Short-term rentals fill the Harriman area and the wider region, drawing visitors to Watts Bar Lake, the Emory and Clinch rivers, and the Cumberland Plateau country north and west of town.
When a guest is hurt at a short-term rental, the case turns on who was in control of the property and its condition. Vacation rentals can involve several parties, including the host, a separate property owner or management company, and a booking platform such as Airbnb or Vrbo.
At Fox & Farmer, we represent guests injured at short-term rentals, work to identify who was responsible for the property, and pursue the compensation the law allows. Our firm serves Roane County from our Knoxville office, about 40 minutes east of Harriman. Call 865-531-9400 today for a free consultation.
A short-term rental injury is a form of premises liability, and premises liability rests on control. The law places the duty to keep property reasonably safe on the person who possesses and controls it, because that person can inspect it, identify its hazards, and fix them. At a short-term rental, that person is usually the host, the one who offers the property, sets it up for guests, and is responsible for its condition.
Tennessee does not sort visitors into invitees and licensees. Since Hudson v. Gaitan in 1984, a possessor of property has owed the same duty, reasonable care under all the circumstances, to everyone on the property with permission, whether that is a paying guest or a friend staying the weekend.
The first task in the case is to identify who controlled the property, which is not always simple. The host may also be the owner, or may be renting out a property they themselves lease or manage for an absentee owner; a management company may handle the property's upkeep; and the booking platform connects guest and host, but generally does not itself possess or control the property.
The booking platforms also typically require hosts to carry their own coverage and structure their terms to position themselves as intermediaries rather than the property's operator, which directs a guest's claim toward the host, owner, or manager who actually possessed and maintained the home.
In these cases, insurance is rarely just the host's homeowners' policy. Airbnb provides its hosts with liability insurance at no cost through AirCover for Hosts, with a limit of $1 million per Airbnb stay, covering a host's legal liability to a guest for bodily injury.
Vrbo (Vacation Rental by Owner) publishes a comparable million-dollar program through Generali. Both carry real exclusions, and Vrbo's program applies a twenty-five percent deductible against an owner who carries no adequate policy of their own.
AirCover for guests is a different thing entirely and is not insurance; it covers booking problems, not injuries. Meanwhile, a host's ordinary homeowners policy commonly excludes liability arising from renting out the house. Part of the case is to work out which policies actually respond, and it is often where the recovery is.
This is one reason these cases turn heavily on the chain of control rather than on the familiar name on the booking app. It makes establishing who possessed and maintained the property the decisive question in nearly every short-term rental injury.
What a short-term rental changes is not the legal category but the circumstances: the host is repeatedly turning the house over to strangers who have never seen it and advertising decks, docks, hot tubs, and pools as reasons to book. Foreseeability and the likelihood of harm are the measures, and those circumstances raise what reasonable care actually requires of a host.
Tennessee requires the injured guest to show that the party in control created the dangerous condition, or that it had actual or constructive notice of the condition before the injury. Constructive notice can be shown where the hazard existed long enough that a reasonably careful owner should have discovered it, or by a pattern of conduct, a recurring incident, or a general or continuing condition.
A host who rents out the same rotting deck season after season, or who never checks whether the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms still work between stays, is on notice of what a reasonably careful owner in that position would have found.
Short-term rentals present the same hazards as any property, plus some that arise from guests being unfamiliar with the home and from hosts varying widely in how carefully they maintain and equip their properties. The table below contrasts the duties in an ordinary home with the heightened practical responsibilities of a short-term rental host.
| Setting | Who is owed care | The practical duty |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary private home | Social guests and other persons entering with consent | Exercise reasonable care under all circumstances |
| Short-term rental | Paying guests and other lawful visitors | Exercise reasonable care under all the circumstances, including reasonable inspection, maintenance, warnings, and correction of dangerous conditions |
The dangerous conditions that cause short-term rental injuries include defective decks, balconies, and railings; unsafe or poorly lit stairs; slippery surfaces; unsafe pools and hot tubs; and inadequate fire and carbon monoxide protection.
Fire safety is its own concern in a rental, where guests do not know the layout in the dark: working smoke alarms on every level, a clear way out, and accessible fire extinguishers are basic precautions. A fire in a rental with dead smoke-alarm batteries or a blocked exit can turn a survivable event into a fatal one. A host's duty to make the property reasonably safe includes these protections as much as it includes sound railings and stairs.
Tennessee has a statute directly on point. Under T.C.A. § 68-102-151, it is unlawful to own or operate a one- or two-family rental unit, a house, cottage, duplex, or condominium without an approved smoke alarm that sounds audibly in the sleeping rooms, to tamper with or remove one, and the owner must confirm the alarm works before the next guests move in.
A violation is a Class A misdemeanor, and each day counts separately. Because the statute sets a specific standard of conduct, protects exactly the people who sleep in the rental, and guards against exactly this harm, a violation can establish negligence per se, meaning the failure itself sets the standard of care and the case turns on causation and damages instead of on arguing about what a careful host should have done.
