Personal Injury Law

Tennessee Adult Protection Act

By John Day

 The Tennessee Adult Protection Act, T. C. A. Sec. 71-6-101 et seq, creates civil action for compensatory  and, as appropriate, punitive damages when "adults" covered by the act are victims of abuse or neglect, sexual abuse or exploitation and  for theft of  money or property whether by fraud, deceit, coercion or otherwise.  Those covered by the Act fall within this definition of adult:

 'Adult' means a person eighteen (18) years of age or older who because of mental or physical dysfunctioning or advanced age is unable to manage such person's own resources, carry out the activities of daily living, or protect such person from neglect, hazardous or abusive situations without assistance from others and who has no available, willing, and responsibly able person for assistance and who may be in need of protective services; provided, however, that a person eighteen (18) years of age or older who is mentally impaired but still competent shall be deemed to be a person with mental dysfunction for the purposes of this chapter

The Act also permits recovery of attorneys' fees in certain circumstances.

The Pennsylvania Fiduciary Litigation Blog has an interesting post that shares a checklist on how to determine if someone has been a victim of undue influence.  (I hasten to add that the original source of the data was the Florida Probate and Trust Litigation Blog.) The Undue Influence Worksheet  "is based upon the IDEAL protocol, which combines knowledge from the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and sociology regarding the mechanisms of human manipulation, with extensive review of statutes, case law, and legal theory. IDEAL describes those psychological and social factors that commonly co-exist in undue influence situations.  IDEAL stands for Isolation,  Dependency, Emotional Manipulation and / or Exploitation, Acquiescence and Loss.

The worksheet explains each of the factors and has a form for gathering and organizing information.

Good stuff.  This form will help you analyze financial cases that you are thinking about bringing under the Tennessee Adult Protection Act. 

Full post as published by Day on Torts on January 29, 2010 (boomark / email).