The state Supreme Court reinstated the license of Tennessee attorney Rachel K. Tyson effective Oct. 19 after Tyson completed requirements of the BPR.

The Nashville Business Journal recently recognized TBA Chief Diversity Officer Mary Beard as an inaugural recipient of its Leaders in Diversity Award. The honorees include individuals and companies who are leading the charge to advance diversity and inclusion practices in the workplace, showing progress over perfection and speaking out for others in the business community. Beard is Senior Human Resources Counsel for HCA Healthcare Inc. “The biggest challenge is for individuals to recognize that unconscious bias exists and that they act on those biases,” said Beard in a feature profile. “Educating stakeholders on the use of micro-inclusions assists in overcoming the challenging effects of those micro-aggressions.” The Nashville law firm Sherrard Roe Voigt & Harbison PLC also was recognized with an award for its DEI efforts.

MURPHY, Circuit Judge. The Black Lung Benefits Act authorizes benefits for coal miners who have “pneumoconiosis.” The Department of Labor’s regulatory definition of this term covers an obstructive lung disease such as emphysema if the disease arises from coal-mine work. Over two decades ago, the Department responded to criticisms of this broad definition in a regulatory “preamble” to its final regulation. The preamble interpreted the then-existing scientific studies to establish that coal-mine work can cause obstructive diseases, either alone or in combination with smoking. The administrative law judge who awarded benefits in this case repeatedly relied on this preamble to discredit a coal-mine operator’s three experts. In this petition for review, the operator argues that the judge wrongly treated the preamble as legally “binding.” We disagree. The judge simply found the preamble more persuasive than the experts. So we deny the operator’s petition for review. But we caution administrative law judges that their conclusions may lack substantial evidence if they over-rely on the preamble for propositions that it does not contain.

SUTTON, Chief Judge. Kathy Griffin, a California-based celebrity and social activist, sent a series of tweets to her two million Twitter followers asserting that Tennessean Samuel Johnson, the CEO of Tennessee-based VisuWell, had engaged in homophobic conduct. She encouraged her followers to make him “online famous” and tagged his company. She then asked his employer to “remove[]” him from the Board of Directors and threatened that the “nation w[ould] remain vigilant” if it did not. Within a day of her first tweets, the company fired Johnson and removed him from the Board. Johnson and his wife sued Griffin in federal court in Tennessee, claiming (among other things) that she tortiously interfered with his employment. Griffin argued that her tweets did not subject her to the State’s personal jurisdiction, and the district court dismissed the case. We disagree and reverse.

The State of Tennessee appealed the Montgomery County Circuit Court’s order granting the Defendant’s motion to suppress evidence recovered during the search of her car. On appeal, the State contends that the trial court erred because probable cause existed to search the Defendant’s car based on a police dog’s signal for the presence of narcotics. We reverse the judgment of the trial court and remand the case for reinstatement of the charges.

Indianapolis-based Barnes & Thornburg LLP, one of the nation’s 100 largest law firms, has signed a 26,000-square-foot lease in the Broadwest office tower in Nashville, reports Nashville Business Journal. The firm announced the opening of its office in May. The move will more than double its current temporary space. The arrival of Barnes & Thornburg intensifies the competition within the metro legal scene. Earlier this year Holland & Knight added Nashville firm Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis into its company.

Neighbors sued to invalidate zoning ordinances that would allow two real estate development projects to be built at significantly taller heights than prior zoning regulations allowed. The trial court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim in part because it found that the passage of two zoning ordinances gave the developers vested property rights under the Tennessee Vested Property Rights Act of 2014 (VPRA). We conclude the trial court erred in its application of the VPRA, but we affirm the dismissal of the complaint for failure to state a claim.

Father appeals the trial court’s finding of abandonment by wanton disregard as a ground for termination of his parental rights, as well as its finding that termination was in the best interest of the child. We affirm the trial court’s judgment in all respects.

The Plaintiff brought a premises liability claim after falling off his own ladder while at the Defendant’s residence. The Defendant moved for summary judgment, arguing he had no duty to warn and could avoid liability under principles of comparative fault. The Plaintiff countered that the Defendant was actually his employer and that the Defendant’s decision not to provide workers’ compensation insurance prevented the Defendant from being able to raise a comparative fault defense. Furthermore, the Plaintiff argued that the Defendant did have a duty to warn. The trial court granted the Defendant summary judgment finding no duty to warn and that even if a duty existed that Plaintiff’s claim failed as a matter of law based upon comparative fault principles. The Plaintiff appealed to this Court. We affirm.

This is an appeal of the termination of a father’s and mother’s parental rights. The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (“DCS”) filed a petition in the Juvenile Court for Sevier County (“the Juvenile Court”) seeking the termination of the parental rights of Justin S. (“Father”) and Alyse C. (“Mother”) to their minor son Edward C. (“the Child”). The Juvenile Court found that DCS had established by clear and convincing evidence the following statutory grounds for each parent: (1) abandonment by failure to provide a suitable home, (2) persistence of conditions, and (3) failure to manifest an ability and willingness to assume legal and physical custody of or financial responsibility for the Child. The Juvenile Court further found that termination of Father’s and Mother’s parental rights was in the Child’s best interest. Although we vacate the statutory ground of abandonment by failure to provide a suitable home due to insufficient findings of fact as it relates to Mother, we affirm the Juvenile Court’s judgment in all other respects, including termination of Mother’s and Father’s parental rights.