April 26–May 2, 2025

  • Woman is on the receiving end of a series of orders of protection for stalking—and making threatening and unhinged posts directed at—a member of the rock band Mötley Crüe and his family.  The orders broadly prohibit Woman from contacting the Petitioner, either directly or indirectly.  Woman nevertheless violates the orders of protection over and over again, culminating in 100 contempt convictions and a 300-day jail sentence.  Woman appeals, challenging the legality of the orders (on First Amendment and overbreadth grounds), her bond conditions, the evidence supporting her convictions, and her sentence.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: Woman’s First Amendment challenge and her challenge to the scope of the orders of protection are unreviewable and precluded because she never timely appealed the orders after they were entered.  Ditto as to Woman’s challenge to her bond conditions, since those are only subject to review under Rule 8, and she didn’t follow the rule.  The record also supports 98 of Woman’s contempt convictions; one was included inadvertently, and another was duplicative.  Woman also gets one day’s jail credit toward her sentence, because she was incarcerated pre-trial after being arrested.  Otherwise, everything is affirmed.  [Editorial note: Some interesting analysis in here about the Court of Appeals’ view that “social media posts directed at a particular person can constitute contact with that person even if the posts were made on the poster’s own page.”]
  • The “Renegade Mountain Community Club”—an HOA—seeks dues from the “Cumberland Point Condominium Property Owners Association,” a property owner’s association (POA) within Renegade Mountain.  The HOA asserts that the dues—which the POA abruptly stopped collecting and remitting to the HOA for reasons that are not super clear—are due under a longstanding declaration within the Renegade Mountain development that requires the POA to collect dues and remit them to the HOA.  Trial court: Never been afraid to say what’s on my mind at any given time of day, and today, I say the dues are due.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: Affirmed in full.  And the delinquent POA gets to pay the HOA’s attorney’s fees, too.
  • District Attorney threatens to stop prosecuting violations in the municipal courts in his judicial district unless the two municipalities involved pay for a prosecutor (which apparently is common practice).  The municipalities balk at the demand and refuse, opting to sue the District Attorney instead.  Trial court issues a writ of mandamus compelling the District Attorney to prosecute, and the District Attorney appeals.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: The relevant statute provides that District Attorneys “[s]hall prosecute in the courts of the district all violations of the state criminal statutes and perform all prosecutorial functions attendant thereto, including prosecuting cases in a municipal court where the municipality provides sufficient personnel to the district attorney general for that purpose.”  The conflict here is over whether “sufficient personnel” means sufficient prosecutorial personnel, as opposed to (for example) judges, bailiffs, and clerks.  Based largely on other provisions of the broader statutory scheme that support the municipalities’ interpretation, we conclude that “sufficient personnel” does not mean prosecutorial personnel.  We also conclude that, although District Attorneys have broad discretion over the performance of their duties, “that discretion necessarily entails the performance of those duties, not the refusal to perform those duties based on factors unrelated to the cases to be prosecuted.”  So the municipalities win the main issue, but because a declaratory judgment suffices, we reverse the mandamus grant.  [Editorial note: There is some useful discussion in here about how Tennessee courts use legislative history when interpreting statutory text.  The famously dishonest Attorney General’s Office also takes it on the chin for a material misrepresentation and is “caution[ed] [against] such misrepresentations of language in the future.”  Perhaps most importantly, if you are one of those people who thinks that “Attorneys General” sounds stupid, this opinion—which repeatedly refers to “District Attorney Generals”—is for you.]
  • Woman is taking her time boarding a bus, so bus driver drives off without her.  Woman then sues the bus driver, the operator, and a representative who declined to pursue a complaint, alleging both intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.  According to Woman’s pro se Complaint, the incident caused her to suffer “severe emotional distress, resulting in impaired ‘flow of energies in the meridians of the liver, kidney, heart, spleen, stomach and large intestine.’”  Trial court grants summary judgment to the Defendants, and Woman appeals.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: “We have no doubt that Plaintiff was upset when [Bus Driver] closed the doors and left her at the Music City Center in the cold.  But “[a]t worst, Plaintiff experienced an annoyance as a result of poor customer service that caused her to wait approximately 26 minutes.”  So the trial court’s judgment that this was not IIED-worthy conduct is affirmed, and she loses her NIED claim for lack of duty, too.
  • Nurse is involved in a two-car collision.  “At the time of the accident, she was driving her own vehicle, a Chevrolet Trax, within the course and scope of her employment.”  Nurse then seeks uninsured motorist coverage under her employer’s business automobile liability policy.  Her employer’s insurer denies coverage, and she sues.  Trial court enters judgment for the insurer, and Nurse appeals.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: “[B]y its plain terms, the policy expressly limits uninsured motorist coverage to injuries that occur while occupying” only one specified vehicle, which was not Nurse’s Chevrolet Trax.  Tennessee’s uninsured motorist statute also does not preclude insurers from limiting coverage “to specifically listed vehicles.”  So we affirm.
  • Litigation between City of Pigeon Forge and a corporation ensues over greenway and construction easements.  Tennessee Court of Appeals, in impenetrably dense 24-page opinion: For reasons, the City wins.
  • As part of a broader effort to interfere with Nashville’s local governance, Tennessee enacts a law concerning the governance of municipal airport authorities.  The law is crafted such that only one municipal airport authority—Metro Nashville’s—is affected.  The trial court invalidates certain sections of the statute under the Tennessee Constitution’s Local Legislation and Equal Protection clauses, and the State appeals.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: Because the statute: (1) is local in form or effect, (2) regulates and restrains the power and duties of Metro Nashville, and (3) applies to Nashville in its governmental or proprietary capacity—and further because the statute does not contemplate local approval before taking effect—the portion of the statute that vacates the authority’s Board is unconstitutional and void under the Home Rule provision of the Tennessee Constitution’s Local Legislation Clause.  There’s a rational basis for the law, though, so the trial court’s equal protection rulings (and its rulings invalidating the rest of the statute’s challenged provisions) are reversed.
  • Cheerleader suffers a serious neck injury after falling during a stunt (which appears to have resulted from “her right foot slipp[ing] on [a teammate’s] nylon shorts”).  Although it does not appear to your summarist that the fall was attributable to poor field conditions, Cheerleader sues School District for negligence based essentially on the theory that the field conditions (namely, wetness/muddiness) were unsafe.  Cheerleader also sues School District for negligent hiring of the relevant Cheerleading Coach.  Following a bench trial, the trial court rules for the School District, and Cheerleader appeals.  Tennessee Court of Appeals: No error here.  There’s no evidence that the Cheerleading Coach did anything wrong, and in the absence of negligence, there is no viable negligent hiring claim, either.  So we affirm.

Firm Updates

Congratulations to Horwitz Law, PLLC client Vanessa Turner!  On behalf of Mrs. Turner, Horwitz Law won a hugely important Tennessee Supreme Court case last week against Mrs. Turner’s ex-husband—and the State of Tennessee—in a case about whether defendants who are victimized by bogus litigation may recover their fees when plaintiffs nonsuit.  Mrs. Turner picked up two concurring votes on a narrower ground, too.  The case will affect thousands of cases in Tennessee each year and will make bad actors think twice before pursuing bogus litigation that involves a contractual or statutory fee-shifting liability.  Read all about it here: https://horwitz.law/horwitz-law-pllc-wins-tennessee-supreme-court-victory-holding-that-defendants-prevail-when-plaintiffs-nonsuit/