Intermediate Scrutiny for January 5, 2024

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 makes a series of increasingly poor decisions. After a night out drinking at a bar during a bachelor party, he removes his shirt, places it on the ground, and starts urinating on it. He then gets himself arrested and charged with public intoxication, resisting arrest, and assault on a police officer. Afterward, he engages in extensive Facebook messenger correspondence with his “companion” from the evening—distinct from his “then-girlfriend, now wife”—in an attempt to ascertain what happened, and she tells him exactly how intoxicated, aggressive, and violent he was. The Secretariat of bad judgment then sues his arresting officers “for defamation and negligence per se” (claiming, among other things, “that he was not intoxicated, aggressive, or violent when he was arrested”). During the litigation, he repeatedly conceals and otherwise lies about his damning correspondence with his “companion,” which he alternately claims did not exist, he forgot about, his wife told him to delete, and/or was work product created at the direction of his attorney. Davidson County Circuit Court: Your “blatant prevarication and misconduct warrants the most severe sanctions,” so you are ordered to pay over $60,000 in fees and costs, and all of your claims are dismissed with prejudice. Tennessee Court of Appeals: And those sanctions “were directly related to the discovery abuses and were not excessive under the circumstances.” (DAH)
  • After Husband and Wife divorce, Wife sues Husband based on a provision of their marital dissolution agreement that says she gets half the equity in their formerly shared home “when the house sells.” Chancery Court for Montgomery County: Wife gets half the equity as of the date of the Parties’ divorce in 2019. Tennessee Court of Appeals: No, wife gets half the equity as of the date of the house’s sale in 2023. But Husband gets an unjust enrichment credit for the twenty-two consecutive monthly payments that he has already paid Wife based on their alleged oral agreement about the amount of her equity interest, even though the agreement violates the statute of frauds. This case is otherwise remanded so Husband can introduce evidence about improvements and other expenditures he made and so Wife can introduce evidence that she’s entitled to reimbursement for her rent because Husband kicked her out before the house was sold. Also, the relevant provision of the Parties’ “not a model of clarity” MDA—which resulted from “the parties’ self-drafting of a form document they obtained from an unknown source”—is internally inconsistent, so this entire opinion is declared non-citable. (DAH)
  • Homeowner contracts with Contractor to build a “log home.” Contractor contracts with Subcontractor to provide some labor and materials. Subcontractor: I did more than $60,000 of work for which Contractor never paid me, so I’m entitled to payment from Homeowner, who flipped the property (which cost $382,000.00 to build) for a cool $1.5 million after construction was completed. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Not yet you aren’t. Although Tennessee law allows unpaid subcontractors to file unjust enrichment claims against property owners, they have to exhaust their available remedies against the contractors with whom they were in privity first, and getting a default judgment against the deadbeat contractor without demonstrating that you can’t collect on it isn’t exhaustive enough. (DAH)
  • Company sues Employees for holding events using the company’s name and failing to remit proceeds. During the litigation, Employees’ counsel “inadvertently included”—twice—a privileged email from one of the Employees in his trial court filings. Employees’ counsel then continues to file the privileged email in the court record and “discusses the substance and contents of the email at length” at least twice more after that. Employees: Company shouldn’t get to use the privileged email, particularly because Company “trap[ped]” us into making a bunch of apparently false statements using information gleaned from it. Tennessee Court of Appeals: It’s true that Tennessee Code Annotated § 23-3-105 subjected the email to the attorney-client privilege. But Tennessee Rule of Evidence 502 requires privilege holders to take “reasonable steps to prevent disclosure,” and repeatedly filing and citing the email was definitely not that, so the email is now admissible. The waiver of privilege is limited to the email alone, though; it doesn’t extend to “any undisclosed communications concerning the same subject matter.” (DAH)
  • Company A initiates arbitration proceeding against Companies B and C, wins, and then petitions the Davidson County Chancery Court to confirm the arbitration award. Companies B and C: Hold on, we didn’t even know the proceeding existed until we received the motion to confirm the award! Davidson County Chancery Court: That’s too bad; you all objected too late, so the arbitration award is confirmed. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Actually, because “absence of notice may warrant vacatur under the [Federal Arbitration Act],” the award is vacated for now, in part because Company A failed to include a ton of information in the appellate record that would allow us to determine when notice was provided. On remand, the trial court must determine both whether one of the companies even agreed to arbitrate and when the companies actually received notice of the arbitration, too. (DAH)
  • Father and Stepmother sue to terminate Mother’s parental rights over Child. Father/Stepmother: Child lives with us, and Mother hasn’t seen her or supported her in years, among other issues. Chancery Court for Sumner County: And those are both valid grounds for termination, but Tennessee’s termination of parental rights statutes recognize “that terminating an unfit parent’s parental rights is not always in the child’s best interests,” and it is not in Child’s best interest here. Tennessee Court of Appeals: “Upon review of the evidence, we agree with the trial court’s assessment and findings.” (Editorial note: Mother nearly had her parental rights terminated because she waived multiple potentially valid defenses, which Tennessee law really should not allow.) (DAH)

A victory for Horwitz Law, PLLC client Theresa Baldwin! In 2022, Ms. Baldwin was sued for a cornucopia of speech-based tort claims after she criticized two adults (one of them an oft-sanctioned lawyer) who took her minor daughter into their home and elsewhere against Ms. Baldwin’s instructions to stay away. And because—after more than a year of litigation—the Plaintiffs failed to establish any element of their various claims, the Tennessee Public Participation Act means that Ms. Baldwin wins and gets to recover her legal fees. Read the Circuit Court of Robertson County’s Order Granting Defendant’s Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-104(a) Petition to Dismiss the Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint Pursuant to the Tennessee Public Participation Act here: https://horwitz.law/wp-content/uploads/2022-247-Order-Granting-TPPA-Petition.pdf.

Tennessee Supreme Court Examines What is “Knowing” in “Severe Child Abuse” Law

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 thyroid condition, chronic subdural hematomas, bronchitis and — most disturbingly – 22 rib fractures.

A child abuse specialist at Vanderbilt determined that the likely cause of the fractures was child abuse.  Because of this diagnosis, the Department of Children’s Services (DCS) got involved and ultimately sought a termination of the parental rights of both the mother and father of Markus E.

In September 2015, a juvenile court in Davidson County found Markus E. to be a dependent and neglected child.  The parents appealed the dependency and neglect finding to circuit court. While this appeal was pending, DCS moved to terminate both parent’s parental rights.  Ultimately, in May 2019, a trial court issued a 73-page opinion granting DCS’s petition to terminate the parental rights of both parents. The court credited expert testimony that the rib fractures were caused by child abuse.  The Tennessee Court of Appeals also found clear and convincing evidence to support the ground of severe child abuse as to both parents.

On appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed in its May 19, 2023. Writing for the majority, Justice Holly Kirby explained that to terminate parental rights, a party, such as DCS in this case, must first establish a ground of termination and then show that termination of parental rights is in the best interests of the child.

DCS sought two grounds in this case: (1) severe child abuse for both parents; and (2) substantial noncompliance with the permanency plan by the mother.

The bulk of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s analysis examined what is “knowing” within the meaning of the “severe child abuse” statute in Tennessee.   The statute defines “severe child abuse” as follows:

The knowing exposure of a child to or the knowing failure to protect a child from abuse or neglect that is likely to cause serious bodily injury or death and the knowing use of force on a child that is likely to cause serious bodily injury or death.

Kirby explained that “a parent’s failure to protect can be considered knowing if the parent was deliberately ignorant, as where the parent avoids actual knowledge of the abuse or neglect but is aware of facts, circumstances, or information that would put a reasonable parent on notice of the risk and the need to protect the child.”

She added that a person can knowingly commit severe child abuse “when he or she is either in deliberate ignorance of or in reckless disregard of the information that has been presented to him or her.”

She also explained that in these type cases, “the evidence shows that one parent inflicted the abuse and the other parent failed to protect the child from it.”

Kirby noted that Markus E. suffered many physical injuries and problems and that there was no finding that these were non-accidental, inflicted injuries.”  The mother, in fact, had taken her child to a variety of hospitals and health care providers when she had custody.   Furthermore, Kirby wrote that “[b]ecause rib fractures are not necessarily accompanied by external bruising or other identifiable body damage, the source of the pain, even from an acute or recent injury, may not be obvious.”

Kirby concluded that “the evidence in the record does not clearly and convincingly show that the failure of Mother and Father to protect Markus from the non-accidental rib fractures was ‘knowing.’”

Justice Sarah Campbell wrote a short concurring opinion that agreed with nearly all of Justice Kirby’s analysis.  However, Campbell wrote that in interpreting legislature purpose, the emphasis must be on the statutory text: “My only point of disagreement with the majority opinion is its suggestion that statutory interpretation requires consideration of a statute’s purposes and objectives separate and apart from its text.”

Questions about this article?  Contact daniel [at] horwitz.law.

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Amended Complaints Supersede Earlier Complaints, Holds Tennessee Supreme Court

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 particular—plaintiffs may amend once “as a matter of course” at any time before a responsive pleading has been served, so the plaintiff’s amended complaint became the operative pleading in the case immediately upon its filing.

Five minutes after amending his complaint, the plaintiff filed a notice of voluntary dismissal—often called a “nonsuit”—regarding the non-physician defendants.  He also tendered a proposed order dismissing those defendants without prejudice.  The intended purpose of the filing was to protect the plaintiff’s right to refile his claims against the dismissed defendants within the following year—something that Tennessee’s savings statute permits as a matter of right when a plaintiff has taken a nonsuit.  The trial court then entered the nonsuit order, which the plaintiff later sought to alter or amend so he could reinstate his claims against the other defendants.  The plaintiff also attempted to amend one of the earlier-dismissed defendants back into the case through another amended complaint several months later.

The problem with this approach, as a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Bivens explained, was that the plaintiff had already filed his first amended complaint, which eliminated any other defendants as parties, before he filed his nonsuit.  Under Tennessee law, the effect of an amended complaint is to “supersede[] and destroy[]” the original complaint as a pleading, essentially rendering it a nullity.[1]  Thus, after the plaintiff’s amended complaint was filed, there was only one defendant in the case.  And because of that, there were no other defendants for the trial court to dismiss from the action, rendering void both the plaintiff’s attempted nonsuit dismissing those defendants and the trial court’s order purporting to dismiss them.

The practical effect of this chronology was that the plaintiff could not seek to alter or amend the trial court’s nonsuit order, which was void.  By amending the other defendants out of his complaint, the plaintiff also functionally abandoned his claims against those defendants.  And because the issue of whether Tennessee’s savings statute applies to abandoned, rather than dismissed, claims is not entirely clear (the text of Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-1-105(a), which requires a “judgment or decree,” suggests that the answer is no), the Plaintiff’s subsequent attempt to reinstate his claims against one of the earlier defendants now risks being time-barred—an issue that lower courts will eventually have to sort out on remand.

Interestingly, nobody involved in the case appears to have noticed these issues, either.  The plaintiff certainly did not.  Neither, it seems, did the trial court.  Instead, the issue was apparently identified for the first time by the Tennessee Supreme Court after it accepted review, pretermitting its consideration of the issue that it had actually granted review to address: whether a voluntary dismissal of one of multiple defendants in a Governmental Tort Liability Act case may be set aside through a motion to alter or amend.  Due to a procedural misstep that risks foreclosing the plaintiff’s claims against that defendant on a different ground, though, that issue does not appear to matter in this case any longer.

Read the Tennessee Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Ingram v. Gallagher, No. E2020-01222-SC-R11-CV, 2023 WL 3487083 (Tenn. May 17, 2023), authored by Justice Jeffrey Bivens, here: https://www.tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/OpinionsPDFVersion/Majority%20Opinion%20E2020-1222-SC.pdf

Questions about this article?  Contact the author at daniel [at] horwitz.law.

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[1] See, e.g., Hanson v. Levan, 647 S.W.3d 85, 90 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2021), appeal denied (Jan. 13, 2022).

Tennessee Supreme Court Shuts Door On Nearly All Malicious Prosecution Claims That Arise Out of Criminal Proceedings

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, and create anxiety in him, his family and his friends.”[1]  Put another way (as the Fifth Circuit has):

“[A] wrongful indictment is no laughing matter; often it works a grievous, irreparable injury to the person indicted. The stigma cannot be easily erased. In the public mind, the blot on a man’s escutcheon, resulting from such a public accusation of wrongdoing, is seldom wiped out by a subsequent judgment of not guilty. Frequently, the public remembers the accusation, and still suspects guilt, even after an acquittal.”[2]

With this context in mind, the tort of malicious prosecution exists to deter people from initiating knowingly baseless charges for malicious purposes and to enable those who are harmed by such charges to be made whole.  Nobody seriously disputes the public policy value of such a tort.  Indeed, independent of civil liability, it is a crime to initiate a knowingly false report to a law enforcement officer for a reason.[3]

By the same token, society has strong interests in encouraging people to report crimes and to insulate those who do so in good faith from retaliatory lawsuits.  Nobody reasonably disputes this, either.  That is why Tennessee (rightly) sets a high bar for malicious prosecution claims and recognizes multiple easy-to-prove defenses along with three separate (and overlapping) common law and statutory immunities from suit—all of which function to protect good-faith reporters from any serious fear of liability and enable them to recover their legal expenses whenever they are improperly sued.

