, 2011, the day Governor Haslam signed the bill into law.
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