Carbon monoxide deserves particular attention because it is invisible, odorless, and can be deadly. A rental with a faulty furnace, water heater, or gas appliance and no working carbon monoxide detector can poison guests in their sleep. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains how carbon monoxide poisoning happens and why working detectors are essential.
Tennessee has no statute that requires a carbon monoxide alarm in an ordinary house rented out short-term. The state's carbon monoxide statute reaches hotels, and the residential code's alarm requirement applies to new construction and to work done under a building permit. But that does not defeat the claim; it changes how it is proved.
The argument is that a host who puts strangers to sleep in a house with a gas furnace, water heater, fireplace, or generator, and no working alarm, has failed to use reasonable care under the circumstances: the risk is fatal, the guests cannot sense it, the warning device costs almost nothing, and no host could reasonably think otherwise.
When the rental was built or permit-renovated under the current residential code, an alarm was required outright, and that violation strengthens the case considerably.
A short-term rental injury claim rests on premises liability and negligence: the party in control of the property owed a duty of reasonable care to the guest, breached it by allowing a dangerous condition it created or knew or should have known about, that breach in fact caused the injury and was its proximate cause, and real harm resulted.
Tennessee's modified comparative fault rule from McIntyre v. Balentine applies, so a guest recovers only if found less than 50 percent at fault, with the recovery reduced by their share of fault. Tennessee law, under Coln v. City of Savannah, overruled on other grounds by Cross v. City of Memphis, folds an open and obvious danger into the comparative fault analysis rather than treating it as an automatic bar, so an obvious hazard does not necessarily defeat the claim.
A guest's unfamiliarity with the property is meaningful here: a homeowner knows which step is loose, which deck board is rotten, and where the dim corner is, but a guest arriving for a few nights does not. The law's expectation of what a person should have noticed and avoided takes that unfamiliarity into account.
A hazard a longtime resident would instinctively step around can be one a visiting guest had no reason to expect, which is part of why these cases are not as easily defended on an obviousness theory as hosts sometimes assume.
More than one party may share responsibility: the host, an owner, or a management company. Tennessee no longer applies joint and several liability. Under T.C.A. § 29-11-107, each defendant pays only the percentage of fault the jury assigns to it, and the jury may assign fault to a person who is not in the case at all. That makes naming every responsible party a question of recovery rather than of thoroughness: a share assigned to someone you did not sue is a share you do not collect.
If a defendant's answer blames someone you have not sued, T.C.A. § 20-1-119 gives you ninety days from that answer to bring them in, even if the one-year deadline has already passed.
Compensation must capture the full extent of the harm. Tennessee law allows recovery for economic damages, the measurable financial losses, and non-economic damages, the human losses of pain, disability, and a changed life.
The injuries at short-term rentals can be serious, such as a fall from a defective balcony, a near-drowning in an unsafe pool, or carbon monoxide poisoning that causes lasting neurological harm, and they can be as grave as those in any Harriman personal injury claim.
The economic damages include past and future medical care and lost income and earning capacity, while the non-economic damages account for the pain, the permanent disability, and the loss of the life a person was able to live before.
Economic damages are not capped in Tennessee. Non-economic damages are capped by T.C.A. § 29-39-102 at $750,000, rising to $1,000,000 where the injury is a catastrophic loss, as the statute defines: paraplegia or quadriplegia, amputation of two limbs, third-degree burns over forty percent of the body, or the wrongful death of a parent leaving a minor child. A spouse's loss-of-consortium claim is counted inside that same cap, not added on top of it.
The cap lifts entirely if the defendant intended to cause serious injury, falsified or destroyed records to evade liability, was intoxicated, or was convicted of a felony for the conduct. The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the cap in 2020.
When a host acted recklessly rather than merely carelessly (removed a smoke alarm, ignored a written complaint about a gas smell, relisted a deck they already knew was rotting), Tennessee allows punitive damages on clear and convincing evidence, decided in a separate phase after compensatory damages are set.
T.C.A. § 29-39-104 caps them at the greater of twice the compensatory award or $500,000, and lifts the punitive cap when the defendant intended to cause serious injury, falsified or destroyed records, was intoxicated, or was convicted of a felony for the conduct.
In Harriman, a person seriously injured at a rental is usually treated first at Covenant Health Roane, the Harriman hospital formerly known as Roane Medical Center, on Roane Medical Center Drive, which has a 24-hour emergency department. The most serious injuries are stabilized and transferred to the Level I trauma center at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, about forty miles east and roughly an hour by road.
Where a rental injury proves fatal, as carbon monoxide poisoning tragically can, the family's Harriman wrongful death case pursues the responsible parties while measuring a far heavier loss.
Get medical care promptly. This is especially important with carbon monoxide exposure, whose early symptoms, headache, dizziness, nausea, and confusion, are easily mistaken for the flu or fatigue. If several guests fall ill at once, get to fresh air and seek care, and tell providers you suspect carbon monoxide. The medical record also documents the injury and ties it to the rental.
If you are able, document everything about the rental and the hazard: photograph the defective condition, the deck, the pool, the missing detector, before you leave, and capture the property listing, the address, and the unit.