As of yesterday, though, based on practical realities of the criminal justice system that the Tennessee Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Mynatt v. NTEU utterly fails to acknowledge, what was previously a high bar has become impossible to clear in nearly all criminal cases.  The essential holding of the Court’s opinion is that “plaintiffs can pursue a claim for malicious prosecution only if an objective examination, limited to the documents disposing of the proceeding or the applicable procedural rules, indicates the termination of the underlying criminal proceeding reflects on the merits of the case and was due to the innocence of the accused.”[4]  Because Tennessee’s criminal judgment form does not contemplate such a finding, though—and because innocent criminal defendants lack any power to force courts or prosecutors to declare their innocence on their dismissal documents—this standard is illusory as a practical matter.  Thus, when a prosecutor determines that a defendant is innocent and opts to dismiss the charges against him as a result, a defendant who wishes to maintain a subsequent malicious prosecution claim must now object to the dismissal of the charges and demand a trial instead.

This will never (and should never) happen.  It also makes little sense to treat criminal defendants whose cases reach trial more favorably than those against whom evidence was so weak that a prosecutor agreed to dismiss charges without one.  That is not just the author’s view, either.  As Justice Kavanaugh explained for the United States Supreme Court when assessing the same issue under federal law just last year:

“[R]equiring the plaintiff to show that his prosecution ended with an affirmative indication of innocence would paradoxically foreclose a [malicious prosecution] claim when the government’s case was weaker and dismissed without explanation before trial, but allow a claim when the government’s evidence was substantial enough to proceed to trial. That would make little sense.”[5]

It is not entirely clear from the Tennessee Supreme Court’s opinion—which contains several glaring errors (like misstating the relevant statute of limitations applicable to criminal proceeding-based malicious prosecution claims and mischaracterizing the substance of the trial court order under review)—that even an acquittal after trial will suffice, either.  As even the most naïve observers of the criminal justice process are aware, an acquittal does not actually reflect a judgment “due to the innocence of the accused,” which is what the Tennessee Supreme Court now says is the standard.  To the contrary, an acquittal “does not prove innocence but, rather, indicates that the prior prosecution failed to meet its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt at least one element of the crime.”[6]  Independently, because a separate element of malicious prosecution claims is that a charge must have been initiated without probable cause, charges that reach trial traditionally preclude malicious prosecution liability based on the “interim adverse judgment rule” on the ground that a charge “had sufficient potential merit to proceed to trial[.]”[7]  A rule that acquitted criminal defendants may (maybe) maintain malicious prosecution claims—but that defendants whose cases were dismissed before trial cannot—is also asinine, “upside down[,]” and has the “perverse consequence of ensuring that some of the most deserving plaintiffs, those who are falsely accused and whose cases were dismissed early on, could not sue . . . .”[8]

All of this is deeply unfortunate.  And the basis for the ruling—which overrules two centuries of Tennessee precedent in favor of adopting the standard for malicious prosecution claims that arise out of civil proceedings—is even worse.  Unlike criminal defendants, civil defendants who are victimized by fraudulent civil litigation have a wide range of tools at their disposal under Tennessee law that enable them to be made whole—including the ability to pursue sanctions even after dismissal,[9] prevent non-merits dismissals merely by moving for summary judgment,[10] and obtain up to $10,000.00 following early-stage dismissals under Tenn. Code. Ann. § 20-12-119(c).  To the extent that the Tennessee Supreme Court was concerned about exposing good-faith reporters to discovery, people who are sued for malicious prosecution for reports to law enforcement also have the ability to stay discovery—every time[11]—merely by petitioning under the Tennessee Public Participation Act, and they can win immediately (and recover their legal expenses) simply by demonstrating that they reported in good faith.

The practical result of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s ruling is that—with the exception of criminal defendants whose charges are dismissed at the earliest possible stage of proceedings for lack of probable cause—no Tennessee criminal defendant will ever be able to maintain a malicious prosecution claim.  A person who falsely accuses, in bad faith, someone of committing a crime can also largely insulate themselves from subsequent malicious prosecution liability just by testifying falsely at a preliminary hearing or filing a false report that facially establishes probable cause.  It goes without saying that society will not benefit from this standard or the perverse incentives it creates.

Considered broadly: If the Tennessee Supreme Court wants to shut the door to righteous civil claims—something it has been increasingly aggressive about doing—it should just say so.  Pretending that claims are available when—as a practical matter—they are illusory compromises the judiciary’s integrity and misleads the public by suggesting that wrongs have remedies when they do not.  Judges—who enjoy absolute immunity from nearly all such claims of wrongdoing—also are not likely to appreciate the genuine consequences of such an approach.  Perhaps it will take a member of the judiciary being wrongfully arrested based on maliciously false criminal charges, suffering the personal and professional humiliation of a false-but-widely-publicized criminal accusation, and finding him or herself without redress after the charge is dismissed for that to change.  Until then, Mr. Mynatt deserved better.

Read the Tennessee Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Mynatt v. Nat’l Treasury Emps. Union, Chapter 39, No. M2020-01285-SC-R11-CV, 2023 WL 3243237 (Tenn. May 4, 2023), authored by Chief Justice Roger Page, here: https://www.tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/OpinionsPDFVersion/Majority%20Opinion%202020-1285-SC.pdf

Questions about this article?  Contact the author at daniel [at] horwitz.law.

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[1] United States v. Marion, 404 U.S. 307, 320 (1971).

[2] Richey v. Smith, 515 F.2d 1239, 1244 n.10 (5th Cir. 1975).

[3] Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-16-502.

[4] Mynatt v. Nat’l Treasury Emps. Union, Chapter 39, No. M202001285SCR11CV, 2023 WL 3243237, at *1 (Tenn. May 4, 2023).

[5] Thompson v. Clark, 212 L. Ed. 2d 382, 142 S. Ct. 1332, 1340 (2022).

[6] State v. Turner, No. W200700891CCAR3CD, 2010 WL 2516901, at *9 (Tenn. Crim. App. June 22, 2010), aff’d, 352 S.W.3d 425 (Tenn. 2011).

[7] Parrish v. Latham & Watkins, 400 P.3d 1, 4 (Cal. 2017).

[8] Tr. of Oral Argument at 73:10–17, Thompson v. Clark, 142 S. Ct. 1332 (2022) (No. 20-659), https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/20-659_lkgn.pdf.

[9] Menche v. White Eagle Prop. Grp., LLC, No. W2018-01336-COA-R3-CV, 2019 WL 4016127, at *10 (Tenn. Ct. App. Aug. 26, 2019).

[10] See Tenn. R. Civ. P. 41.01(1).

[11] Cf. Formulas, Inc. v. LaMarche, 31 Cal. 4th 728, 734, 74 P.3d 737, 741 (2003) (noting that California’s anti-SLAPP law “potentially may apply to every malicious prosecution action”).

