The following shall apply to all civil actions for silica or mixed dust disease claims brought against a premises owner to recover damages or other relief for exposure to silica or mixed dust on the premises owner’s property:

(1) A premises owner is not liable for any injury to any individual resulting from silica or mixed dust exposure, unless that individual’s alleged exposure occurred while the individual was on the premises owner’s property;
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Terms Used In Tennessee Code 29-34-307

  • Damages: Money paid by defendants to successful plaintiffs in civil cases to compensate the plaintiffs for their injuries.
  • Evidence: Information presented in testimony or in documents that is used to persuade the fact finder (judge or jury) to decide the case for one side or the other.
  • Mixed dust: means a mixture of dusts composed of silica and one (1) or more other fibrogenic dusts capable of inducing pulmonary fibrosis if inhaled in sufficient quantity. See Tennessee Code 29-34-303
  • Plaintiff: The person who files the complaint in a civil lawsuit.
  • Premises owner: means a person who owns, in whole or in part, leases, rents, maintains, or controls privately owned lands, ways, or waters, or any buildings and structures on those lands, ways, or waters, and all privately owned and state-owned lands, ways, or waters leased to a private person, firm, or organization, including any buildings and structures on those lands, ways, or waters. See Tennessee Code 29-34-303
  • Property: includes both personal and real property. See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
  • Silica: means a respirable crystalline form of the naturally occurring mineral form of silicon dioxide, including, but not limited to, quartz, cristobalite, and tridymite. See Tennessee Code 29-34-303
  • State: when applied to the different parts of the United States, includes the District of Columbia and the several territories of the United States. See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
(2) If exposure to silica or mixed dust is alleged to have occurred after January 1, 1972, it is presumed that products containing silica or mixed dust used on the premises owner’s property contained silica or mixed dust only at levels below safe levels of exposure. To rebut this presumption, the plaintiff must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the levels of silica or mixed dust in the immediate breathing zone of the plaintiff regularly exceeded the threshold limit values adopted by this state; and
(3)

(A) A premises owner is presumed to be not liable for any injury to any invitee who was engaged to work with, install, or remove products containing silica or mixed dust on the premises owner’s property, if the invitee’s employer held itself out as qualified to perform the work. To rebut this presumption, the plaintiff must demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that the premises owner had actual knowledge of the potential dangers of the products containing silica or mixed dust at the time of the alleged exposure that was superior to the knowledge of both the invitee and the invitee’s employer;
(B) A premises owner that hired a contractor before January 1, 1972, to perform the type of work at the premises owner’s property that the contractor was qualified to perform shall not be liable for any injury to any individual resulting from silica or mixed dust exposure caused by any of the contractor’s employees or agents on the premises owner’s property, unless the premises owner directed the activity that resulted in the injury or approved the critical acts that led to the individual’s injury;
(C) If exposure to silica or mixed dust is alleged to have occurred after January 1, 1972, a premises owner is not liable for any injury to any individual resulting from that exposure caused by a contractor’s employee or agent on the premises owner’s property, unless the plaintiff establishes the premises owner’s intentional violation of an established safety standard in effect at the time of the exposure, and that the alleged violation was in the plaintiff’s immediate breathing zone and was the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury.
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