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| Tuesday, October 18, 2011 |
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LAET inducts 'Pro Bono Attorney Hall of Fame'
Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET) has named eight Chattanooga area lawyers to its inaugural Pro Bono Attorney Hall of Fame, chosen based on their long-term commitment to pro bono representation, increasing access to justice, and support of LAET.
They are T. Maxfield Bahner, Bruce C. Bailey and William C. Carriger of Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel; Thomas A. Caldwell of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz; Charles W. "Buz" Dooley of Leitner, Williams, Dooley & Napolitan; Marcia Meredith Eason of Miller & Martin; Richard R. Ruth Jr.; and Harold A. Schwartz Jr. "We are privileged to have so many lawyers in East Tennessee committed to giving back to the community," said Charlie McDaniel, attorney at law and pro bono director for LAET.
The group will be recognized at a reception on Thursday, Oct. 20, beginning at 5 p.m. at the LAET office, 535 Chestnut St., Ste. 360. The Hall of Fame is part of this month's statewide Celebrate Pro Bono Month.
Learn more from Chattanoogan.com
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TODAY'S OPINIONS
Click on the category of your choice to view summaries of today’s opinions from that court, or other body. A link at the end of each case summary will let you download the full opinion in PDF format. To search all opinions in the TBALink database or to obtain a text version of each opinion, go to our OpinionSearch page. If you have forgotten your password or need to obtain a password, you can look it up on TBALink at the TBA's Membership Central.
01 - TN Supreme Court
02 - TN Worker's Comp Appeals
00 - TN Supreme Court - Rules
01 - TN Court of Appeals
02 - TN Court of Criminal Appeals
00 - TN Attorney General Opinions
00 - Judicial Ethics Opinions
00 - Formal Ethics Opinions - BPR
00 - TN Supreme Court - Disciplinary Orders
You can obtain full-text versions of the opinions two ways. We recommend that you download the Opinions to your computer and then
open them from there. 1) Click the URL at end of each Opinion paragraph below. This should give you the option to
download the original document. If not, you may need to right-click on the URL to get the option to save the file
to your computer. 2) Do a key word search in the Search Link area of TBALink. This option will allow you to view
and save a plain-text version of the opinion.
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STATE OF TENNESSEE v. TEDDY RAY MITCHELL
CORRECTION on page 14 at fifth line from top, "Posados" has been changed to "Posadas"
Court: TSC
Attorneys:
Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Rachel West Harmon, Asst. Attorney General; C. Berkeley Bell, District Attorney General; Victor Vaughn, Asst. District Attorney General, for the appellant, State of Tennessee.
Darren V. Berg, James Charles Wright, and Robert Deno Cole, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Teddy Ray Mitchell.
Judge: WADE
The defendant was convicted of disorderly conduct and sentenced to thirty days in jail, to be served on probation. On direct appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed, holding that the evidence was insufficient. This Court granted the State permission to appeal in order to consider the admissibility of a racially derogatory term, to review the sufficiency of the evidence, and to determine whether the conviction violated the constitutional right to free speech. Because the disputed testimony was properly admitted, the evidence was sufficient to support a conviction for disorderly conduct, and there was no violation of the right to free speech, the Court of Criminal Appeals is reversed. The judgment of conviction and sentence is reinstated.
http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TSC/2011/mitchellt_COR_101811.pdf
STERLING EDWARD HUBBARD v. SHERMAN-DIXIE CONCRETE INDUSTRIES, INC. ET AL.
Court: TWCA
Attorneys:
Thomas O. Sippel and James F. Exum, III, Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the appellant, Sherman-Dixie Concrete Industries, Inc. and CNA Insurance Company.
Michael A. Wagner, Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the appellee, Sterling Edward Hubbard.
Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter, and Alexander S. Rieger and Joshua Davis Baker, Assistant Attorneys General, for the appellee, Second Injury Fund.