New Tennessee Court of Appeals Ruling Settles Previously Unanswered Questions About the Tennessee Public Participation Act

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 nasty fallout among former coworkers at investment advisory firm Innovative Advisory Partners.  After four members of the firm left to form a new investment group, a dispute arose and litigation ensued.  Shortly after that litigation was initiated, Innovative Advisory Partners amended something called a “Form U5 Uniform Termination Notice” to state that its former members had been discharged due to “[v]iolation of client privacy rights, misrepresentation and selling away”—the latter meaning selling securities without approval or authorization.  Maintaining that such allegations had been made maliciously and with actual knowledge that the statements were false, the former members sued Innovative Advisory Partners and its CEO for defamation.

The Plaintiffs’ defamation suit began with the trial court issuing a categorically unconstitutional prior restraint enjoining the Defendants from publishing further information that the Plaintiffs contended was false—a frustratingly common occurrence in Tennessee that received no further mention.  The Defendants then petitioned to dismiss the Plaintiffs’ lawsuit under the Tennessee Public Participation Act.  As grounds, the Defendants asserted that the Plaintiffs had filed the complaint in response to Defendants’ exercise of their right to free speech, that the Defendants’ speech related to a matter of public concern, and that the statements in their amended U5 disclosure were true.

The Plaintiffs responded in opposition to the Defendants’ TPPA Petition, appending several declarations that at least facially supported their disputed defamation claim.  The Plaintiffs further maintained that the Defendants’ TPPA Petition was frivolous and that they were entitled to attorney’s fees for having to respond to it.  The Defendants then replied with evidence of their own.

Upon review of the Parties’ filings, the trial court found that the TPPA applied, it denied the Defendants’ TPPA Petition on its merits, and it ruled that it was not filed frivolously.  Everyone appealed.  Thereafter, the Court of Appeals accepted interlocutory review, which TPPA petitioners and respondents may seek as a matter of right under Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-106 (“The court’s order dismissing or refusing to dismiss a legal action pursuant to a petition filed under this chapter is immediately appealable as a matter of right to the court of appeals. The Tennessee Rules of Appellate Procedure applicable to appeals as a matter of right governs such appeals.”).

Upon review, the Court of Appeals resolved three previously unanswered questions about how critical provisions of the TPPA operate, all of which will provide substantial guidance for litigants and trial courts in future TPPA cases.

First, the Court of Appeals settled the definition of “prima facie” under the TPPA.  The term is used twice in the statute.  It appears, first, in Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-105(a), which provides at step one of the TPPA’s burden-shifting framework that: “The petitioning party has the burden of making a prima facie case that a legal action against the petitioning party is based on, relates to, or is in response to that party’s exercise of the right to free speech, right to petition, or right of association.”  It also appears a second time, in Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-105(b), at step two of the TPPA’s burden-shifting framework, which provides that: “If the petitioning party meets this burden, the court shall dismiss the legal action unless the responding party establishes a prima facie case for each essential element of the claim in the legal action.”

The reason the definition of “prima facie” matters—and why the quantum of evidence necessary to satisfy the standard is so critical—is because it affects whether the TPPA applies at all, and if so, whether a defendant’s TPPA petition should be granted.  Previous litigants—including Daily Wire host Candace Owens en route to her record-setting TPPA win against a failed congressional candidate earlier this year—had fought over the proper definition of “prima facie” within the meaning of the TPPA, given that the term been defined differently across Tennessee law in several circumstances.  Cf. State v. Bryant, 585 S.W.2d 586, 589 (Tenn. 1979) (“‘prima facie’ may be used in various senses, with a range of meaning”).  Resolving this dispute, the relevant portion of the Court of Appeals’ opinion states that:

Tennessee courts have defined the prima facie case standard in other contexts, thus rendering it a term with a well-recognized meaning in the common law. See, e.g., Anderson v. State, 55 Tenn. 13, 14, 1873 WL 5945, at *1 (1873) (“Prima facie evidence is that evidence which is sufficient to establish a fact unless rebutted.”); Union Planters Corp. v. Harwell, 578 S.W.2d 87, 93 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1978) (“As we understand it, a prima facie case is made out when some credible proof … is presented on the issues required to be offered in evidence by a plaintiff for a plaintiff’s recovery.”); Pickard v. Berryman, 142 S.W.2d 764, 769 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1939) (explaining that “prima facie case” “means merely that [the plaintiff’s] evidence, assuming it to be true, is sufficient to prevent his suit being dismissed”); Macon Cnty. v. Dixon, 100 S.W.2d 5, 9 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1936) (“Prima facie evidence is that which, standing alone, unexplained or uncontradicted, is sufficient to maintain the proposition affirmed. It is such as, in judgment of law, is sufficient to establish the fact; and, if not rebutted, remains sufficient for that purpose.”).

Pragnell, 2023 WL 2985261, at *10.

Thus, the prevailing definition of “prima facie” for purposes of Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-105(a) and (b) requires that “‘some credible proof’” be presented to support a litigant’s claim.  Id. at *11 (quoting Union Planters Corp., 578 S.W.2d at 93).  The Court of Appeals also held that this standard does not apply to the third step of the TPPA’s burden-shifting framework (regarding a defendant’s ability to establish a valid defense) and remanded for reconsideration of the matter, explaining that:

To the extent that the initial two steps of the dismissal procedure require only a prima facie showing pursuant to the express statutory language, see Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-105(c), the rules of statutory construction instruct that we should infer “that if the Legislature had intended to enact a certain provision missing from the statute, then the Legislature would have included the provision. Thus, the missing statutory provision is missing for a reason—the Legislature never meant to include it.” Effler v. Purdue Pharma L.P., 614 S.W.3d 681, 689 (Tenn. 2020). In other words, with respect to establishing a defense to the defamation claim, Defendants would be required to make more than a prima facie demonstration in order to achieve dismissal of the defamation claim.

Id. at *12.

Second, in a blockbuster footnote that bears heavily upon the multibillion-dollar defamation claim pending between SmileDirectClub and NBC Universal, the Court of Appeals held that no inferences are to be drawn in favor of the opposing party at the TPPA stage.  Id. at n.4 (“We note that the TPPA does not state that the evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to a particular party, as is the case with summary judgment proceedings.”).  This means that—unlike the standard for summary judgment—evidence furnished at the TPPA stage should not be construed liberally by a trial court or in a manner that is favorable to the party furnishing it.  The most significant practical result of this holding is that in public-figure defamation cases—in which plaintiffs must demonstrate actual malice to prevail—a plaintiff must immediately come forward with clear and convincing evidence of actual malice in order to survive dismissal.

