Rule 68.Offer of Judgment

Rule 68 lets a party defending against a claim, or a party pursuing one, serve a formal written offer of judgment on the opposing side at any point more than ten days before trial begins. A 1984 amendment extended the rule to plaintiffs, who had not originally been able to make this kind of offer, putting both sides on equal footing. The offer proposes a specific judgment — money, property, or whatever else the offer specifies — along with whatever costs have accrued to that point.

The other side has ten days to accept in writing; if it does, either party can file the offer and the notice of acceptance with the court, and judgment is entered accordingly. An offer that goes unaccepted within that window is treated as withdrawn, and neither side can bring it up at trial — it only resurfaces later, if at all, in a proceeding over costs. Making an offer that gets rejected does not prevent a party from making another one later in the case.

The rule’s teeth are in what happens after rejection: if the party that rejected the offer ultimately obtains a judgment no more favorable than what was offered, that party has to pay all costs that accrued after the offer was made. In practice, this consequence rarely amounts to much, because Tennessee courts read "costs" under Rule 68 narrowly, limited to the clerk’s statutory bill of costs rather than attorney’s fees or the broader discretionary costs — expert witness fees, deposition costs, and the like — that a court might otherwise award under Rule 54.04. Without a separate statute authorizing fee-shifting on top of the rule, the financial pressure to accept a reasonable offer is often modest, which is part of why Rule 68 has never generated the volume of settlement activity that a fee-inclusive offer-of-judgment rule can produce elsewhere.