We are in the process of putting together the TBA Entertainment & Sports Law Section Executive Council for the 2015-2016 Bar Year.  If you are interested in participating, please email me at cgibson@tnbar.org with your name, firm name, and area of the state you are located (West, Middle, or East) and I will include you on the list of interested participants.

Responsibilities include the following:

    Developing the annual CLE program for the section;
    Webcasts;
    Discussing and providing opinions on potential legislation; and,
    Providing news to the section.

Again, if you are interested in participating, please send your information to me by Thursday, April 23, 2015.

Christy Gibson

TBA Sections/Committees Coordinator

Doug Howard has been appointed Dean of Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business.  For more information on this story, please click here. 

Social Security released the final rule on Submission of Evidence in Disability claims on March 20, 2015.  You can review it by clicking here.  
 
The Disability Law Section will be discussing this at our upcoming CLE on April 23. Register below for the upcoming CLE.

Katie Evans Moss

TBA Disability Law Section Chair

Dear Tax Section Members:

Attached, please find the Tennessee Department of Revenue's recent Notice regarding Informal Taxpayer Conferences.  The Notice references recent changes to the Informal Conference procedure and the powers of the Hearing Officers.  Also, imbedded in the Notice is a link to a new form that taxpayers and counsel may use to request an informal conference.  We hope that this will be helpful to those practitioners who practice in this forum.

If you have any questions or comments, please call me at 615-850-8695 or write to me at john.burns@wallerlaw.com.

Sincerely,

John Burns

TBA Tax Law Section Chair

A new pilot project in Davidson County court will open the door to increased efficiencies in complex business litigation in Tennessee.

Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle will preside over the pilot project, which is expected to start taking cases May 1. A chancellor since 1995, Lyle has expertise in handling complex business and commercial disputes, and will provide proactive, hands-on case management. The pilot project will gather data and information to identify best practices for development of potential future Tennessee Business Courts.
The pilot project court will focus on complex business litigation with the goals of expediting cases and developing a body of rulings from which lawyers and litigants can better predict and assess outcomes in business cases. An evaluation process will be put in place to determine the effectiveness of the court.

“Our court system must do a better job serving the needs of businesses that provide jobs to Tennesseans. With the creation of a business court, we will have more predictable, consistent results, and more timely resolutions of business disputes,” said Chief Justice Sharon Lee. “This will be a great tool to attract and retain business in Tennessee.”

More than half the states have business courts, which have proven an effective tool for business retention, economic development, and enhanced effectiveness of the judicial system.

The Supreme Court order also says non-business case dockets will benefit from the removal of complex and time-consuming business cases from the general docket.

To see a copy of the Court’s order go to TNCourts.gov.

Join us on May 4, 2015 where we will discuss various legal issues Tennessee business lawyers face through the life cycle of a business combination transaction, whether accomplished through a merger, an acquisition, a share exchange, or a combination of any of them. Panelists will provide a practical, nuts-and-bolts treatment of each phase of a business combination, covering determining whether and how to select a business broker, the drafting and executing letters of intent, conducting diligence, and negotiating the acquisition agreement.

Sessions will include a more in-depth examination of selected topics in merger and acquisition law and practice, including the significance and effects of transaction structure, tax planning issues for entities and individual equity holders, and rollover equity implications. The program will particularly emphasize legal and practical considerations associated with conducting business combination transactions in Tennessee. The sessions are designed to be useful for both transactional lawyers and litigators practicing in public and private practice settings.

To register or find out more information about this CLE, please click here.

Mark your calendar for this year's annual tax program, which will be held on May 15, 2015.  The program will provide you with the best practices and updates to protect your clients. Topics will include significant developments in Federal and Tennessee's tax laws. Annual updates include nationwide tax trends, Tennessee tax laws, as well as discussion on the IRS appeals and collections process.

Expert attorneys will discuss the risks and benefits of captive insurance. Captive insurance allows companies to fund their own insurance coverage in a more cost effective manner. Speakers will discuss the unique tax advantages, and help you advise your clients.

A session on wills will provide you with detailed information and steps tax lawyers need to take to protect their clients’ interests.

Wrapping up this program is an ethics session on considerations under the new circular 230 rules.

To register or find out more information about this CLE, please click here.

The Tennessee Department of Revenue has announced that an informal conference process is available to any taxpayer that has received a proposed assessment of tax.  It is free, and a taxpayer may participate in a conference without representation. The primary role of Department of Revenue hearing officers is to make an independent determination of whether a proposed assessment is correct. A hearing officer can adjust an assessment based on a review of state law or any additional information received.

A taxpayer must make a conference request in writing within 30 days from the date of the Notice of Proposed Assessment; please include a copy of your Notice of Proposed Assessment with your request.  Written conference requests may be sent to:

Administrative Hearing Office
Tennessee Department of Revenue
500 Deaderick Street, Suite 11.451
Nashville, TN 37242
DORConference.Request@tn.gov

If a conference request is made within the 30-day time period, the Department of Revenue will contact the taxpayer within 10 days of the request to arrange a time and date for the conference to take place. Click here to read the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. This document has more information about when proposed assessments become final and a taxpayer’s right to challenge a final assessment in court.