Third, the Court of Appeals resolved the standard for frivolity.  The question arose out of the Parties’ dispute over Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-17-107(b), which provides that: “If the court finds that a petition filed under this chapter was frivolous or was filed solely for the purpose of unnecessary delay, and makes specific written findings and conclusions establishing such finding, the court may award to the responding party court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees incurred in opposing the petition.”  Id.  Construing the meaning of “frivolous” for TPPA purposes, the Court of Appeals ruled that a TPPA petition is frivolous when it is “baseless or ‘utterly lacking in an adequate factual predicate as to make the filing of such a [petition] highly unlikely to succeed.”  Pragnell, 2023 WL 2985261, at *15 (quoting Milan Supply Chain Sols., Inc. v. Navistar, Inc., 627 S.W.3d 125, 161 (Tenn. 2021)).  Affirming the trial court’s ruling that the Defendants’ TPPA Petition had not been filed frivolously, the Court of Appeals also concluded (as onlookers had assumed) that a trial court’s determination on the matter is reviewable only for abuse of discretion.

Read the Court of Appeals’ unanimous ruling in Pragnell v. Franklin, No. E2022-00524-COA-R3-CV, 2023 WL 2985261 (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 18, 2023), here: https://www.tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/OpinionsPDFVersion/E2022-524.pdf.

Questions about this article?  Contact the author at daniel [at] horwitz.law.

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If a Government Employee’s Negligence Kills You, the Government Will (Virtually) Never Have to Pay For It, Holds Tennessee Supreme Court

By Daniel A. Horwitz:

On May 24, 2022, a gunman massacred 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.  376 law enforcement officials who responded to the scene—who lied about at least a dozen critical facts of the shooting afterward—stood idly by while the gunman’s hour-long execution of young children and their teachers unfolded before them.  “Law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety,” an Interim Report by the Texas Legislature’s Investigative Committee concluded.  The same committee also determined that law enforcement’s fatal failures were not attributable to “malice or ill motives”; instead, “systematic failures and egregious poor decision making” were the culprits.

In a unanimously wrong decision issued by the Tennessee Supreme Court on February 16, 2023, Tennessee’s high court has ruled that if this exact scenario unfolds in Tennessee tomorrow, then the government need not pay for any of the harm caused.  Only a concurring opinion by Justice Kirby—which expressly (and blessedly) calls for review of Tennessee’s outmoded, extra-statutory, judge-invented “public duty doctrine”—explains why.  The practical effect of the Court’s opinion, though, is clear: If heads, then the government wins.  If tails, then the plaintiff suing the government loses.  In virtually all instances, however, the government will not have to pay.

To understand how Tennessee law arrived at this disturbing point, some background is useful.  At common law, governments were generally immune from any lawsuit based on the doctrine of “sovereign immunity.”  The origins of that despotic doctrine are unapologetically monarchical. “‘[D]eeply rooted in feudal notions of the divine right of kings,’ sovereign immunity, which protects the state and its political subdivisions from tort liability, is based upon the premise that ‘the King can do no wrong.’”[1]

In 1975, a closely divided Tennessee Supreme Court disagreed about whether sovereign immunity was part of Tennessee’s common law.  Disputing that it was, two dissenting Justices complained that interpreting Tennessee’s straightforward law on the matter “does not require brilliance—just intellectual honesty”; that application of sovereign immunity had “produced ludicrous results”; that the Tennessee Supreme Court had woven “a tangled web . . . to protect and promote an unjust rule of law”; and that they would “condemn this legal monstrosity to the oblivion which it so richly deserves.”[2]  The dissenting Justices’ views did not carry the day.

Sovereign immunity’s questionable origins aside, all agree that Tennessee’s General Assembly has authority to enact legislation allowing the government to be sued for tortious misconduct.  In the 1970s, a slightly more evolved Tennessee General Assembly also did just that.  In particular, “[i]n 1973, following the lead of other states that had abolished or limited sovereign immunity by statute or judicial decision, our General Assembly passed the Tennessee Governmental Tort Liability Act[.]”[3]

The GTLA’s most important provision—Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-205—states that: “[i]mmunity from suit of all governmental entities is removed for injury proximately caused by a negligent act or omission of any employee within the scope of his employment” except for specified exceptions (such as intentional misconduct) that are listed in the statute.  Based on this provision and the sole purpose underlying it (to allow tort victims of government negligence to recover), one might reasonably expect that the government could be sued successfully when its negligence causes harm.  Given another judicially manufactured common law doctrine—the “public duty doctrine”—that appears nowhere in the GTLA, though, the practical reality is quite different.

“The public duty doctrine originated at common-law and shields a public employee from suits for injuries that are caused by the public employee’s breach of a duty owed to the public at large.”[4]  This is a complex way of saying that if a public employee owes a duty to every member of the public, then the government is immune from suit if that duty is violated as to any specific person.  Thus, based on this doctrine, the Tennessee Supreme Court explained in 1975 that “[i]t is the settled law in this state that private citizens, as such, cannot maintain an action complaining of the wrongful acts of public officials unless such private citizens aver special interest or a special injury not common to the public generally.”[5]

To be sure, the Tennessee Supreme Court is aware that “[t]he public duty doctrine is not expressly listed as an exception to the waiver of immunity for injuries resulting from negligent acts or omissions of governmental employees” set forth in Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-205,[6] which instead delineates ten exceptions that are not the public duty doctrine.  Given that, how can it be that the public duty doctrine is still applied as an exception to liability in negligence cases arising under the GTLA?  The answer is straightforward and unsettling: Because regardless of the statute that the Tennessee General Assembly enacted, the Tennessee Supreme Court preferred a policy that prevented the government from being sued instead.  “We think that on balance, the State is better served by a policy that both protects the exercise of law enforcement discretion and provides accountability for failure to perform a duty,” the Tennessee Supreme Court explained in 1995.[7]  Given the Tennessee Supreme Court’s traditional fondness of proclaiming that “[i]t is not the role of this Court to substitute its own policy judgments for those of the legislature[,]”[8] the Court’s explicit embrace of such judicial policymaking is curious.

In any case, since 1995, the Tennessee Supreme Court has held that “the public duty doctrine was not abolished by the Governmental Tort Liability Act and that sound policy reasons support its continuance[.]”[9]  As a result, in order to sue the government for negligence caused by an employee, a plaintiff must generally raise a negligence claim under the GTLA and then overcome the separate immunity conferred by the public duty doctrine as well.

