August 30–September 5, 2025
- Bystanders are mistakenly shot by Metro police (who were aiming for someone else). Afterward, Bystanders sue Metro for negligence. Six years later, Metro asserts that the lawsuit is barred by the Tennessee Governmental Tort Liability Act’s civil rights exception, and the trial court agrees. Bystanders appeal. Tennessee Court of Appeals:
Bad plaintiff’s lawyers make bad plaintiff’s law.Because police intentionally shot their guns and courts reserve the right to involuntarily reimagine this sort of claim as a federal civil rights claim that nobody pleaded and that would not have succeeded, we affirm. And Bystanders’ “decision not to pursue a federal civil rights lawsuit makes no difference to our conclusion.” (Editorial note: For at least seven different reasons, the Tennessee Court of Appeals has horrifyingly botched the relevant analysis over a series of recent cases, but until the Tennessee Supreme Court grants review to correct the Tennessee Court of Appeals’ egregiously wrong approach, the Tennessee Court of Appeals will continue to be the place where basically all governmental negligence claims go to die.) - Homeowner in a subdivision that is subject to an HOA’s Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions (CC&Rs) asserts that he has an exclusive right of access to a private road within the subdivision. The trial court finds otherwise and awards the HOA fees for prevailing in the dispute, and Homeowner appeals. Tennessee Court of Appeals: The CC&Rs say that “every Owner shall have the right to access and use all of the Access Roads” and that “All Owners (not just those owning Lots serviced by the applicable gated private access road) shall have free and unlimited access through any common gates[,]” so we are going with the HOA on this one. And because the CC&R’s fee-shifting provision is mandatory, the HOA gets its fees on appeal, too.
- Parties dispute the proper interpretation of right-of-first-refusal provisions included within four property deeds that were executed in 1953. Tennessee Court of Appeals (28 pages later): Because the defendants’ property interest is injuriously affected by the trial court’s judgment (which mandates how they may dispose of the property), they have standing to challenge it. And for various extremely fact-specific reasons, the challenged provisions are unenforceable “because they were personal to the grantees of the [relevant] Deeds and had therefore expired” when they died.
- Tennessee Court of Appeals (in Memorandum Opinions): This appeal is dismissed for want of finality. This one, too. And this one. And this one.
Firm Updates
Congratulations to Horwitz Law, PLLC client Leah Gilliam, whose cert. petition received national coverage last week and just prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to order a response from the State of Tennessee. For those who can’t wait to see the too-incredible-to-believe trial transcript dissected in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion, the order significantly increases the likelihood of a grant.
