Matt Burnstein, chairman of the board of directors at Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis LLP in Nashville, plans to run his 28th marathon next month in Louisiana. The Nashville Business Journal recently caught up with Burnstein for this week's "The Boss" executive profile. He said he decided more than a decade ago to run a marathon in every state. He's made the marathons a way to visit every state in the country and plans his trips around dining at local restaurants and site-seeing. Read the full interview at the NBJ website. 

Johnson City was awarded a three-year, $240,000 grant to establish a Family Justice Center for Johnson City/Washington County by the state's Office of Criminal Justice Programs, WJHL reports. The grant will be used to help reach the goals of Gov. Bill Haslam's Public Safety Action Plan to reduce the number of domestic violence incidents locally by establishing a Family Justice Center, a model that brings together a multi-disciplinary team of professionals under one roof to work together to provide coordinated services to family violence victims. According to the press release, Tennessee currently has two established Family Justice Centers, one in Knoxville and one in Memphis.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is said to be resting comfortably after undergoing a heart catheterization today. Ginsburg, who is 81, was taken to the hospital last night after experiencing “discomfort” during exercise, said Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg in a press release. Surgeons at MedStar Washington Hospital Center installed a stent to clear a blockage in Ginsburg’s right coronary artery. The ABA Journal has more.

Charles Michael Clifford was suspended yesterday (Nov. 25) regarding two complaints. In the first complaint, Clifford failed to pursue his clients’ objectives and misled them as to the status of the case. In the second complaint, Clifford failed to comply with a scheduling order and failed to take appropriate steps to protect his client when he withdrew from the case. View the BPR notice.

A judge today blocked the state’s attempt to derail a lawsuit filed by death row inmates attacking Tennessee’s use of the electric chair, the Nashville Public Radio reports. In August, attorneys representing ten death row inmates sued the state alleging the electric chair is “cruel and unusual punishment.” Assistant Attorney General Linda Kirklen argued, in part, that the sentence of a criminal case should not be litigated in civil court. Kelley Henry, a federal public defender representing the inmates, responded that an attack on the method of execution is not the same as an attack on the conviction. After two-hours of deliberations, Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman ruled the lawsuit is aiming at the protocol of execution, not the criminal conviction, so it does fall under the state’s civil court and denied the state’s motion to dismiss.

The Justice Department says it collected $24.7 billion in settlements and penalties in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, WRCB reports from the Associated Press. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that the amount includes both criminal penalties and civil settlements and is more than three times the $8 billion collected in the previous year, fiscal 2013. The total includes proceeds that were actually recovered in fiscal year 2014, even if the cases that yielded the money had been legally settled in prior years. It also includes civil debts collected on behalf of other federal agencies.

Learn more Presdient Barack Obama's new executive order on immigration as well as many other changes in immigration policy on Dec. 10 at 6 p.m. Immigration Law section members will receive a discount. Learn more at TBA CLE.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has changed the way it calculates job openings in the legal profession, producing a rosy outlook for law grads in 2016, the ABA Journal reports. The bureau’s new method of calculating workers leaving an occupation who need to be replaced no longer relies on the assumption that workers enter at a young age, work in their field until they are old, and then retire. Now, the bureau will directly measure workers who leave occupations, based on survey results. The new method projects 41,460 lawyer openings a year. Critics of the new method include lawyer Matt Leichter, author of the Law School Tuition Bubble, who says the new methodology yields “an unbelievable replacement rate.”

House Republicans today filed a lawsuit against the Obama Administration over unilateral actions on the health care law that they say are abuses of the president’s executive authority. The suit accuses the administration of unlawfully postponing a requirement that larger employers offer health coverage to their full-time employees or pay penalties. It also challenges the payment of roughly $175 billion to insurance companies for subsides to low income customers. The New York Times has more.

Travis McDonough, a Chattanooga attorney who presently serves as Mayor Andy Berke's chief of staff and legal adviser, has been nominated to become the new judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports. If confirmed by the Senate, McDonough will occupy the seat of Judge Curtis Collier, who recently took senior status.