Until yesterday, doing so was difficult but not impossible.  In particular, based on the same 1995 decision discussed above, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that plaintiffs could overcome the public duty doctrine’s additional layer of immunity when one of the following three circumstances applied to establish a “special duty”:

1) officials, by their actions, affirmatively undertake to protect the plaintiff, and the plaintiff relies upon the undertaking; 2) a statute specifically provides for a cause of action against an official or municipality for injuries resulting to a particular class of individuals, of which the plaintiff is a member, from failure to enforce certain laws; or 3) the plaintiff alleges a cause of action involving intent, malice, or reckless misconduct.[10]

The first two exceptions are sufficiently rare that few plaintiffs can rely on them.  Thus, in virtually all cases in which the public duty doctrine applies, plaintiffs need to plead a negligence claim under the GTLA and also allege “reckless misconduct” to overcome the public duty doctrine.  The reason why was simple: The GTLA itself provides that intentional and malicious conduct remain subject to immunity.[11]  Thus, in most cases, the only non-exempt theory of relief that permitted a plaintiff to navigate both the GTLA’s and the public duty doctrine’s overlapping layers of immunity were negligence claims that involved reckless misconduct.

Based on this difficult-but-not-impossible state of affairs, at least some plaintiffs who found themselves the victims of government negligence could and did recover for their injuries.  For instance, in April 2022, the Court of Appeals reinstated a negligence claim filed by a gunshot victim who alleged negligence on the part of a sheriff’s deputy, unanimously explaining that “[t]he complaint also contains sufficient factual allegations of reckless misconduct such that the special duty exception to the public duty doctrine could apply.”[12]  Thus, the Plaintiff’s negligence-combined-with-recklessness claim went forward.  Other victims of governmental negligence that involved recklessness were able to survive early dispositive motions and then recover, too.

No longer.  Courtesy of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision in Lawson v. Hawkins Cnty., 2023 WL 2033336, at *6 (Tenn. Feb. 16, 2023), the Tennessee Supreme Court has now determined that:

The [GTLA] removes immunity only for “negligent” employee acts. Common-law precedent and statutory context make clear that the term “negligent” in section -205 means ordinary negligence, not gross negligence or recklessness. The Court of Appeals erred by holding otherwise.

The reasoning underlying the opinion is exceedingly poor.  For instance, the opinion relies heavily on Tennessee’s COVID liability statute—which was enacted in 2020, and which also had little bearing upon and did not purport to address the question presented—to determine the meaning of a statute enacted almost fifty years earlier.  That is an unusual departure from traditional interpretive methods, particularly given that the opinion was authored by the same Justice who—only six months ago, and in another government-favoring opinion that similarly raised eyebrows—took pains to emphasize the importance of examining “[o]riginal public meaning” and “authoritative dictionaries published around the time of a statute’s enactment[,]”[13] none of which appears to have been consulted.  Also ignored was directly relevant Tennessee statutory law, which has long recognized that simple negligence claims may include recklessness. See, e.g., Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-39-104(a)(1) (providing that recklessness may support an award of punitive damages in negligence cases); Wilson v. Americare Sys., Inc., 397 S.W.3d 552, 553 (Tenn. 2013) (remanding for consideration of punitive damages award in suit arising from, among other things, reckless misconduct in case where “the negligence of the staff, the owner, and its management company caused Ms. Farrar’s death.”).  The decision conflicts with recent authority from other jurisdictions that bears directly on the point, too.  See, e.g., Weis v. Baumann, No. DBDCV216038973S, 2021 WL 4895122, at *3 (Conn. Super. Ct. Sept. 22, 2021) (“While not all negligent acts are reckless, reckless conduct will almost certainly always also be negligent.”).

Given the continued application of the public duty doctrine, the practical effect of the Lawson Court’s ruling is certain: Virtually no plaintiff will be able to recover against the government in a negligence case.  In particular, to be able to sue under the GTLA, a plaintiff is now required to assert a simple negligence claim alone, because claims of recklessness are not subject to liability.  After asserting such a simple negligence claim, though, the plaintiff’s claim will be dismissed for failure to assert recklessness based on the public duty doctrine’s overlapping layer of immunity forbidding simple negligence claims.  So heads, the government wins, and tails, the plaintiff suing the government loses.

One Justice, at least, has recognized the “Catch-22 for plaintiffs” that the Tennessee Supreme Court has now assured.  Specifically, in a concurring opinion, Justice Kirby noted that:

If the plaintiff’s complaint alleges that the governmental entity’s employee was reckless in order to qualify for the “reckless misconduct” special duty exception to the public duty doctrine, then dismissal under the GTLA is likely because immunity is not removed for reckless conduct. Conversely, if the complaint alleges that the governmental employee was negligent in order to avoid dismissal under the GTLA, the plaintiff risks dismissal under the public duty doctrine by making his claim ineligible for the special duty exception for reckless misconduct.[14]

Justice Kirby’s concurrence also calls upon the Tennessee Supreme Court to consider whether it should “discontinue application” of the outmoded public duty doctrine “in deference to the statutes governing immunity” that do not embrace it.[15]

Assuming that at least one other Justice agrees that the Court should reconsider the continued viability of the public duty doctrine, that opportunity will come soon.  There are currently two cases pending in lower courts—one involving a woman’s preventable murder arising from Metro Nashville’s failure to enforce an order of protection, and another involving the preventable death of a pregnant woman who experienced a mental health event during a Metro police response—in which the claim that the public duty doctrine should be overruled has been expressly raised and preserved.

Regrettably, the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision in Lawson is yet another example of courts undermining citizens’ ability to sue the government in the face of statutes that expressly provide they can.  Courts’ extra-statutory eagerness to gut the remedies afforded by 42 U.S.C. § 1983—the most important civil rights statute ever enacted—through the judge-made doctrine of qualified immunity is perhaps the best known example.  Less well known is the fact that courts have gutted, for instance, the remedies afforded by statutes like the law enforcement proviso of the Federal Tort Claims Act following a successful reform effort that was designed to ensure that federal law enforcement officials could be sued for intentional torts.  In every such case, though, courts’ response to legislative efforts to afford citizens a remedy has been to ensure that that remedy is as useless as possible and to leave tort victims like Mrs. Lawson without a remedy.

On a broader level, this reliable pattern is corrosive to democracy.  Unlike tacitly intimidating judges by visiting their homes, the right way to advocate for policy change is democratically—by petitioning legislators to change the law by adopting needed reforms, and by voting them out of office when they refuse.  When courts disrespect the results of the democratic process after citizens have advocated for reform successfully, though—for instance, when they rule that “on balance, the State is better served by a policy” that protects the government from being sued regardless of the legislation that the democratic process produced—the resulting message that judges (most of whom are former government lawyers) do not actually respect the democratic process is clear.  Unless and until the judiciary as a whole sheds its heavy preference for government-friendly outcomes, though, it seems unlikely that confidence in the American judiciary—currently at a historic low—is at risk of improving anytime soon.

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[1] Hughes v. Metro. Gov’t of Nashville & Davidson Cnty., 340 S.W.3d 352, 360 (Tenn. 2011) (quoting Cooper v. Rutherford Cnty., 531 S.W.2d 783, 786 (Tenn.1975) (Henry, J., dissenting)).