Judge: WADE
Pursuant to Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 51 and Tennessee Code Annotated Section 50-6-225(e)(3), this appeal has been referred to the Special Workers' Compensation Panel. In this
instance, an employee was injured when he tripped and fell over boxes while loading a truck. The employer, who contended that the injury was an aggravation of a pre-existing condition, requested two independent medical evaluations, the second of which the employee refused
to attend. The trial court denied the employer's motion to compel the second evaluation and, ultimately, awarded workers' compensation benefits. In this appeal, the employer contends that the trial court erred by failing to compel a second evaluation, by awarding benefits to the employee, and by failing to apportion liability to the Second Injury Fund. We affirm the judgment.
http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TSC_WCP/2011/hubbards_101811.pdf
MICHAEL A. PARISH v. HIGHLAND PARK BAPTIST CHURCH ET AL.
Court: TWCA
Attorneys:
Richard A. Schulman and McKinley S. Lundy, Jr., Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the Appellant, Michael A. Parish.
Thomas O. Sippel and Benjamin T. Reese, Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the Appellees, Highland Park Baptist Church and Guideone Mutual Insurance Company.
Judge: BRYANT
Pursuant to Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 51, this workers' compensation appeal has been referred to the Special Workers' Compensation Appeals Panel for a hearing and a report of findings of fact and conclusions of law. The Employee was injured when he was thrown from a horse. He alleged that the injury arose in the course and scope of his
employment. His Employer contended that the Employee was engaged in a purely private activity; therefore, the injury was not compensable. The trial court denied the claim. On appeal, the Employee contends that the trial court erred by finding his injury was not related to his employment. We affirm the judgment.
http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TSC_WCP/2011/parishm_101811.pdf
IN RE: NATALIE R. C.
Court: TCA
Attorneys:
Lance A. Evans, Maryville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Kenneth C.
Lawrence P. Leibowitz and Jennifer L. Knapp, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Janet S.
Laura Levy, Guardian Ad Litem.
Judge: SWINEY
Janet S. ("Grandmother"), maternal grandmother and custodian of the minor child Natalie R. C. ("the Child"), filed a petition to terminate the parental rights of Kenneth C. ("Father") in the Juvenile Court for Blount County ("the Juvenile Court"). Christy S. ("Mother"), the Child's mother, is deceased. The Juvenile Court terminated Father's parental rights on the grounds of failure to pay child support and failure to visit the Child. Father appeals, arguing, among other things, that the petition to terminate his parental rights was fatally defective because of numerous deficiencies and therefore should have been dismissed. We hold that the petition to terminate parental rights was defective, although not fatally so, due to multiple deficiencies. We vacate the judgment of the Juvenile Court and remand for further
proceedings consistent with our Opinion.
http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCA/2011/natalierc_101811.pdf
STATE OF TENNESSEE v. JEFFERY ALLEN BOSTON
Court: TCCA
Attorneys:
John Chadwick Long, Hendersonville, Tennessee (on appeal); and Bart Highers, Mike Carter and David R. Howard, Gallatin, Tennessee (at trial), for the appellant, Jeffery Allen Boston.
Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Mark A. Fulks, Assistant Attorney General; Lawrence Ray Whitley, District Attorney General; and Bryna Grant, Assistant
District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.
Judge: WITT
A Sumner County Criminal Court jury convicted the defendant, Jeffery Allen Boston, of second degree murder, see T.C.A. section 39-13-210 (2006); domestic assault, see id. section 39-13-111; and assault, see id. section 39-11-101. At sentencing, the trial court merged the assault conviction
into the domestic assault conviction and imposed a sentence of 25 years' incarceration for the second degree murder conviction to be served consecutively to a sentence of 11 months and 29 days for the domestic assault conviction. On appeal, the defendant argues that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress photographs of the murder victim taken before the victim's death and by refusing to instruct the jury regarding voluntary intoxication. Discerning no error, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.
http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2011/bostonj_101811.pdf
STATE OF TENNESSEE v. TIMOTHY BRIAN MORTON
Court: TCCA
Attorneys:
Donna Orr Hargrove, District Public Defender, and William J. Harold, Assistant District Public Defender, for the appellant, Timothy Brian Morton.
Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Benjamin A. Ball, Assistant Attorney General; Chuck Crawford, District Attorney General; and William Bottoms, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.
