District Attorney General Neal Pinkston said he will not appear before the Chattanooga City Council next week, despite the council's motion to issue a subpoena to him. The council is seeking answers from Pinkston regarding his lack of involvement in the city’s anti-gang initiative. Pinkston, who this week launched his own anti-gang task force, said the council members have no way to enforce the order. Read more from the Times Free Press.

The amount Tennessee meningitis patients will recoup in a $200 million settlement fund that stems from a 2012 outbreak remains unknown at this time, The Tennessean reports. The settlement comes as part of Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center’s bankruptcy filing, the company linked with contaminated steroid medicine that was used in spinal injections as pain treatment. Several Tennessee companies are named as defendants in the suit. Sixteen Tennesseans died as a result of the outbreak. 

A student at Anderson County Career and Technical Center, who reportedly had part of his left thumb amputated, filed a lawsuit against a teacher and the Anderson County Board of Education. The complaint alleges he was not properly taught and supervised how to use a grinder. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports the student is seeking compensatory damages "not to exceed the lesser or $500,000.00, or the applicable limits of liability for Anderson County."

Law Technology Today shares “10 Things Attorneys Should Know About Digital Forensics,” including information on forensic copy, encryption and pricing. "The scope and cost of the analysis often depends on the nature of the case, so it is very important for the forensic examiner to have a clear understanding of what the case is about," the author writes. 

The Nashville Business Journal shows the Tennessee Bar Association remains the state's largest association serving traditional professions. Information was obtained from association representatives and association websites.

Plaintiffs in the sweeping sexual assault suit against the University of Tennessee today filed a motion explaining why they believe the suit should move forward, The Tennessean reports. The plaintiffs again stated that the university has a policy of disregarding “obvious and known risk of sexual assaults, especially by male athletes, both on and off UT's campus.” Their latest filing is in response to UT’s motion earlier this month to dismiss the suit. Judge Aleta Trauger has not decided if the lawsuit will be moved to Knoxville, as UT has requested.

Attorneys for TV personality Erin Andrews asked in a new filing that Nashville Circuit Judge Hamilton Gayden require the owners of a Nashville hotel and its management company to award Andrews the full $55 million awarded to her earlier this month. The attorneys say the companies should not split the payment with Michael David Barrett, the man who secretly recorded nude videos of Andrews at the hotel. The Tennessean reports jurors held that Barrett was 51 percent responsible, and that the hotel owner and operator 49 percent responsible for the harm Andrews suffered.

The Tennessee Supreme Court today upheld a decision by the Tennessee Department of Revenue to impose a tax variance on the parent company of Verizon Wireless and ruled the Commissioner of Revenue was within his authority to impose the variance. The lawsuit, filed in 2007 by Vodafone Americas Holdings Inc. and its subsidiaries, asked Tennessee to refund nearly all state franchise and excise taxes it had paid from 2002-2006. The company claimed the apportionment formula in Tennessee’s franchise and excise tax has been incorrectly applied. The Commissioner of Revenue then decided to impose on Vodafone a tax variance that required the company to pay franchise and excise taxes by a formula that varied from the standard apportionment formula in Tennessee’s tax statutes. The trial court and the Court of Appeals both upheld the Commissioner’s decision to issue the tax variance. Read the majority opinion in Vodafone Americas Holdings, Inc. v. Reagan Farr, authored by Justice Holly Kirby, and the dissent by Justice Jeffrey S. Bivins.

The Hamilton County School Board has hired attorney Courtney Bullard, a partner at Spears, Moore, Rebman and Williams PC, to conduct an investigation at Ooltewah High School into the alleged rape of a student by three basketball teammates. The Times Free Press reports the Office of Civil Rights requires school systems to conduct investigations after incidents such as those that happened at Ooltewah.

Former court bailiff Meredith Driskell testified yesterday that Former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner appeared to “nod off” during the January 2010 trial of Raynella Dossett Leath. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports attorneys Rebecca Legrand and Joshua Hedrick, who represent Leath, are attempting to win Leath a new trial and claim Baumgartner robbed her of a constitutionally sound trial. Baumgartner was later sentenced to prison for lying to cover up a drug conspiracy in which he was buying pills.