[2] Cooper., 531 S.W.2d at 788–92 (Henry, J. dissenting).

[3] Hughes, 340 S.W.3d at 360.

[4] Ezell v. Cockrell, 902 S.W.2d 394, 397 (Tenn. 1995).

[5] Bennett v. Stutts, 521 S.W.2d 575, 576 (Tenn. 1975).

[6] Ezell, 902 S.W.2d at 400.

[7] Ezell, 902 S.W.2d at 401.

[8] State v. Gentry, 538 S.W.3d 413, 420 (Tenn. 2017) (citing Frazier v. State, 495 S.W.3d 246, 249 (Tenn. 2016))

[9] Ezell, 902 S.W.2d at 401.

[10] Ezell, 902 S.W.2d at 402.

[11] See Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-20-205(2), 29-20-205(4), 29-20-205(6).

[12] Haynes v. Perry Cnty., No. M2020-01448-COA-R3-CV, 2022 WL 1210462, at *1 (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 25, 2022).

[13] State v. Deberry, 651 S.W.3d 918, 924 (Tenn. 2022) (emphasis added).

[14] Lawson, 2023 WL 2033336, at *12 (Kirby, J. concurring).

[15] Id.

Horwitz Law, PLLC Client Kenneth Mynatt Wins Federal Tort Claims Act Appeal, Unanimous Reversal of District Court Order Before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

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 “discretionary function” exception.

“The question here is whether presenting false evidence (in testimonial or documentary form) to a prosecutor and then to a grand jury is the type of conduct ‘that the discretionary function exception was designed to shield.’  The answer here is plainly no,” Judge Griffin explains.  In so holding, the Sixth Circuit has joined other federal courts in concluding that “[t]here can be no argument that perjury is the sort of legislative or administrative decision grounded in social, economic, and political policy that Congress sought to shield from second-guessing.”  In reversing Middle District of Tennessee District Court Judge William Campbell’s contrary ruling, the Panel further “agree[d] with Mynatt that the district court framed the issue incorrectly and erred[.]”

“We are proud to have represented Mr. Mynatt on appeal and to have won him a unanimous, precedent-setting reversal that permits his Federal Tort Claims Act claims against the United States to move forward,” said Horwitz Law, PLLC principal Daniel A. Horwitz, who represented Mr. Mynatt on appeal along with co-counsel Lindsay Smith.

Read the Sixth Circuit’s unanimous ruling in Kenneth J. Mynatt v. United States of America, et al., here.  Mr. Mynatt’s briefing in the case and selected media coverage are available below.

Case Documents:

Principal Brief of Plaintiff-Appellant

Reply Brief of Plaintiff-Appellant

Selected Media Coverage:

-Bloomberg News: IRS Worker Gets Retaliation Claim Against Feds Revived on Appeal

###

As part of Horwitz Law, PLLC’s appellate practice, Horwitz Law has successfully represented appellate clients in high-stakes, high-profile appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the Tennessee Supreme Court, the Tennessee Court of Appeals, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, the Tennessee Supreme Court Special Workers’ Compensation Appeals Panel, and in administrative agency appeals to Davidson County Chancery Court.  Horwitz Law also provides amicus curiae representation in both state and federal appellate courts.  If you are seeking appellate representation, you can purchase a consultation from Horwitz Law here.

Tennessee Court of Appeals Affirms Trial Court Order Invalidating School Board Censorship Clause in Ex-Director Shawn Joseph’s Severance Agreement

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 and permanently enjoined its enforcement.

Among other things, the School Board Censorship Clause prohibited elected School Board members even from truthfully criticizing “Dr. Joseph and his performance as Director of Schools.”  Upon review of it, Chancellor Lyle ruled that the clause violated the Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights, unlawfully prohibited them from speaking honestly with their constituents, and violated established Tennessee public policy.  As a result, Chancellor Lyle invalidated the clause as unenforceable and ordered Metro and Joseph to pay the Plaintiffs’ “reasonable costs and attorney’s fees,” which were pledged to charity.  Thereafter, both Metro and Joseph appealed.

Upon review of Chancellor Lyle’s ruling, the Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed in a pair of separate opinions.  By the time the case reached appeal, the Defendants had all but conceded that what they had done was illegal and attempted to use that concession as a basis for avoiding a judgment.  In their majority opinion, Judges Carma Dennis McGee and Andy Bennett noted that: “The fact that the defendants admit in their briefs that their contract was unlawful should not prevent Plaintiffs from having standing to challenge the contract in court.”  In a separate concurring opinion, Judge McBrayer undertook a wider review of several issues that the majority determined Metro and Joseph had waived through deficient briefing, and he held that:

“Here, the chancery court concluded that there was ‘no material dispute that the Nondisparagement Clause contained in the Severance Agreement . . . does not promote a compelling governmental interest, that it is unconstitutional, and that is an overbroad and unenforceable speech restriction.’ Based on my review of the record, I conclude the same.”
“This is a landmark victory on behalf of both elected officials’ free speech rights and citizens’ right to hear from their elected representatives,” said attorney Daniel A. Horwitz, who represented all three Plaintiffs along with co-counsel Lindsay Smith.  “Metro and Joseph should be ashamed of their efforts to gag elected officials and prevent them from speaking honestly with their constituents about issues of tremendous public importance, and their illegal attempt to do so should serve as a costly warning to other government officials to think twice before violating the First Amendment.”  Selected case documents and media coverage are linked below.

Selected Case Documents:

*Tennessee Court of Appeals Opinion Affirming Summary Judgment and Awarding Appellate Fees

*Concurring Opinion Affirming Judgment

*Post-Remand Order Granting $110,000.00 Attorney’s Fee Award

*Order Granting Summary Judgment and Denying Defendants’ Motions to Dismiss

*Order Granting $58,543.52 Attorney’s Fee Award

Principal Brief of Plaintiffs-Appellees

Reply Brief of Plaintiffs-Appellees

Plaintiffs’ Complaint

Plaintiffs’ Memorandum in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment

Metro Response/Joseph Response In Opposition to Summary Judgment

Selected Media Coverage:

-The Tennessean: Tenn. appeals court finds part of MNPS director Joseph’s severance deal unconstitutional

-Channel 5: Court invalidates censorship clause in MNPS former director Shawn Joseph’s termination contract

-Main Street Nashville: Court rules non-disparagement clause in termination contract was unconstitutional

-TCOG: Non-disparagement clause violates free-speech rights of Nashville school board members, court says

-The Tennessean: Judge finds part of MNPS director Shawn Joseph’s severance agreement ‘unconstitutional’

-Fox 17: Court order finds clause in ex-MNPS director’s contract is unconstitutional, unenforceable

-Channel 4: Judge rules censorship clause in former Director of School’s severance agreement unconstitutional

###

As part of Horwitz Law’s First Amendment practice, Horwitz Law has successfully represented and advised numerous state and local elected officials, candidates for public office, PACs and political organizations, county political parties, and other political law clients across Tennessee.  If you are seeking First Amendment or political law assistance, you can purchase a consultation from Horwitz Law here.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Lacks Authority to Violate Court Orders, Rules Tennessee Supreme Court

“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.

