Tennessee Code 68-212-121 – Employer’s liability for employee’s motor vehicle accidents involving hazardous wastes or substances
Terms Used In Tennessee Code 68-212-121
- Damages: Money paid by defendants to successful plaintiffs in civil cases to compensate the plaintiffs for their injuries.
- Hazardous waste: means waste, or combination of wastes, which because of its quantity, concentration, or physical, chemical, or infectious characteristics may:
(A) Cause, or significantly contribute to an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible illness or incapacitating reversible illness. See Tennessee Code 68-212-104 - Highway: includes public bridges and may be held equivalent to the words "county way" "county road" or "state road". See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
- Jurisdiction: (1) The legal authority of a court to hear and decide a case. Concurrent jurisdiction exists when two courts have simultaneous responsibility for the same case. (2) The geographic area over which the court has authority to decide cases.
- Person: means an individual, trust, firm, joint stock company, corporation (including a government corporation), partnership, association, state, municipality, commission, political subdivision of a state, any interstate body, and governmental agency of this state and any department, agency, or instrumentality of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. See Tennessee Code 68-212-104
- Road: includes public bridges and may be held equivalent to the words "county way" "county road" or "state road". See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
- State: means the state of Tennessee. See Tennessee Code 68-212-104
- Waste: means any garbage, refuse, sludge from a waste treatment plant, water supply treatment plant, or air pollution control facility and other discarded material, including solid, liquid, semisolid, or contained gaseous material resulting from industrial, commercial, mining and agricultural operations, and from community activities, but does not include solid or dissolved material in domestic sewage, or solid or dissolved materials in irrigation return flows or industrial discharges which are point sources subject to permits under §. See Tennessee Code 68-212-104
If any person who is driving on a Tennessee road, highway, interstate or other thoroughfare or rightfully in physical control of any motor vehicle containing a hazardous waste or hazardous substance as defined in § 68-131-102 is adjudicated to have been at fault in a court of competent jurisdiction for an accident resulting in a spill of such hazardous waste or hazardous substance, the employer of such person shall be jointly and severally responsible for damages incurred as a result of the spill, and any reasonable clean-up costs incurred by the governmental agency or the state or any political subdivision thereunder, which may result from the spill. In the event of a dispute concerning the reasonableness of assessed clean-up costs or damages, a court of competent jurisdiction shall determine the reasonableness of such costs and damages.