The Tennessee Supreme Court has granted review in two criminal cases and two civil matters, Raybin-Perky Hot List reports. The criminal case issues include an ineffective assistance of counsel claim in a death penalty case regarding mental health proof; and whether expunged convictions may still be challenged in post-conviction proceedings where there are lingering immigration consequences. On the civil front, the court will determine whether a trial court may require a prevailing party to draft a summary judgment order without offering its own legal reasoning, and whether an inmate in state custody, but in a privately operated facility, may only bring a lawsuit in the county in which the facility is located as opposed to the corporation headquarters in Nashville. 

The Nashville Post and partner CABLE on Wednesday hosted the third annual Most Powerful Women symposium at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. The event brought almost 200 people to listen to a roundtable discussion among honorees Stacey Garrett of Bone McAllester, Sherry Stewart Deutschmann of LetterLogic, Jacky Akbari of the Nashville Career Advancement Center and Janet Miller of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce.

The Department of Justice and the European Commission approved a deal for Delta Air Lines to buy a 49 percent stake in Virgin Atlantic, stating the deal does not pose an antitrust threat. They concluded that Delta and Virgin Atlantic will still be competing against a strong alliance between American Airlines and British Airways, as well as other airlines. The deal still needs approval from the U.S. Transportation Department, which Delta hopes to get later this year. The Memphis Daily News has the story.

The partners of Husch Blackwell LLP and Brown McCarroll LLP have voted to merge the two firms, effective July 1. The Chattanoogan reports the combined firms will move forward together in all markets as Husch Blackwell LLP. With the addition of Austin, Dallas and Houston, the new firm has offices in 16 U.S. cities -- including Chattanooga and Memphis -- more than 600 attorneys and 750 staff. Based on 2012 revenues reported earlier this year, the combined firm would have achieved annual revenues of $319 million, which would have vaulted the new firm into a tie at No. 94 on the 2013 AmLaw 100 list of highest revenue-generating law firms. View the official press release. 

A new Government Accountability Office report suggests that implementation of health care exchanges called for in the new heath care reform act may be rough going when enrollment in federally operated exchanges, including Tennessee's, begins on Oct. 1. The federal "data hub" designed to deliver real-time eligibility rulings has only undergone initial testing, of concern to the federal investigators who authored the report. The report also confirms what many policy experts have been warning about – namely, that the federal government wasn't prepared or expecting to operate 34 state exchanges, causing some deadlines to be missed or delayed. The Memphis Business Journal has the story.

Following Judge Beryl Howell’s ruling last week tossing out as unconstitutional the previous anti-demonstration rules at the U.S. Supreme Court, court officials clarified and revised regulations to the 60-year old law. "The term demonstration includes demonstrations, picketing, speechmaking, marching, holding vigils or religious services and all other like forms of conduct that involve the communication or expression of views or grievances, engaged in by one or more persons, the conduct of which is reasonably likely to draw a crowd or onlookers," says the revised Regulation 7, which was effective last Thursday. "The term does not include casual use by visitors or tourists that is not reasonably likely to attract a crowd or onlookers." WCYB has the story.

Executive Legal Professionals, founded by attorney Noel R. Bagwell, recently held its ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Clarksville Area Chamber of Commerce. The firm provides businesses, start-ups, and entrepreneurs with customized packages of ongoing business legal services for flat rates. Services are also provided on an as-needed basis for single occurrence legal services, The Leaf Chronicle reports.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg discussed the growing number of women judges in courts across the country during a panel discussion Tuesday on women and the District of Columbia’s federal courts, the Blog of the Legal Times reports. Ginsburg stated that her fellow Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor made her "tremendously optimistic" about the future. "We are no longer one-at-a-time curiosities," she said, adding that having multiple women on the Supreme Court was "exhilarating" and offered "the right picture for the children who troop in and out."

Newly released records from the Department of Children’s Services contain substantial redactions of information that the Tennessean says appear “random” and “contradictory.” According to the newspaper’s review, in some cases DCS redacted autopsy results, which are routinely made public by the state’s medical examiners. In other cases, DCS redactions were contradictory, concealing cause of death on some pages, while leaving it unedited elsewhere in the same child’s file. Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Carol McCoy, who ordered the records released and reviewed each one, said last week that at least 129 pages contained redactions that may have gone beyond what she ordered DCS to eliminate to protect the confidentiality of families.

An $800,000 grant is helping initiate 20 programs designed to reduce crime in the Mountain Home and downtown areas of Johnson City, including the Targeted Community Crime Reduction Project aimed specifically at reducing recidivism in women. “It just keeps going on and on and on, generation after generation," Johnson City Juvenile Court Judge Sharon Green said. "If we don't break that cycle now, then we're going to have tremendous problems ongoing," Green told WJHL.