The Shelby County Commission is set to meet with county attorneys in a closed session today to seek legal advice before meeting to consider cuts to vacant positions in the county sheriff’s office, the Daily Memphian reports. Last week, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr. said he would sue the commission if it cuts funding for 441 unfilled positions in his budget. Bonner argues that state law prevents the commission from cutting the positions.

A lawsuit filed by a Jewish couple alleging religious discrimination in Tennessee adoption law will now move forward after the Tennessee Supreme Court declined to hear the state's appeal, the Tennessean reports. Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram sued the state arguing they were unconstitutionally discriminated against after a state-funded Christian adoption agency refused to work with them. The case was initially dismissed but an appellate court overturned that ruling. The Supreme Court’s decision not to review the appellate ruling allows the suit to go forward.

A new documentary "STAX: Soulsville U.S.A." tells the story of the rise and fall of the iconic Memphis record label. The four-part series, which will air on HBO and stream on Max, is a “story of groundbreaking music, hard truths and unhappy endings,” according to the Commercial Appeal. Spoiler alert: the series concludes — not with the launch of the Stax Museum (the site of a past TBA Convention event) or the success of the Stax Music Academy or Soulsville Charter School — but with the original studio razed, an empty lot serving as a painful reminder of what once thrived in the heart of South Memphis. “I wanted us to wrestle with two truths,” says the documentary’s director, Jamila Wignot. “There’s the beauty and the legacy of the music, and there’s the fact that it wasn’t allowed to live on. To me, it was important to hold both of those, because that’s the honest story.”

The Nashville government is asking a judge to throw out the remainder of a law that cuts the size of its Metro council in half. Part of that law was invalidated last year by a three-judge panel, which decided the law was enacted too late to go into effect before the 2023 council elections. Attorneys for the city argue that the remaining part of the law cannot work without the blocked element. The state is arguing for the law to be upheld, saying a blanket limit on metro governments should proceed. Tennessee Report has more on the case.

ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge. For violating the terms of his supervised release a second time, the district court imposed upon Keita Jerrod Hayden a seven-month term of incarceration followed by an eight-year term of supervised release. The district court imposed mandatory and standard supervised-release conditions by reference and imposed special conditions by orally pronouncing them at Hayden’s sentencing. Hayden challenges his supervised-release term on two grounds: first, that it is longer than his statute of conviction allows, and second, that the district court violated his right to be present at sentencing by imposing the mandatory and standard conditions by reference. Because the district court did not exceed the statutory-maximum term of supervised release and because it did provide Hayden with sufficient notice of the conditions to satisfy due process, we affirm the judgment.

The Defendant, Nathaniel Isaac Herrick, appeals from the Sullivan County Criminal Court’s probation revocation of his two-year sentence for drug-related convictions. On appeal, the Defendant contends that the trial court abused its discretion by revoking his probation and ordering him to serve the remainder of his sentence in confinement. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

After a tragic motor vehicle accident caused her husband’s death and her minor child’s serious injuries, the plaintiff filed this products liability action against several manufacturers and sellers. We granted the instant interlocutory appeal in which the defendant requests review — based on the Tennessee Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Carolyn Coffman, et al. v. Armstrong International, Inc., et al., 615 S.W.3d 888 (Tenn. 2021) — of the trial court’s denial of its motion for relief from unfavorable summary judgment orders. We reverse the trial court.

In the first appeal in this case, we reversed the decision of the trial court to award custody of the minor children to Grandparents and remanded for Grandparents to prove substantial harm. While the appeal was pending, Mother and Grandparents filed a joint petition for custody to be returned to Mother. The trial court held a trial on both issues following the remand from this Court. Ultimately, the trial court granted Mother’s petition and entered a parenting plan naming Mother primary residential parent and awarding Father weekend visitation; Grandparents were not awarded any visitation. Discerning no reversible error, we affirm.

For the week of May 13, 2024 - May 17, 2024

The annual Bench Bar Luncheon will take place June 13 as part of the TBA’s Convention. Lawyers and judges from across the state will gather to recognize judicial service and hear from Memphis lawyer Charles Newman, who served as one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s lawyers during the sanitation workers strike in the spring of 1968. It was the strike that brought King to Memphis, where the day after addressing workers, he was felled by an assassin’s bullet. Also at the lunch, Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Holly Kirby will be recognized with the TBA’s Justice Frank F. Drowota III Outstanding Judicial Service Award and Senior Judge J. Daniel Breen will receive the Judge Pamela L. Reeves Tennessee Professionalism Award, given jointly by the TBA and the Tennessee American Inns of Court. Make plans now to join your colleagues at this annual favorite!