The Tennessee Supreme Court has upheld a death sentence for a man who was convicted of first degree felony murder in 1991. In 2009, the Supreme Court denied post-conviction relief for Derrick Quintero but granted relief for William Eugene Hall, finding that his attorneys had simply copied the original appellate brief filed by Quintero’s attorneys. After reviewing claims filed by Hall’s new attorneys, the Supreme Court affirmed Hall’s convictions and sentence of death. Chief Justice Sharon G. Lee filed a separate concurring opinion, in which she agreed that Hall’s death sentence is proportionate to the sentences imposed in similar cases, but reiterated her disagreement with the manner in which this Court reviews the proportionality of death sentences. The AOC has more. 

Since the beginning of this year, Burr Forman has more than doubled its attorney count in Music City. The Nashville Business Journal interviews Tom Potter, who manages the Nashville office of the Birmingham-based  firm, to learn more about the its plans.

The city of Nashville will build a Family Justice Center at the former Capitol Chevrolet dealership on Murfreesboro Road near Foster Avenue, WKRN reports. The center would house resources for both victims of domestic abuse and child abuse in one place. The domestic violence unit, youth services and the Nashville Children’s Alliance — currently located in different parts of the city — would likely all have space in the new center.

An embattled state law establishing legal requirements to market spirits as “Tennessee Whiskey” could run afoul of both the U.S. and state constitutions for carving out a special exemption for a single distiller, a new legal opinion from state Attorney General Herbert Slatery says. The General Assembly in 2013 excluded Kelso-based Pritchard’s Distillery from the law passed at the behest of Jack Daniel’s that for the first time established rules for which products could label themselves as Tennessee whiskey. The Tennessean has more.

Applications for the Circuit Court Judge vacancy in the 1st Judicial District are due by noon April 14. The district covers Carter, Johnson, Unicoi and Washington counties. The impending vacancy has been created by the announcement from Judge Thomas J. Seeley Jr. that he is retiring effective June 30. The AOC has more.

Target Corp. will pay $10 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over a massive data breach in 2013 that exposed details of as many as 40 million credit and debit card accounts, the Memphis Daily News reports. U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson granted preliminary approval of the settlement, allowing people to begin filing claims ahead of another hearing for final approval, which he'll hold in late October or early November.

Corporate tax attorney Brett Carter is suing Republican Gov. Bill Haslam's administration for refusing to produce documents under the Tennessee Open Records Act. Carter, who is with Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, filed the lawsuit alleging a "willful violation" of open records laws in Chancery Court in Nashville on Wednesday. Carter is seeking information used by the state Department of Finance and Administration in drafting the "Revenue Modernization Act" that Haslam has proposed to lawmakers this year, the Memphis Daily News reports.

Knowing the basic principles of accounting is beneficial to lawyers of all practice areas. Learn how to valuate financial assets and address common tax issues at Financial Literacy for Lawyers on April 7. Visit TBA CLE for more information.

Legal scholar Symeon C. Symeonides will speak at the University of Memphis at noon on March 24 in Wade Auditorium. Symeonies, who holds the Alex L. Parks Distinguished Chair in Law and Dean Emeritus at Willamette University School of Law in Oregon, will present “Codifying Choice of Law around the World: The Last Fifty Years.”  For more information or to RSVP, contact Ryan Jones. 

The lawyers representing the couples in the four historic same-sex marriage cases slotted for arguments on April 28 asked the Supreme Court yesterday to divide the arguments on their side in the two questions posed by the high court: whether the 14th Amendment requires states to license marriages between persons of the same sex and whether the 14th Amendment requires states to recognize valid same-sex marriages performed out of state. The justices have ordered 90 minutes of argument on the first question and 60 minutes for the second, the National Law Journal reports.