Tennessee Sen. Brent Taylor, R-Memphis, has asked for Gov. Bill Lee’s aid to help address rising crime issues in and around Memphis, ABC24-Memphis reports. In a letter addressed to the governor, Taylor cites recent crimes, including the murder of St. Jude employee Alexander Bulakhov. The senator is requesting unannounced "surges" of patrols from the Tennessee Highway Patrol, a "monitoring" team to better track crime data, and support to hold the judicial system more accountable.

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to revive a Florida law banning the performance of drag shows in the presence of minors, Reuters reports. Florida officials made a request to narrow a judge's pause on the law to a single plaintiff rather than maintain a temporary statewide halt of the measure. U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell blocked the measure in June, deciding it likely violates free speech because its prohibitions were poorly defined and risked outlawing constitutionally protected expression.

A legislative panel considering rejecting federal school funds for Tennessee concluded two weeks of meetings yesterday, the Tennessean reports. The Joint Working Group on Federal Education Funding heard testimony from representatives of conservative groups who highlighted the advantages of rejecting federal funds. Over the last two weeks, lawmakers also heard from state fiscal analysts and researchers, national education policy experts, representatives from schools and school districts, and officials from the Tennessee Department of Education. It will resume hearings after Thanksgiving and will prepare policy recommendations for the General Assembly when it convenes in January.

PER CURIAM. By enabling enormous aggregation of claims and parties, class actions represent a significant departure from “our constitutional tradition of individual litigation.” Brown v. Electrolux Home Prods., Inc., 817 F.3d 1225, 1233 (11th Cir. 2016). It’s easy to understand why class actions are the exception, not the rule; exponential aggregation of claims and parties magnifies the stakes of litigation and can thus have massive ramifications for plaintiffs and defendants alike. See Blair v. Equifax Check Servs., Inc., 181 F.3d 832, 834 (7th Cir. 1999) (Easterbrook, J.) (“[A] grant of class status can propel the stakes of a case into the stratosphere.”). To ensure appropriate use of this potent litigation device, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 serves as a gatekeeper to class certification. Far more than “a mere pleading standard,” Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338, 350 (2011), the Rule erects four threshold safeguards: numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy. Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a). Satisfying the Rule requires a named plaintiff to offer “[s]ignificant” evidentiary proof that he can meet all four of those criteria, where they are contested. Doster v. Kendall, 54 F.4th 398, 432 (6th Cir. 2022) (quoting Wal-Mart, 564 U.S. at 353); see also Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 569 U.S. 27, 33 (2013). As for the district court, it should not certify a class unless its “rigorous analysis” shows that not one or two, but all four Rule 23(a) prerequisites are met. Davis v. Cintas Corp., 717 F.3d 476, 484 (6th Cir. 2013) (quoting Gen. Tel. Co. of the Sw. v. Falcon, 457 U.S. 147, 161 (1982)).

The district court in this case certified statewide classes to resolve three issues relating to a purported brake defect in Ford F-150 pickup trucks. For the most part, the district court thoughtfully considered the issues presented in concurrent motions for summary judgment and class certification. But Rule 23 requires precision across the board. And the district court’s cursory treatment of commonality, one of the four necessary class action ingredients, failed to meet Rule 23’s stringent requirements. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(2). For that reason, we grant Ford’s Rule 23(f) petition for interlocutory review, vacate the class certification order, and No. 22-0109 In re Ford Motor Co. Page 3 remand for more searching consideration. See In re Tivity Health, Inc., No. 22-0502, 2022 WL 17243323, at *2 (6th Cir. Nov. 21, 2022).

A Shelby County jury convicted the Petitioner, Martrice Thomas, of first degree premeditated murder. The Petitioner appealed her conviction, and this court affirmed the trial court’s judgment. State v. Thomas, No. W2017-02489-CCA-R3-CD, 2018 WL 6266277, at *1 (Tenn. Crim. App., Nov. 29, 2018), perm. app. denied (Tenn. March 28, 2019). On April 6, 2020, more than a year after the final judgment, the Petitioner filed a petition for post-conviction relief, alleging that her trial counsel was ineffective, and the post-conviction court denied relief, finding that the Petitioner had received the effective assistance of counsel. The Petitioner appealed, and we remanded the case for consideration of the one-year post-conviction statute of limitations. After a hearing, the post-conviction court determined that due process required the tolling of the statute of limitations. The Petitioner subsequently filed a notice of review, requesting this court complete review of the appeal. After review, we affirm the post-conviction court’s denial of post-conviction relief.

