March 9–March 15, 2024
- Pro se plaintiff repeatedly fails to comply with court orders to answer discovery in a car accident case. He has time to file serial motions to disqualify the trial court judge, though. Trial court: Three generations of orders to answer discovery are enough; case dismissed as a sanction for discovery non-compliance. Tennessee Court of Appeals: One instance of failing to comply with briefing requirements is enough; appeal dismissed as a sanction for failure to cite to the record, or cite legal authority, or identify the standard of review.
- Pro se litigant files fourth appeal regarding the same car accident case; this time, he “appears to present more arguments concerning his request for recusal.” Tennessee Court of Appeals: The trial court hasn’t even entered an order on the motion to recuse, so this appeal is dismissed because there is nothing for us to review here.
- Journalist files public records lawsuit seeking footage of a “physical altercation” between a detainee and an officer at the Shelby County jail. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Tennessee Code Annotated § 10-7-504(m)(1)(E)—which says that segments of “[s]urveillance recordings, . . . may be made public when they include an act or incident involving public safety or security or possible criminal activity”—is permissive, rather than mandatory, so it’s effectively useless as a public records provision. As a result, as far as the surveillance video is concerned, the government never has to give it up, and it may let you down. Government entities don’t have to “create or recreate documents they do not possess” or “that do not otherwise exist,” either.
- Bizarre divorce case involves Husband who takes an unusually large number of nude pictures of the unhappy couple’s seven-year-old child, though there appears to be no criminal behavior afoot, and an expert says there’s no sexual deviance here. Wife is designated primary residential parent; Husband gets limited supervised visitation. The Parties fight about money, too. Tennessee Court of Appeals: The trial court did not abuse its discretion in disregarding the expert’s recommendations, since he acknowledged a bunch of oversights and errors. And although the marital residence was Husband’s separate property at the time of the Parties’ marriage, it became marital property through the doctrine of transmutation. The trial court slightly overvalued the marital residence by considering evidence of the valuation at a point in time that was “nearly a year and a half after the court declared the parties divorced[,]” though.
- “[H]omeowner’s association’s lawsuit which sought to enforce [a] declaration’s architectural review restrictions against the owners of the property” concerns “whether a parcel of real property is subject to certain restrictions contained in a previously recorded declaration of restrictive covenants.” Tennessee Court of Appeals, unreadably: The rest of the opinion does not improve, but we reject the homeowner’s association’s arguments that the property was restricted to the terms of the declaration by either an implied negative reciprocal easement or by waiver.
Firm Highlights
New briefs! Are personalized license plates communicating secret messages from Tennessee’s government? (No.) Can a “one sentence” argument justify entering a protective order in a federal civil rights case? (No.) These are just some of the interesting things we work on in an average week. If you have a great First Amendment case, or civil rights case, or governmental tort case, or appeal, or other matter you think we’d handle well, please send it our way. Referrals are the only way we work, and we wouldn’t have the most interesting docket in Tennessee without them.