Judge: TIPTON
The Defendant, Timothy Brian Morton, pled guilty to aggravated burglary, a Class C felony. See T.C.A. section 39-14-403 (2010). He was sentenced as a Range I, standard offender to five years' confinement. On appeal, he contends that the trial court imposed an excessive sentence. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2011/mortont_101811.pdf
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| TODAY'S NEWS |
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Legal News
General Assembly News
Celebrate Pro Bono
TBA Member Services
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| Legal News |
| New York firm to expand to Nashville |
| New York-based Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman announced today it would bring 150 employees to Nashville as part of an expansion. The law firm, which specializes in energy and natural resources, financial services, real estate and technology will open a professional services center and begin transferring and recruiting employees in the spring of 2012. A site for the new office has not been finalized, according to a firm spokesperson. |
The Nashville Business Journal has details
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| Sources: Haley will replace Malone at Miller Martin |
| The voting membership of Miller & Martin has selected James M. Haley IV as the firm's new chairman/managing member, NashvillePost reports this afternoon.
Haley will succeed Melvin J. Malone, who has served in that capacity for the past two years.
Haley is a partner in the firm's Chattanooga office and sources say the move might exacerbate tension already existing among the firm's Nashville, Atlanta and Chattanooga offices -- the genesis of which was Malone's original appointment in 2009. |
Read more in NashvillePost.com
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| Kelley Cannon appeals murder conviction |
| Defense attorney Peter Strianse told the state Court of Criminal Appeals today that the evidence doesn't support the jury's first-degree murder conviction of Kelley Cannon in the 2008 death of her husband, Nashville lawyer James M. Cannon. Strianse told the court Kelley Cannon was
too frail, drug-addled and distraught to kill her husband. But Assistant Attorney General Ben Ball said the evidence was sufficient to support her conviction, and that she augmented her strength by strangling her husband with a cord. |
The Tennessean has the story
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| Law schools falsifying jobs data may be sanctioned |
| The American Bar Association is considering imposing specific penalties for law schools that misrepresent graduate job placement data, the group announced on Monday. John O'Brien, chairman of the ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, said the ABA is drafting a rule spelling out consequences for law schools that intentionally falsify jobs data, possibly including monetary fines or the loss of accreditation. |
Law.com has more
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| General Assembly News |
| Lawmakers increase own out-of-session expenses |
| Lawmakers' out-of-session expenses increased 8 percent in the third quarter despite the elimination of legislative oversight committees, an Associated Press review has found. The state paid out about $270,000 in daily expenses and mileage reimbursements in the quarter ending Sept. 30, compared with $251,000 in the same year-ago period. |
The Knoxville News Sentinel has this AP story
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| Celebrate Pro Bono |
| Volunteers needed for Saturday's 'Wills for Heroes' |
| Can you help out this Saturday in Davidson County at a 'Wills for Heroes' event? The Tennessee Bar Association Young Lawyers Division needs
a few more attorney and notary volunteers, particularly during the afternoon. The event is at the Metro Police South Precinct, 5101 Harding Place, Nashville 37211. For more information or to volunteer, contact Jenney S. Keaty at
(615) 297-1007 or jkeaty@kcbattys.com. |
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| Legal clinic at Campus for Human Development |
| Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz PC and the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands will host a legal clinic for homeless people on Oct. 18. Clients must make an appointment and arrive by 8 a.m. at the Room in the Inn/Campus for Human Development, 532 8th Ave., South in Nashville. For more information contact Lucinda Smith at 615-780-7127 or at lsmith@las.org. |
See a full schedule of Celebrate Pro Bono Month events
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| TBA Member Services |
| Let JobLink help you with your next career move |
| A career service for Tennessee attorneys and law students, TBA JobLink is a job seeking and recruitment tool available at no charge. Whether you have a position to fill or are seeking employment, this site will guide you through a simple process to post your information.
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About this publication: Today's News is a compilation of digests of news reports of interest to Tennessee lawyers compiled by TBA staff, links to digested press releases, and occasional stories about the TBA and other activities written by the TBA staff or members. Statements or opinions herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Tennessee Bar Association, its officers, board or staff.
© Copyright 2011 Tennessee Bar Association
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