Leonard John Clemons, Defendant, was convicted of attempted burglary, burglary, vandalism, and two counts of theft. For those convictions, Defendant was sentenced as a career criminal to a total effective sentence of 24 years, 11 months, and 29 days. After the trial court denied his motion for new trial, Defendant appealed. On appeal, Defendant argues that the trial court erred by denying a continuance based on discovery violations and that the evidence is insufficient to support his convictions. Because Defendant has waived his challenge to discovery violations and because the evidence is sufficient to support the convictions, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.

Husband and Wife divorced; the trial court divided their property. Husband appeals, asserting five errors. Two of those purported errors are related to continuances, and three are related to the trial court’s division of the couple’s property. With regard the property division, one purported error relates to the trial court’s division of certain vehicles and two purported errors relate to the trial court’s division of two parcels of real property. We conclude that both of Husband’s continuance arguments are waived. We also conclude that his property division argument as to the vehicles is waived. With regard to the real property division, we conclude the trial court made inadequate findings of fact and conclusions of law to explain its decision as to both parcels, and we vacate and remand for the trial court to render further findings of fact and conclusions of law.

To collect on its judgment, Appellant judgment creditor served a levy on Appellee garnishee bank. Judgment creditor sought to garnish an escrow account that was subject to an escrow agreement between a third-party and judgment debtor’s representative. Garnishee bank initially responded that it did not have any funds to remit. Thereafter, garnishee bank filed an amended response and enclosed a cashier’s check for $731,598.51, the amount of funds in the escrow account; the check was made payable to the Williamson County Circuit Court. A few days later, garnishee bank filed a motion to return funds deposited into the Clerk’s Office. At trial, garnishee bank argued that it was not properly served with the levy and that, even if service was proper, judgment creditor had no right to collect the funds held in the escrow account. The trial court agreed. We conclude that garnishee bank waived any objection concerning whether the levy was properly served. The trial court’s order is otherwise affirmed.

Rite Aid announced today it is suing the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to stop a lawsuit alleging that the pharmacy chain ignored red flags and illegally filled hundreds of thousands of prescriptions for addictive opioid medication, reports Reuters. Rite Aid asked a U.S. bankruptcy judge to rule that the DOJ lawsuit cannot proceed while it is bankrupt. Other opioid plaintiff lawsuits were automatically stopped by bankruptcy filing, the company argues. The DOJ, which sued Rite Aid in March, agreed only to a "brief pause" of its suit after Rite Aid went bankrupt last month, a position that Rite Aid say threatens to undermine the company's restructuring efforts.

Question 1: Article II, section 28 of the Tennessee Constitution declares that “[h]ouse trailers, mobile homes, and all other similar movable structures” are to be assessed as “real property” for taxation purposes. Tennessee Code Annotated § 67-5-501(7) defines “moveable structure” for the statutory scheme that implements this constitutional provision. Expressly excluded from that definition are certain moveable structures that contain less than three hundred square feet of enclosed space.

When an assessor of property does not assess as real property those moveable structures that are expressly excluded under the statutory definition of “moveable structure” is the assessor constitutionally applying the law in accordance with article II, section 28, and Williams v. Carr, 218 Tenn. 564, 404 S.W.2d 522 (1966)?

Opinion 1: Yes. The exclusion of “self-propelled vehicles, sleeping and camping facilities attached to, or designed to be attached to, or drawn by a pick-up truck or an automobile, [] that contain less than three hundred square feet (300 sq. ft.) of enclosed space” from the definition of “moveable structure” in Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-5-501(7) appears to be consistent with the plain language of article II, section 28 and reflective of the intent of the framers and the people who adopted that constitutional provision.

Question 2: If so, may the General Assembly authorize the assessor of property to assess the property to the owner of the excluded moveable structure instead of assessing it as real property as an improvement to the land on which it is located?

Opinion 2: Yes. Because the specified, excluded moveable structures with less than 300 square feet of enclosed space are not assessed as real property, they are assessed by statute to the owner as “tangible personal property.” See Tenn. Code Ann. § 67-5-501(8), (13). As a practical matter, however, all tangible personal property in Tennessee is exempt from property taxation unless it falls within the classifications of public utility property or commercial and industrial property, as explained in Tenn. Att’y Gen. Op. 00-062 (Apr. 3, 2000).