August 23–29, 2025
- Pro se appellant files grossly defective brief in which he asks the Tennessee Court of Appeals to “order the removal of [the trial court judge’s] inappropriate and defamatory remarks from both the court transcript and the official orders” and to issue “a letter of reprimand” to the trial court judge. Tennessee Court of Appeals: “Yeah unfortunately, due to a lack of everything, we don’t do [any of that].”
- Trial court issues a final order dismissing Plaintiff’s complaint as untimely. 31 days later, Plaintiff incorrectly files an (untimely) notice of appeal with the trial court clerk, rather than in the Tennessee Court of Appeals where it belongs. Three days after that, Appellant files an (untimely) notice of appeal with the Tennessee Court of Appeals and moves the Tennessee Court of Appeals to accept the untimely appeal. Tennessee Court of Appeals: We both can’t and won’t do that, so the appeal is dismissed as untimely. [Editorial note: That’s an awful lot of malpractice in just a couple of sentences.]
- Pro Se Debtors initiate fifth appeal in a case where Banks obtained a deficiency judgment against them, which presents issues that Pro Se Debtors litigated and lost six times before now. This time, Pro Se Debtors are mad because they were sanctioned below for filing a frivolous complaint and because the trial court imposed a screening requirement on future filings. Tennessee Court of Appeals: “It would be inaccurate to refer to [Pro Se Debtors’] litigation history as ‘Quixotic.’ Don Quixote may have been suffering from a delusion that windmills were actually hostile giants, but the windmills themselves were real. [Pro Se Debtors] on the other hand are simply denying reality: there is no army of hostile giants, and there are no windmills either. [Pro Se Debtors] repeat their demonstrably false claim that no court has ever adjudicated their theory that the debt they incurred was a non-recourse loan. . . . Enough is enough.” So we affirm and also award frivolous appeal fees on top of that. [Editorial note: Unfortunately, there is no discussion about the legality of the trial court’s “screening mechanism,” which many other litigants ought to be subject to.]
- Faculty Member sues Vanderbilt for rejecting her applications for promotion and tenure. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Under our caselaw, “[a]bsent evidence of discrimination or a substantial departure from academic norms, a university’s assessment of a [tenure] candidate’s scholarly excellence is a matter within the professional judgment of the university.” And here, “the facts do not establish that Vanderbilt exhibited a substantial departure from accepted academic norms or procedural regularity in denying [Faculty Member’s] applications for tenure.”
- Client who has a civil rights claim against the Knoxville Police Department contracts with Attorney #1 for a one-third contingency fee. The agreement does not address associating other counsel, but Attorney #1 brings the matter to Attorney #2, who is in a separate law firm. Client then signs a separate contract with Attorney #2 for a 45% contingency fee; this contract provides that “Attorney has the right to associate other lawyers to assist Attorney in prosecuting the litigation” but that such association “will not increase the amount of the Client’s attorney fee.” The case settles for $175,000.00 at mediation. Afterward, despite the fact that both attorneys represented Client (and Attorney #2 said so during the representation), Attorney #2 pockets the full 45% cut and doesn’t pay anything to Attorney #1, who then sues Attorney #2 for a piece of the fee. Client also separately sues Attorney #2 for charging an unreasonable fee. [Editorial note: Absent unusual circumstances, market rate for a contingency fee of this sort would be 33.3%–40%; 45% is uncharacteristically high.] Tennessee Court of Appeals: The only thing we are deciding in this narrow interlocutory appeal is whether the Attorneys’ respective fee agreements are invalid because they violated Tennessee Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5(e), which governs the division of fees between attorneys who are in different firms. Client’s fee agreement with Attorney #1 definitely is invalid, since it said nothing about associating with other counsel or how fees would be split. Client’s fee agreement with Attorney #2 is not invalid, though; Tennessee’s version of the rule “‘does not require disclosure to the client of the share that each lawyer is to receive.’”
- 31 days after trial court issues a final order, Appellants file an untimely motion to alter or amend it (which must be filed within 30 days). Appellants also file a Rule 60.02 motion asking the trial court to consider their untimely motion to alter or amend, which the trial court denies. Appellants then appeal the Rule 60.02 denial, arguing that their attorney’s excusable neglect merited granting the motion. Tennessee Court of Appeals: “Appellants have not offered any extraordinary reason that the filing in this case was late, and as Appellants’ counsel has admitted, the delay was entirely within his control.” So the motion was correctly denied.
- Landowner wants to construct a second residence on her property despite a restrictive covenant permitting only one residence. So she subdivides her lot into two lots and starts building a second residence on the “new” lot that doesn’t have one. That’s kosher, no? Tennessee Court of Appeals: No; “[t]he developer here . . . limited each tract to residential and farming purposes with not more than one residence per tract.”
- Pro Se Litigant who is involved in some kind of a landlord-tenant dispute appeals trial court order dismissing his claims. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Due to massive briefing deficiencies, this appeal is dismissed based on Pro Se Litigant’s non-compliance with briefing rules.
Firm Updates
Congratulations (again) to Horwitz Law, PLLC client Chaundra Gilkey, whose trial win against the State of Tennessee will not be disturbed despite the State’s efforts to set aside. Also, as a pro-tip, arguing that critical (and sworn) interrogatory responses that you maintained through trial should be disregarded as inaccurate risks prompting a court ruling that “[t]he mutually incompatible positions [the State] attempts to maintain [are] seriously damaging to its credibility“—something that you should maybe be worried about if the same tribunal has already found that your email correspondence reflects facts that “are contrary to the account given” by you during an earlier sanctions dispute. [Private attorneys would risk serious action against their license for behaving this way.]
