January 12–18, 2026

Intermediate Scrutiny—a Tennessee Court of Appeals blog—is a snappy weekly newsletter from Tennessee appellate attorney Daniel A. Horwitz summarizing the week’s decisions from the Tennessee Court of Appeals.  To subscribe, click here.  Past newsletters can be found here.

  • Attorney (pro se) gets into extended spat with Neighbor that “repeatedly” results in Attorney “walking or standing in front of Appellee’s home wearing only brightly colored underwear,” among other bizarre behavior.  Neighbor seeks and obtains an order of protection against Attorney, which Attorney does not appeal.  Neighbor then seeks and obtains a one-year extension of her order of protection (which Attorney does appeal, including on First Amendment grounds) based on Attorney taking action that tiptoes around the explicit restrictions in the order but reflects stalking behavior.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: No error here, and any constitutional objection is waived because Attorney did not appeal the original order of protection and otherwise fails to develop any constitutional challenge.
  • Plaintiff in a personal injury case wins a jury verdict.  But the jury awards damages that were significantly lower than Plaintiff’s claimed medical expenses.  Afterward, Plaintiff appeals, contending that the damages awarded were outside the range of reasonableness and reflected an unlawful compromise verdict.  Plaintiff also challenges the jury’s comparative fault determination.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: “This award does not appear to be an arbitrary fraction indicative of a compromise. By awarding an amount within $200 of the initial conservative treatment costs, the jury appears to have accepted [a doctor’s] testimony that the acute injury would normally have resolved in twelve weeks, while simultaneously rejecting the causal link to the subsequent $40,000 surgery. Thus, the jury appears to have concluded that the later treatment was necessitated by [Plaintiff’s] undisclosed, preexisting degenerative condition rather than the 2017 accident.”  We also leave undisturbed the jury’s allocation of fault; “[c]hallenging a jury’s allocation of fault is the legal equivalent of a ‘Hail Mary’ pass,” and Plaintiff’s falls incomplete.
  • Inmate seeks certiorari review of Class A disciplinary infraction.  But he fails to verify his cert. petition in time, so the trial court dismisses the petition for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.  Inmate then appeals, arguing that prison staff were responsible for obstructing his timely verification.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: Appellant claims obstruction only on the last day involved, but “the filing stamp for both the petition and the supporting documents establishes a filing date of more than two weeks later.”  Thus, “even if we were empowered to adopt an exception to the sixty-day timeline to file a verified petition for a writ of certiorari, we cannot conclude that we would be inclined to do so in this particular case.”  Also, as a pro-tip (of which your Summarist was unaware despite practicing in this space): “A trial court has subject matter jurisdiction to extend the sixty-day time period of section 27-9-102 if the order granting the extension is entered within the sixty-day period[,]” so there is a “procedure set out in [Blair v. Tenn. Bd. of Prob. & Parole, 246 S.W.3d 38, 40 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2007)] to obtain an extension on the sixty-day deadline” in cases like this.
  • Buyer sues Builder over alleged construction defects.  Buyer loses at a bench trial and then appeals.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: Buyer “contends that he presented expert testimony revealing the flaws in the house’s construction.”  “For each claim, however, Builder presented contrary evidence that the alleged violation was either up to code, remedied, or in one case, offered to be remedied but rejected.”  And because the trial court acted within its discretion by crediting Builder’s testimony, we affirm.
  • Pro Se Litigant sues an assortment of Banks, Lawyers, and Law Firms.  During the trial court litigation, the trial court denies Pro Se Litigant’s motion to recuse, and Pro Se Litigant files accelerated interlocutory appeal.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: “Upon thorough review of the filings submitted by [Pro Se Litigant] in support of this appeal, we conclude that he has failed to produce evidence that would prompt a person of ordinary prudence in the Trial Judge’s position, with knowledge of all facts known to the Trial Judge, to find a reasonable basis for questioning the judge’s impartiality,” so we affirm.  We do vacate a couple of orders that the trial court entered while Pro Se Litigant’s motion to recuse was pending, though; “[p]er Rule 10B’s plain language, the trial court should have ruled on the recusal motion before taking further action in the case.”
  • Pro Se Litigant files accelerated interlocutory appeal of the trial court’s order denying a motion to recuse.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: Despite defects in the briefing, we consider the merits of Pro Se Litigant’s appeal, which are lacking.  So we affirm.
  • Tennessee Court of Appeals: Pretty much the same thing in this case.

Firm Updates

Congratulations (in part) to Horwitz Law, PLLC clients Jaikanthan and Neeta Sankaradass!  After the Sankaradasses were sued by a local Cult with an international presence, they petitioned to dismiss the Cult’s claims under the Tennessee Public Participation Act.  And the Cult’s speech-based tort claims are now dismissed with prejudice, given that the Cult “has woefully under-supported its attempt to rebut Defendants’ well-supported arguments or evidence[,]” including that “the statements made by Defendants were substantially true.”  There’s still some work left to do on the Cult’s contract claims, though.