TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Dec 20, 2019

The City of Memphis has paid Baker Donelson more than $1 million in attorney fees to defend itself against a lawsuit brought in 2017 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the Daily Memphian reports. In August 2018, the federal district court ruled that the police department violated a 1978 consent decree between the city and the ACLU by conducting political surveillance of activists. In addition to its own attorneys’ fees, the city also has paid those of the ACLU and court monitor Ed Stanton III, but those amounts have not been made public. In June 2020, the judge overseeing the case will consider whether to grant the city’s request to modify the consent decree.