No specific laws identified for this ruling.
This is a teacher tenure case. Appellant, a tenured teacher employed by Appellee Shelby County Board of Education, was fired for insubordination and conduct unbecoming. Appellant appealed the Shelby County School Board's decision to the Chancery Court for Shelby County. In a post-trial motion, Appellee petitioned the court to consider an email notification of the board's decision that was sent to Appellant's attorney. Specifically, Appellee argued that the email constituted statutory notice to the Appellant so as to start the thirty-day time period for filing an appeal of the board's decision in the trial court. Tenn. Code Ann. 49-5-513(b). The trial court denied the motion as newly discovered evidence. We conclude that the email goes directly to the question of whether the Appellant's petition was timely so as to confer subject-matter jurisdiction on the trial court. Accordingly, the trial court erred in treating the motion as one for permission to file "newly discovered evidence." Because the trial court applied an incorrect legal standard in ruling on the admissibility of the email evidence and did not address the question of its subject-matter jurisdiction, we vacate the trial court's order and remand for further proceedings.
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Plaintiff brought claims against Knox County and the County Clerk based on allegedly discriminatory employment practices. The trial court determined that Plaintiff committed serious discovery violations and imposed as a sanction the exclusion of certain evidence. With this evidence excluded, the trial court granted summary judgment to the Defendants. Plaintiff appeals, challenging the discovery sanction, the trial court's conclusion under the Tennessee Human Rights Act that the continuing violation doctrine did not apply, the trial court's conclusion that the Clerk was not individually liable, and the award of attorney's fees against the Plaintiff and her attorney. We affirm.
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