The employee sustained a back injury in the course of his work. His employer provided medical treatment for the injury, and the employee appeared to recover. He subsequently developed more severe symptoms and the employer denied additional treatment. The employee eventually had a fusion of three vertebrae in the lower back. The trial court found that the injury was compensable and awarded permanent total disability benefits. It found that the Second Injury Fund was not liable for any portion of the award.

Shelby County launched its Mental Health Court under the leadership of Shelby County General Sessions Judge Gerald Skahan, the Memphis Flyer reports. Defendants suffering from mental illness will have a chance to have their charges dropped in exchange for completing a year-long mental health treatment plan. "The benefit to the community is this is a tremendous savings because it's expensive to house somebody in jail and give them their medicine,” Skahan said.

The Autism Society of East Tennessee is currently seeking an attorney to join its Board of Directors in May 2016. Board members are expected to attend bi-monthly meetings lasting approximately two hours and join a committee of their preference. For more information, contact Margaret Stanley at 865-247-5082.

In a rare move for Knox County prosecutors, the group announced it will seek life without parole for Timothy Dwayne Ison, who is accused of killing a woman on a city greenway. The prosecutors cited “the randomness of the attack” and Ison’s violent past as cause in the legal notice, according to The Knoxville New Sentinel reports. Life without parole requires a separate mini-trial before a jury and may only be imposed by a jury.

The Tennessee Supreme Court today upheld the conviction of a man for facilitation of aggravated robbery and facilitation of the first degree murder of a Knox County man. Thomas Hutchinson appealed his convictions, arguing that his constitutional rights were violated in two ways: (1) The medical examiner who testified at Hutchinson’s trial was not the examiner who performed the autopsy report on the victim; (2) Police officers who entered Hutchison’s home seized evidence without first obtaining a warrant. The Court of Criminal Appeals found no violations of Hutchinson’s constitutional rights. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld that ruling. Read the opinion in State of Tennessee v. Thomas Lee Hutchison, authored by Justice Holly Kirby.

The Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act, a bill that says no state agency may enforce the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, could cost the state more than $8.5 billion. The figure, tallied in the bill’s fiscal note, includes federal funding the state receives for programs like TennCare that would be eliminated if the state is noncompliant with federal law. “… Some legislators are endangering billions of dollars in federal funding, not to mention threatening the health insurance, hospital visitation and parenting arrangements of same-sex couples,” said Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project. Read more from The Tennessean.

This is a breach of contract action in which the trial court granted summary judgment to a creditor against defendant doctors. We affirm the grant of summary judgment.

This appeal involves parties who were married for thirty-six years prior to divorcing in 2004. The wife claims that she received a judgment against the husband pursuant to their divorce entitling her to the sum of $24,000. The wife insists that because this judgment was never paid by the husband, she filed a lien against real property that was awarded to him in the divorce. Upon learning that the real property in question was scheduled to be sold at auction, the wife filed the instant action, seeking to stop the auction and enforce her lien.

A jury convicted the defendant of three counts of facilitation of first degree murder and one count of facilitation of aggravated robbery. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and the sentence. On appeal to this Court, the defendant contends, inter alia, that the admission into evidence of an autopsy report through the testimony of a medical examiner who did not perform the autopsy violated his right to confront the witnesses against him under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 9 of the Tennessee Constitution.

Chief U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan today sentenced Malik First Born Allah Farrad, a longtime felon, to more than 15 years in prison for a selfie in which he posed with a gun. Jurors were tasked with determining if the gun in the photo, which was taken in Farrad’s Knoxville apartment, was real. Read more from The Knoxville News Sentinel.