ScotBlog Readers: The delinquent editor of this unreliably updated blog has started a new project: A weekly newsletter devoted to Tennessee Court of Appeals opinions.  The first version is reprinted below, though future versions won’t be published here.  If you like what you see, you can subscribe here: https://horwitz.law/intermediate-scrutiny-blog-signup-form/. A snappy weekly newsletter from the lawyers at Horwitz Law, PLLC summarizing the week’s decisions from the Tennessee Court of Appeals. January 1–5, 2024 “Extremely intoxicated, hostile, and belligerent” Army lieutenant ma ..read more

By David L. Hudson, Jr. The Tennessee Supreme Court unanimously reversed a Tennessee Court of Appeals opinion that had found there was clear and convincing evidence that both parents of a young infant found with 22 rib fractures had committed “severe child abuse.”   Instead, the state high court found in In Re Markus E. that there was insufficient evidence that the parents’ actions or omissions were “knowing.” The case involved a prematurely born infant – known in court papers as Markus E. – who suffered from a variety of ailments, including neonatal Graves disease, an overactive thy ..read more

By Daniel A. Horwitz: Procedural rules matter.  They help ensure that litigation moves along in an orderly and understandable way.  They can also be used as a shield and, when an opponent has misunderstood them, as a sword. That is the story of Ingram v. Gallagher, a healthcare liability action (better known as a “medical malpractice” claim) filed against a physician, a hospital, and two other defendants.  After filing suit, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint naming only the physician as a defendant.  Under Tennessee law—Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 15.01, in par ..read more

By Daniel A. Horwitz: Malicious prosecution—a common law tort claim—is designed to afford civil redress to people who are subjected to maliciously false lawsuits or criminal charges.  Between the two, being an innocent person who is wrongfully charged with a crime based on malicious falsehoods is worse.  As the U.S. Supreme Court has observed, “[a]rrest is a public act that may seriously interfere with the defendant’s liberty, whether he is free on bail or not, and that may disrupt his employment, drain his financial resources, curtail his associations, subject him to public obloquy ..read more

By Daniel A. Horwitz: As news of Dominion Voting System’s record-shattering settlement in its defamation case against Fox News spread across newswires, the Tennessee Court of Appeals quietly issued a landmark defamation decision of its own.  In particular, in a little-noticed April 18, 2023 ruling in Pragnell v. Franklin, No. E2022-00524-COA-R3-CV, 2023 WL 2985261 (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 18, 2023), the Court of Appeals settled three critical and previously unanswered questions about the Tennessee Public Participation Act, Tennessee’s still-novel anti-SLAPP statute. Prangell arose from a nast ..read more

In a unanimous panel opinion issued on August 12, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ordered that Horwitz Law, PLLC appellate client Kenneth Mynatt’s malicious prosecution and civil conspiracy claims against the United States—maintained under the Federal Tort Claims Act—be reinstated and permitted to move forward.  The Court’s unanimous ruling, authored by Judge Richard Griffin, sets critical Circuit precedent that presenting false evidence to secure an indictment is not “discretionary” conduct within the meaning of the Federal Tort Claims Act’s “discretio ..read more

In a pair of separate opinions issued June 20, 2022, the Tennessee Court of Appeals affirmed a ruling by Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Ellen Hobbs Lyle in favor of Plaintiffs Amy Frogge, Fran Bush, and Jill Speering, all represented by Horwitz Law, PLLC.  The ruling arose out of a lawsuit filed against Metro and ex-MNPS Director Shawn Joseph regarding the legality of the School Board Censorship Clause contained in Joseph’s severance agreement.  In a September 2020 Memorandum Order, Chancellor Lyle struck down the censorship clause as unconstitutional on multiple grounds ..read more

“The determination of whether an offense is eligible for expunction is an obligation entrusted to courts, not the TBI[,]” the Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled.  Accordingly, “the TBI lacked authority to refuse to comply” with a final and unappealed expungement order that no statute “authorize[d] the TBI to disregard or revise[.]”  The Tennessee Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion powerfully vindicates expungement rights under Tennessee law, the right of Tennesseans to sue the government for acting illegally, and citizens’ right to demand that the government comply with court orders. T ..read more

The Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance, Registry of Election Finance “is in contempt of court,” a senior Chancery Court judge has found.  The finding arose from the Registry’s willful collection of $64,000.00 in PAC fees in violation of a permanent injunction prohibiting it from doing so.  “[T]he Registry shall refund all improperly collected registration fees, obtained through the enforcement of Tenn. Code Ann. §2-10-121 in violation of this Court’s injunction, within 15 days,” the Court’s order reads.  It further “ORDERED that additional coercive fines will be con ..read more

By Daniel A. Horwitz (Republished from the Tennessee Free Speech Blog): In 2019, Tennessee’s free speech law underwent a sea change.  The Tennessee Public Participation Act—Tennessee’s first-ever meaningful anti-SLAPP law—took effect, ushering in a host of critical protections for people sued for defamation (libel or slander), false light invasion of privacy, business disparagement, or other speech-based torts. Heading into its third year of existence, it is clear at this point that the Tennessee Public Participation Act is working.  If 2021 is a sign of things to come, Tennessee’s f ..read more