The case arose out of a years-old expungement order that was entered by agreement of a District Attorney and approved by a judge following a diversionary plea agreement.  When such an expungement order is entered, Tennessee law obligates the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to process it within sixty days of receipt.  In lieu of complying with the court’s order, though—and at the urging of Tennessee Deputy Attorney General Scott Sutherland and other misbehaving members of his office—the TBI opted to violate it, believing that the order was wrong.  “But no statute grants the TBI authority to independently review and decline to comply with a final expunction order it considers erroneous,” the Tennessee Supreme Court explained.  Further, as the Plaintiff noted, “willfully disobeying a final court order at the urging of counsel is ‘lawless behavior that would land any other contemnor in jail and would subject any other attorney to professional discipline.’”

Along the way to reaching this holding, the Tennessee Supreme Court forcefully affirmed Tennesseans’ rights to sue the government for acting illegally.  As relevant to the case, in 2018, the Tennessee General Assembly enacted a critical new statute—Tennessee Code Annotated § 1-3-121—that established the right of “any affected person” to sue the government “regarding the legality or constitutionality of a governmental action.”  In full, Tenn. Code Ann. § 1-3-121 provides that:

“Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, a cause of action shall exist under this chapter for any affected person who seeks declaratory or injunctive relief in any action brought regarding the legality or constitutionality of a governmental action.  A cause of action shall not exist under this chapter to seek damages.”

Despite the clarity of this statute, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office spent the next several years arguing in transparent bad faith that the statute was meaningless; that it did not mean what it said; and that it did not permit any lawsuits to be filed against state government at all.  But “[t]he General Assembly clearly and unmistakably waived sovereign immunity by enacting Tennessee Code Annotated section 1-3-121,” the Tennessee Supreme Court explained, and “[t]he plain meaning of this text expressly recognizes the existence of causes of action ‘regarding the legality or constitutionality of a governmental action’ that seek declaratory or injunctive relief.”  Accordingly, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the Plaintiff’s lawsuit against the TBI and its Director for willfully violating a court order was permissible, and it ordered a lower court to grant the Plaintiff’s claim for injunctive and declaratory relief, which the court had to that point denied.

“We appreciate the Tennessee Supreme Court unanimously vindicating our client’s expungement rights,” said Horwitz Law PLLC attorney Daniel A. Horwitz, who represented the Plaintiff along with co-counsel Lindsay Smith.  “However, we are disturbed that the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office had to be reminded by a court yet again that its job is to uphold the law, not to encourage government officials to violate it.  Having engaged in lawless behavior that would land any other contemnor in jail and that would subject any other attorney to professional discipline, we hope that Director Rausch and Attorney General Slatery won’t need to be reminded again.”

The TBI and its Director, David Rausch—who asserted the government’s entitlement to violate court orders—were unsuccessfully represented in the case by attorneys Rob Mitchell (BPR 32266), Miranda Jones (BPR 36070), and Mallory Schiller (36191) of the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.  In advance of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s unanimous reversal, they opposed appellate review in the case on the basis that “there is no probability of reversal.”  Contact them at @TNattygen.

The Parties’ oral argument in the case can be viewed here.  The Plaintiff’s briefing in the case is linked below.

Principal Brief: https://horwitz.law/wp-content/uploads/Principal-Brief-of-Appellant-Stampfiled.pdf

Reply Brief: https://horwitz.law/wp-content/uploads/Appellants-Reply-Brief.pdf

Read the Tennessee Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Recipient of Final Expunction Order in McNairy County Circuit Court Case No. 3279 v. David B. Rausch, Director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, authored by Justice Sharon G. Lee, here: https://www.tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/recipient.of_.finalexp.3279.opn_.pdf

Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance, Registry of Election Finance Held In Contempt, Ordered to Return $64,000.00 It Collected in Willful Violation of Permanent Injunction

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 considered if defendant fails to refund the registration fees as ordered above[.]”

The contempt proceeding at issue arose from an injunction secured by the election reform advocacy group Tennesseans for Sensible Election Laws in 2018.  Based in part on misconduct by the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office, that injunction was thereafter upheld on appeal by the Tennessee Court of Appeals, which additionally concluded that a mid-litigation statutory amendment to the underlying statute did not moot the case.  A subsequent order issued in December 2021 opted to keep the injunction in place, finding that the Registry had “failed to allege, or meet, the ‘significant change in the law’ standard for relief from prospective enforcement of a final judgment containing an injunction.”

In advance of the contempt trial, discovery revealed that despite knowing that the court’s permanent injunction remained unmodified, Registry officials had opted to begin enforcing the enjoined statute again at the recommendation of the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.  It additionally revealed that the Registry “expected” a contempt petition to result from its renewed enforcement.  In defense of its violation of a permanent injunction, though, the Registry asserted that “sovereign immunity bars” a contempt petition against the government “as a matter of law”—a position that would mean the government may violate court orders without consequence.  “[T]his simply cannot be[,]” Senior Judge Wright concluded in an April 6 2022 order, noting that such a result would render the separation of powers doctrine “a nullity” and reduce the judiciary “to a paper tiger with the authority to declare an action of the legislative or executive branch to be unconstitutional but an inability to enforce its judgment.”

Upon review of the Registry’s behavior, Judge Wright concluded that “[t]he injunction at issue was lawful,” that it “is clear and unambiguous,” and that the Registry’s “conscious choice” and “deliberate” decision to enforce the enjoined statute was “willful.”  Accordingly, “the Court FINDS that the defendant willfully violated this Court’s injunction by a preponderance of the evidence,” Judge Wright’s order reads.

“While the Tennessee Attorney General’s lawless approach to court orders and constitutional rights continues unabated, so does TSEL’s commitment to vindicating the rights of Tennesseans to participate in elections without illicit governmental interference,” said Daniel A. Horwitz, who represented TSEL with attorneys Jamie Hollin and Lindsay Smith.  “Court orders are not voluntary—even for the state officials who wrongly believe themselves to be above the law.  We look forward to ensuring the return of $64,000.00 that the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office instructed the Registry to steal.”

The Registry was unsuccessfully represented by attorneys Alex Rieger, Matt Jones, and Janet Kleinfelter, all of the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.  Contact them at @TNattygen.

Read the Chancery Court’s Memorandum Opinion and Order on Plaintiff’s Petition for Contempt here: https://horwitz.law/wp-content/uploads/Memorandum-Opinion-and-Order-on-Plaintiffs-Petition-for-Contemp-1.pdf