The Lawyers' Association for Women Marion Griffin Chapter (LAW MGC) Foundation is now accepting applications for grants for 2025. Grants may be awarded in amounts up to $3,500 annually per applicant. All 2025 applications are due on or before close of business on May 16, and should be submitted via email to lawmgcfoundation@gmail.com. Recipients will be notified in advance and acknowledged at the 2025 Annual LAW New Admittees’ Breakfast. Grant proposals should support the foundation's mission, which includes advocating for the participation of women in the legal profession and educating about issues affecting women in the legal profession. Please review the full mission statement and grant guidelines prior to submitting an application, and note that there are separate application forms for individual and organizational applicants.

On behalf of the Local Government Practice Section, I want to thank you for your section membership and your support for what we do each year. Be sure to continue to stay connected with our section to get updates on the CLEs we will offer in 2025—don't forget that your section membership includes discounts on all section-sponsored CLE! In the event you missed our most recent Local Government Forum in November, you can still view the presentations in the TBA CLE Course Catalog. The forum provided four hours of credit and featured sessions on parliamentary procedures, 1st Amendment cases, local sustainability measures and the Tennessee Public Records Act. As you all know, government law is an ever-changing practice area with a unique blend of constitutional, statutory and case law. 
 
Aside from our annual forum, our section posts current news articles and information related to local government practice in our online eCommunity.  On the site, you can find a wealth of information, which currently includes over 1,700 relevant posts! We strive to bring you relevant content to keep you at the top of your practice. 
 
Thank you for your support of the TBA Local Government Practice Section. If you have a friend or colleague who might be interested in joining our section, please feel free to contact me or our TBA staff coordinator Jamie Rhode. If you have ideas or thoughts for our section, or if you are interested in getting more involved, please reach out to me.

Sunny Sandos

As chair of the Tennessee Bar Association's Corporate Counsel Section, I want to thank you for your section membership and your support for what we do each year. As you know, each year our section holds its annual Corporate Counsel Forum. This year, our forum will be held virtually on March 28. I am excited about our top-notch line-up of panelists, who will cover a wide variety of issues, including employment law updates, recent developments in administrative law, attorney-client privilege for in-house counsel, and navigating artificial intelligence and cybersecurity in contracts. In addition to the annual forum, our section presents corporate-related CLE webinars throughout the year, recordings of which can be found on TBA's CLE catalog.
 
Finally, our section also publishes this newsletter in which seasoned practitioners share their insights about developing trends, caselaw updates, and stories focused for those serving as corporate counsel to a variety of institutions. Our newsletter strives to seek contributing authors from different viewpoints, including views from firms that represent businesses and other in-house counsel professionals.
 
Thank you for your support of the TBA Corporate Counsel Section. If you have a friend or colleague who might be interested in joining our section, please feel free to contact me or the section's staff coordinator Jamie Rhode. If you have ideas or thoughts for our section, or if you are interested in writing an article for the newsletter, please reach out to me.
 
Lisa Marie Crews

THAPAR, Circuit Judge. Paula Linden filed for Social Security benefits a few years before she reached her full retirement age. Had she waited to file until she reached the full retirement age, she would be receiving bigger monthly checks than she currently receives. Now, Linden claims that she filed early only because the Social Security Administration falsely told her that filing early wouldn’t cause her to receive smaller checks. Thus, she wants the agency to increase her monthly pay to the amount she would have received if she had waited to file. Because the statutory scheme doesn’t allow for that result, we affirm.

The TBA Corporate Counsel Section will hold its annual forum virtually on March 28. The event, which will run from 9 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. CDT, will include sessions on the complexities of attorney/client privilege for in-house counsel, an employment law update, a Supreme Court update and a look at how AI can impact contract negotiations. Speakers include Nashville lawyer Jeb Gerth with Epstein Becker Green, Alex Koskey and Matthew White with Baker Donelson, Zach Kisber with Mid-America Apartment Communities, Preston Battle with Baker Donelson, and University of Tennessee professor Hemant Sharma. Section members receive discounts on registration costs. Not a member yet? Join here.

The Tennessee Supreme Court on March 7 issued a ruling that municipal judges in Tennessee must reside within the city they serve, as required by the Tennessee Constitution. Chattanoogan.com reports that a number of local courts are affected by the ruling and judges are conferring with their town attorneys and other legal authorities to determine what happens next. The decision also is having an effect in general sessions court, which often relies on municipal judges to fill in as needed. Several dockets are being juggled between judges, based on who lives where, according to the paper.

JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff Gina Burt sued defendants Playtika, Ltd. and Playtika Holding Corporation (collectively, “Playtika”) in Tennessee state court, seeking to recover alleged gambling losses incurred by Tennessee residents who played Playtika’s online games. Playtika removed the case to federal court, invoking federal jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), Pub. L. No. 109-2, 119 Stat. 4 (2005), and traditional diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. The district court entered an order remanding the case to state court, determining that it lacked jurisdiction because (1) Burt’s suit was not a “class action” under CAFA, and (2) the losses of the Tennessee players could not be aggregated for amount in controversy purposes. Playtika appeals the district court’s remand order under CAFA’s expedited removal appeal provision, 28 U.S.C. § 1453(c).

We do not reach the statutory removal issues, however, because Burt lacks Article III standing to proceed in federal court. We therefore affirm the district court’s remand order.

Defendant, Julian Summers, was convicted by a Shelby County jury of first degree murder, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse. As the thirteenth juror, the trial court affirmed the verdicts as to the first degree murder and abuse of a corpse but dismissed the verdict as to tampering with evidence. The trial court sentenced Defendant to a total effective sentence of life imprisonment plus two years. On appeal, Defendant claims that 1) the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress his video-recorded statement to the police; 2) the trial court abused its discretion by permitting the State to call the forensic evaluator as a rebuttal witness; 3) the evidence was insufficient to support his first degree murder conviction; and 4) the trial court abused its discretion by imposing consecutive sentences. Upon review of the entire record, the briefs of the parties and the applicable law, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.

The Open-Source AI Foundation (O-SAIF) recently announced the launch of The 20% Project, an initiative leveraging open-source Agentic AI to transform the criminal justice system and save taxpayers money. Agentic AI is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can act independently and solve problems without human intervention using a combination of AI technologies. According to the foundation, the initiative will deploy AI-powered case review technology to analyze, prioritize and recommend cases for pardon and commutation recommendations starting with the more than 160,000 federal incarcerated individuals. The 20% Project will integrate custom-built, open-source Agentic AI to assist legal teams and pardon review experts, with the goal of reducing the time and complexity involved in processing applications. Learn more in a press release from O-SAIF.

The employee filed a notice of appeal in Spanish purportedly seeking to appeal the trial court’s denial of her motion to continue a summary judgment hearing. Despite having been instructed that the notice of appeal must be in English and having been provided resources to assist with obtaining the translation, the employee failed to file anything further. Accordingly, we are unable to discern any issues or argument on appeal, and the appeal is therefore dismissed. The case is remanded to the trial court.