Please keep the following in mind when considering whether to request a conference:

• You are not required to request an informal conference. An informal conference is not a prerequisite to challenging your assessment in court.
• Interest continues to run on proposed assessments even after an informal conference has been requested and scheduled.  Therefore, you should consider making payments against your tax liability - particularly against any uncontested portions of the assessment – before an informal conference is held. If you make a partial payment, you should submit a letter with the payment indicating how the payment should be applied.
• If a conference is timely requested, the Department will not undertake any levy actions until the conference process is completed. However, even if you request a conference, the Department may still file a state tax lien against you.
• If a proposed assessment is determined to be correct, state law prohibits the Department from waiving interest.
• The Department may waive penalties in certain circumstances. However, if you were required to register with the Department (for example, to obtain a sales and use tax registration or a business tax registration), and failed to do so, state law prohibits the Department from waiving your penalty.
• If you have been denied a penalty waiver by the Department's Penalty Waiver Unit, you cannot schedule a conference to review that denial.
• If your proposed assessment is the result of an audit, you should also bring any objections or additional documentation to the attention of the auditor and his/her supervisor even if you have already requested an informal conference.  It is beneficial to present all available information to the auditor as soon as possible so full consideration can be given to the additional information.  If you are able to resolve your issues with the Audit Division and no longer need a conference, you should notify the Hearing Office in writing that your conference request is withdrawn.

If you have any other questions, please click here or contact the Hearing Office at (615) 741-3810.

Wade Auditorium, March 24^th at Noon.

Codifying Choice of Law around the World: The Last Fifty Years

Symeon C. Symeonides, Alex L. Parks Distinguished Chair in Law and Dean Emeritus, Willamette University School of Law

The Lecture

During the last fifty years, we have witnessed a flurry of codification activity in Private International Law (PIL), resulting in the adoption of nearly 200 national codifications and international conventions?more than in all preceding years in the seven-century history of PIL.

Drawing from the lecturer’s recent comprehensive book on this subject,[1] the lecture will compare and evaluate the ways in which these codifications:

• resolve certain conflicts of laws?namely, how they choose the law that governs disputes that implicate the laws of more than one country;
• respond to some of the fundamental philosophical dilemmas of PIL, such as whether the choice-of-law process should aim for the law that will produce the “best” substantive outcome, rather than for the country that has the “proper” connections regardless of outcome;
• struggle to attain the optimum equilibrium between the perpetually competing needs for legal certainty, on the one hand, and flexibility, on the other hand; and
• succumb to ethnocentric protectionist urges, despite contrary internationalist rhetoric.

The Lecturer

Symeon C. Symeonidesis the holder of the Alex L. Parks Distinguished Chair in Law and Dean Emeritus at Willamette University School of Law, in Oregon. He has published 25 books and more than 100 articles (in seven languages) on conflict of laws and comparative private international law (PIL), including the widely-read annual surveys of American choice-of-law cases for the last 28 years. Reviewers have characterized him as a “conflicts giant” and “perhaps the world’s leading expert on comparative conflicts law today.” His work has been cited by the supreme courts of the United States and the United Kingdom and has been honored with four scholarly prizes, including one for lifetime achievement from the American Society of Comparative Law.

Symeonides has taught at several American and European universities, including Paris-I, Paris-V, Louvain-la-Neuve, and the Hague Academy of International Law. An active law-reformer, he drafted three PIL codifications (for Louisiana, Puerto Rico, and Oregon), and provided legislative advice to the EU Parliament, the EU Council, and several national governments. He recently spent six months in Brussels chairing five drafting groups of the EU Council.

He is president of the International Association of Legal Science, former president of the American Society of Comparative Law, and member of the Institut de Droit International, the International Academy of Comparative Law, the Groupe Européen de Droit international Privé, the American Law Institute, the Order of the Coif, and Phi Beta Kappa.  He holds two LL.B. degrees (in private law and public law) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, an LL.M. and an S.J.D from Harvard, and two honorary doctorates.

Join us on April 24, 2015 for the 19th Annual TBA Labor and Employment Forum.  The Forum provides timely, specialized and practical information on a range of labor and employment law topics. The Labor and Employment Section is excited about this years Forum, which features a very impressive panel of speakers. This years topics include developments in employment law, perspectives from the federal bench, an update on developments at the NLRB from a former member, wage and hour issues from both sides of the bar, ethics and much more.

Speakers/Producers

• John Edwin Gerth, Waller Lansden Dortch Davis, Nashville
• John Bode, Miller & Martin PLLC, Chattanooga
• Robert Boston, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP, Nashville
• Stanley Graham, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP, Nashville
• Jonathan Harris, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash Smoak & Stewart, P.C., Nashville
• Brian Hayes, Ogletree Deakins, Washington
• Michael Russell, Gilbert Russell McWherter Scott Bobbitt PLC , Franklin
• Kevin Sharp, U.S. District Court, Middle District of Tennessee, Nashville

To register or find out more information about this CLE, please click here.