Tennessee judgments expire after ten years.
As a creditor lawyer, one of my greatest fears is that one of the many judgments that I’ve taken over the past 10 years is set to expire and I have forgotten about it.
It is so easy to renew judgments under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 69.04, but it’s also easy to forget about those old files. If a law firm forgets, it could get sued for malpractice. It’s a big deal.
Earlier this week, the Tennessee Court of Appeals touched on this issue. See John Doe Corp. v. Kennerly, Montgomery & Finley, P.C., E2023-00236-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. May 28, 2024).
In the case, after the 10 year period expired on an old judgment, the judgment creditor client sued its former lawyers, alleging that the law firm “had failed to inform Plaintiff that the judgment would expire after ten years or that it needed to seek to extend the judgment prior to its expiration.”
The trial court dismissed the claims against the law firm, because the client failed to have filed the lawsuit within the one-year attorney malpractice statute of limitations. The opinion doesn’t really focus on the renewal issue; the real analysis is on issues of recusal and the different standards under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 59.04 and 60.02.
But, back to creditor rights. Is this is victory for the law firm? Not really, because lawyers don’t like being sued for malpractice in the first place.
Since starting my firm nearly 4 years ago, I’ve opened 639 new cases. Before that, I handled a similarly busy caseload at my old firm. In the past 10 years, I’ve taken 100s of judgments.
It would be a cold comfort to me to know that, if my client sues me for malpractice, I could possibly defend the case on a technicality.
Having said that, how can lawyers mitigate that risk? The answer is in a Court of Appeals decision I wrote about in 2019. There, the malpractice claims turned on whether the law firm warned the client, at any point, that the judgment needed to be renewed in ten years. Because the law firm had previously warned the client about the 10 year expiration, the client had knowledge of the possible malpractice claims that accrued at the time of non-renewal (and not a later date).
Look at the text of the John Doe case: the client alleged that the law firm “had failed to inform Plaintiff that the judgment would expire after ten years or that it needed to seek to extend the judgment prior to its expiration.”
If you’re like me, a busy lawyer with many judgments, remember my advice from 2019: “A good practice is to make sure that the client understands that it has a responsibility in ten years to notify you that it wants you to take this action.”
In a perfect world, my advice is to calendar judgments and simply avoid this issue altogether.
A separate safeguard could be, in that initial congratulatory email, sending a copy of the judgment to the client, to always include text that clearly discusses the validity and expiration of the Judgment in terms that the client can understand.
Creditors Rights 101 