Report the injury to the host and through the booking platform, which creates a record, and preserve your booking confirmation and any messages with the host, which can establish the relationship and any prior complaints.
Read the rental agreement. Tennessee generally enforces a pre-injury liability waiver where the language is clear, the circumstances are fair, and the landlord-tenant statute that voids waivers in ordinary leases does not apply to a short-term, transient stay.
A waiver buried in a booking flow can still fail. The Tennessee Supreme Court's test weighs the parties' bargaining power, the clarity and unmistakable character of the language, and the public interest; no waiver covers gross negligence or willful conduct. But it is a defense worth expecting, which is one more reason to preserve the booking documents exactly as they appeared when you booked.
Gather the names and contact information of any witnesses, including others in your party. Be cautious with any insurer or representative who contacts you: do not give a recorded statement or accept an early settlement before you have advice.
Then reach out to a lawyer promptly, because the evidence of the hazard and of who was responsible for the property is best secured early, before a host repairs the condition or a listing changes, and Tennessee's one-year deadline can arrive faster than expected.
The one-year deadline becomes two years when criminal charges are brought against the person who caused the injury. When a rental injury proves fatal, Tennessee measures the deadline from the negligent act rather than from the date of death, because a wrongful death action preserves the person's own claim instead of creating a new one. A family that waits a year after the funeral may already be out of time.
The one-year clock also runs differently for a child. Under T.C.A. § 28-1-106, a claim that accrues while the injured person is under eighteen does not begin to run until they turn eighteen, so a child hurt at a rental generally has until about the nineteenth birthday to bring their own claim.
That is a reason to call sooner rather than later, not a reason to wait: the evidence at a short-term rental (the deck, the detector, the listing photos) is gone long before the deadline.
Usually the party in control of the property, which is most often the host, and sometimes a separate owner or management company. The booking platform connects guests and hosts, but does not possess or control the property, so it is often not directly responsible for a dangerous condition, though the facts of each case determine who controlled what.
A claim against the platform itself is harder than it looks, for reasons that go beyond who possessed the property. Airbnb's United States terms require most disputes with Airbnb to go to individual arbitration and waive class actions, and there is no carve-out for personal injury. The only injury-related exception is for sexual assault and harassment, which federal law requires.
Those same terms cap Airbnb's own liability to a guest at roughly what the guest paid. That is why these cases are built against the host, the owner, or the manager who actually controlled the property, and against the insurance behind them.
Carbon monoxide is a serious and sometimes fatal hazard. These cases can be strong, but the exposure must be documented, which is why prompt medical attention and reporting matter.
Tennessee does not impose a general statewide four-foot fence requirement on private residential pools; the state’s four-foot barrier rule applies to public swimming pools. But Tennessee does impose a statewide pool-alarm requirement under T.C.A. § 68-14-804. The law requires an alarm for covered swimming pools acquired for installation after January 1, 2011, including hot tubs and nonportable spas containing more than 36 inches of water.
A missing alarm is a statutory violation. And whether or not a fence was ever legally required, a host who advertises a pool, a hot tub or lake access to families still has to use reasonable care about it, a gate that will not latch, a dock in disrepair, a hot tub with no cover.
You can still recover as long as your share of the fault stays below 50 percent, with the recovery reduced by your share. A host may argue that a danger was obvious, but that is weighed in the comparative fault rather than barring the claim, especially where a guest was unfamiliar with the property.
It depends on the severity of the injury, past and future medical costs, lost income and earning capacity, and non-economic harm. A serious injury, such as a fall from a defective balcony or carbon monoxide poisoning with lasting effects, is worth far more than the early bills alone.
These claims are handled on a contingency basis, which means there is no fee unless there is a recovery. The first consultation is free, so understanding your options costs nothing.
Harriman lies mostly in Roane County, but the city limits extend into Morgan County, so the courthouse depends on where the rental sits. A case arising on the Roane side is filed in Roane County Circuit Court at 200 East Race Street in Kingston, the county seat, about six miles southeast.
A case arising on the Morgan side is filed in Morgan County Circuit Court at 415 North Kingston Street in Wartburg. Both counties sit in the Ninth Judicial District.
With years of experience across Roane County and the wider Knoxville area, our attorneys know how to establish who controlled a property, how premises liability principles and the open-and-obvious rule under Coln apply, and how the courts where a case is filed operate.
A short-term rental injury case is won by establishing who controlled the property, proving the failure to keep it reasonably safe, and documenting the full extent of the harm. At Fox & Farmer, we build each case to do all three, securing the evidence of the hazard and the chain of control before it changes. The goal is a recovery that reflects the true cost of the injury and is grounded in the responsible party's failure to exercise the care the law requires.
We handle these cases on a contingency fee, so there is no attorney's fee unless we recover for you. We will put in writing how case expenses are handled before you sign anything. Contact our team today for a free consultation.
Last reviewed: June 2026
This page was reviewed by Sandy Gothard, licensed in Tennessee since 1996.
This page is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Contacting Fox & Farmer does not create an attorney-client relationship.
