Rule 40.Setting Cases for Trial

Rule 40 is short and largely procedural, leaving the mechanics of building a trial docket to each court’s own local rules. What it does require is notice: whether a court sets a trial date on its own initiative or in response to a party’s request, every party has to be told before the date is fixed, so that anyone with a scheduling concern has a chance to be heard. The rule also directs that cases entitled to priority under a Tennessee statute — categories such as disputes over public revenue, county boundary lines, or a public officer’s eligibility for office — get to jump the line ahead of ordinary civil matters.

The rule’s own history describes it as directory rather than mandatory, reflecting how much docket practices vary from one court to the next. That characterization has not stopped Tennessee courts from treating notice of the actual trial date as a matter of real consequence: a judgment entered after a party received no notice of the date its case was tried has been overturned on due-process grounds, even though Rule 40 itself is framed as leaving the details to local practice. The tension is best understood as Rule 40 governing the setting of a trial date, while the deeper notice requirement that protects a party’s chance to prepare and appear operates somewhat independently of the rule’s own text.

Rule 40 says nothing about continuances once a trial date is set. Whether to postpone a scheduled trial is left to statutes outside the civil procedure rules and to the trial court’s own discretion, reviewed only for abuse of that discretion.