Gary Humble has ended his state senate campaign just two months after launching a bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, citing “personal and organizational commitments.” According to the Williamson Scene, Humble made the announcement last Friday, saying, “after much prayer, thought, and honest conversations with my family, I have reached the conclusion that this is not the right pursuit for me at this time.” The founder and executive director of Tennessee Stands will continue to run that organization. He has offered a full refund to anyone who donated to his campaign.

The Tennessee Bar Association will be closed Wednesday through Friday in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. An abbreviated edition of TBA Today will be published on Wednesday. Visit the TBA website at any time to access CLE offerings and contact information for individual staff members. The office will reopen Dec. 1 at 8 a.m. CST. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Tennessee Supreme Court on Nov. 21 suspended 18 attorneys for failure to pay the annual registration fee, 12 of whom also failed to file proof that client funds are held in an IOLTA-compliant account. View the fee suspension order and IOLTA suspension order. Lawyers reinstated in the last month include two suspended this year, one suspended in 2021, one suspended in 2020 and one suspended in 2019. Access all administrative suspensions dating back to 2005.

Law firms now account for 10.5% of U.S. office leasing activity — double their pre-pandemic share — as other industries have scaled back and firms increasingly require in-person work, Reuters reports. Strong profitability and a renewed emphasis on office presence have allowed many firms to expand or maintain space, contributing to 8.3 million square feet leased through the third quarter. While more than a third of firms expanded their footprint, nearly one-third reduced space.

READLER, Circuit Judge. The derailment of 38 cars in a Norfolk Southern freight train in early 2023 upended the quiet Columbiana County (Ohio) community of East Palestine. With the train carrying hundreds of thousands of gallons of hazardous materials, the derailment stoked fires that billowed for days. Those combustions were followed by additional “controlled releases” that resulted in a “toxic mushroom cloud” of chemicals. Am. Master Complaint, R. 138, PageID 1804, 1805–06. To some observers, the incident “looked like something out of Chernobyl.” See Salena Zito, ‘We Don’t Know What We Are Breathing’: A Report from East Palestine, The Free Press (Feb. 23, 2023), https://perma.cc/T4J5-CCBW. Thousands were evacuated from the area, with fears growing over potential health, environmental, and economic fallout from the accident. Within days of the accident, lawsuits ensued against Norfolk Southern. The cases, filed on behalf of numerous affected individuals and businesses, were eventually consolidated into one master class action. In the end, a $600 million settlement was forged between the parties, which the district court ultimately approved. See In re E. Pal. Train Derailment, --- F. 4th --- , Nos. 24-3852, 24-3880, 25-3342, 2025 WL 3089606, at *1 (6th Cir. Nov. 5, 2025). Today’s case, however, does not directly concern the victims of the derailment or the settlement they achieved. Instead, it involves the lawyers who sued Norfolk Southern. The dispute here involves a late-breaking fight over the timing and allocation of attorney’s fees. Weeks after the district court gave final approval of the settlement and fees, Morgan & Morgan—a law firm that represented a group of individuals and entities who had filed standalone cases against Norfolk Southern—challenged the distribution of attorney’s fees. Despite having been awarded nearly $8 million in attorney’s fees (and receiving those fees at an expedited pace), Morgan & Morgan took issue with the process for awarding those fees. In the end, the district court refused to undo its earlier decisions. We largely agree. Save for a narrow issue as to Morgan & Morgan’s specific allocation of the total fee award, which we remand for consideration by the district court, we affirm.

BLOOMEKATZ, Circuit Judge. Jonathon Chase Vowels-Harper was a young adult when he met a minor girl on social media. The two began to exchange casual text messages, but their conversations soon turned sexual. Vowels-Harper asked the minor to send him sexually explicit photos and videos of herself, and she did. He later pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography based on that conduct. At sentencing, the district court applied a four-level enhancement on the ground that one of the videos of the minor depicted “sadistic” conduct. Vowels-Harper argues that the court applied the wrong standard in evaluating the video for the sadism enhancement. We agree, so we vacate his sentence and remand for resentencing under the proper standard.

The Defendant, Gerald Tyshawn Henry, was convicted by a Knox County jury of second degree murder and various other gun-related crimes, for which he received an effective sentence of fifty years in confinement. In this appeal, the sole issue presented for our review is whether the evidence is sufficient to sustain the Defendant’s conviction of second degree murder. Upon our review, we affirm.

The Governor’s Council for Judicial Appointments met in Nashville to select nominees for the upcoming vacancy on the Tennessee Supreme Court, which will occur with the retirement of Justice Holly Kirby on June 30, 2026. After holding a public hearing and conducting public interviews, the commission selected three names to forward to the governor. They are: Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals Judge J. Ross Dyer of Memphis; Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Kyle A. Hixson of Knoxville; and Memphis attorney Shea Sisk Wellford. View the nominees’ applications here.

A group of West Nashville residents has filed a 20-page ethics complaint against District 20 Councilmember Rollin Horton, accusing him of misuse of office, retaliation, doxxing and interfering with political activity in response to their efforts to oppose his successful rezoning plan for The Nations, according to the Nashville Post. The complaint stems largely from a failed recall effort and cites incidents including an Instagram post that displayed a resident’s address, police being called on petition gatherers and alleged pressure on business owners. Horton denies the allegations, calling them baseless and politically motivated, and says the rezoning followed extensive community engagement. Metro Legal now has two weeks to determine whether the complaint merits a full hearing before the Board of Ethical Conduct. WPLN also reports on the developments.

Shelby County General Sessions Court Judge Lonnie Thompson grew up in poverty in South Memphis and originally planned to become a classical pianist, earning a scholarship to the Oberlin Conservatory. His participation in student protests against South African apartheid led him to shift his focus from music to law. Thompson went on to earn a law degree from Georgetown and built a wide-ranging legal career before becoming a judge. And he still plays piano and organ at his Memphis church! Now elected president of the General Sessions Judges Conference, he hopes to improve court efficiency and expand community outreach. "I think general sessions is a very, very special court because it’s the court of first impression," Thompson said. "Our citizens get to see exactly what the court system is like, and they are more likely to encounter us before they will any judge on any other level." Read more in this profile from the Administrative Office of the Courts.