My name is Michelle Harrison, and I lost my mother, Joyce Hunley, on February 28, 2025. 

On February 27, 2025, she went to the ER in Tennessee with severe pain. Despite her recent diagnoses of Stage 4 cancer and recent sepsis, she was discharged in 38 minutes without meaningful testing, stabilization, or intervention. After discharge, she arrived at another facility confused, with dangerously low vital signs. She passed the following day.

I tried to seek accountability through Tennessee's legal system, but I was told by multiple law firms that pursuing a medical malpractice case here is nearly impossible. Tennessee's laws make malpractice cases prohibitively expensive and stacked against grieving families. In effect, our laws protect institutions instead of patients.

This means that what happened to my mom can happen again, and the families affected will have no meaningful path to justice.

I am calling on the Tennessee Legislature and Governor Bill Lee to review and reform Tennessee's malpractice laws so that patients and families can realistically seek accountability, reconsider damage caps and procedural barriers that prevent cases from ever being heard in court, and ensure hospitals and providers are held to the highest standard of care and not shielded from it. 

My mother spent much of her life feeling like her voice didn't matter. I refuse to let her death be dismissed in the same way. This is not just about her, its about every patient in Tennessee who deserves dignity, safety, and justice. 

A lawyer's reply to me regarding my potential health care liability case; summarized. "Under Tennessee law, medical doctors must be willing, and hired, to testify not only that the case has merit but also that the action, or lack of action, of a health care provider caused an injury that would not have otherwise occurred. Medical doctors charge for these services; hundreds of dollars per hour, some even charge over $1,000 per hour. The cost of obtaining medical records can amount to hundreds of dollars. Gathering and organizing the records, and finding doctors to review them, and doing research takes a good deal of time. The effort to find medical experts is made even more difficult by the fact that the Tennessee Legislature has passed a law which ordinarily requires that these experts come only from states that border Tennessee and who are knowledgeable about appropriate medical practice in the community where the event allegedly occurred. That law- unfair to patients- greatly increases the difficulty of finding medical experts who are willing and able to testify. Finding experts in Tennessee is virtually impossible because the vast majority of Tennessee physicians purchase malpractice insurance from the same insurance company, which is owned by doctors. In addition, even if an expert believes a case has merit a lawyer must make a judgement about whether the case is economically feasible. Health care liability cases are very expensive to pursue; the out-of-pocket expense of pursuing even the simplest cases exceeds $20,000 and complicated cases with multiple health care providers as defendants will require the expenditure of well over $100,000. The fact of the matter is that the economics of this very challenging litigation means that sometimes representation is unable to be accepted in meritorious cases because the damages that might be recovered are simply insufficient to justify the substantial investment of time and money by a firm. Tennessee has very strict rules about when lawsuits must be filed as well. "

Please sign this petition to demand change. Together, we can ensure that no other family is left without answers, accountability, or hope.

Patients deserve better. Families deserve better. Tennessee deserves better. My mother deserved better! 

Thank you.