Court Rulings

REPORTED MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER granting Government's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on Appropriations Caps denying [46] Plaintiffs' Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on Appropriations Caps and denying as moot [42] Government's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on Appropriations Caps. Signed by Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby. (jp) Service on parties made.

Civ.R. 60(B) notification e-filing system abuse of discretion. Trial court did not err in denying plaintiff's motion to vacate summary judgment for employer where plaintiff was promptly served with employer's motion for summary judgment pursuant to the trial court's local rules for electronic filing, and did not check docket or user's notification page to learn of motion, and court ruled on it six weeks later.

This is a sexual assualt/health care liability case wherein a female customer alleges she was assaulted while receiving a massage at a day spa. The customer sued both the massage therapist as well as the employer-business, bringing intentional tort, negligence, and vicarious liability claims. The customer complied with the pre-suit notice requirements as required by the Tennessee Health Care Liability Act however, she failed to file a certificate of good faith with her complaint. The massage therapist and the business both moved for summary judgment and noted such failure, asking the trial court to dismiss the customer's claims with prejudice. The trial court granted both parties' motions for summary judgment, dismissing all of the customer's claims. The customer appealed. Because we find that the requirements of the Tennessee Health Care Liability Act are not applicable to the claims against the massage therapist but are applicable to the claims against the employer, we affirm in part and reverse in part.

An employee of Nashville Electric Service ("NES") was terminated in 2015 due to false and misleading information he provided on his initial application for employment nine years earlier, in 2006. NES did not discover that the information was false until the employee submitted an application for promotion in 2015 and one of his supervisors noticed a discrepancy between the two applications. NES provided the employee with a due process hearing and a hearing by an administrative law judge before the Electric Employees' Civil Service and Pension Board of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County ("the Board"), which voted to terminate his employment. The employee filed a petition for judicial review of the Board's decision, which the chancery court affirmed. On appeal to this Court, we affirm the trial court's judgment upholding the Board's decision.

This Court affirmed a judgment of the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, reversing a decision of the Unemployment Compensation Review Commission. The common pleas court found there was no just cause to terminate Lancaster's employment.

Judgment affirmed trial court did not abuse its discretion in awarding reasonable attorney fees pursuant to Civ.R. 37(A)(5) and entering a default judgment as a sanction pursuant to Civ.R. 37(B)(1)(f).

The trial court did not err when it overruled appellant's motion for summary judgment on its political subdivision immunity. The appellees adduced evidence establishing the existence of a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether the appellant was negligent for the manner in which it chose to clear the blockage from the sewer line which allegedly resulted in a sewage backup in the appellees' basement. Furthermore, the appellant's decision to force water into the sewer line with the Jet-Vac truck was not a discretionary decision pursuant to R.C. 2744.03(A)(5), because the appellant provided no evidence of any specific decision that it made regarding its alleged negligence that involved weighing alternatives or a high degree of official judgment or discretion. Thus, we conclude that the trial court did not err in determining that genuine issues of material fact exist and that the appellant was not entitled to summary judgment as to the issue of immunity. Judgment affirmed.

The parents of a kindergartener filed suit against a metropolitan government for negligence after their child injured her arm at school. The trial court granted the metropolitan government's motion for summary judgment based upon its finding that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the metropolitan government breached a duty of care owed to the plaintiffs or that any action or inaction by a metropolitan government employee was the cause in fact or proximate cause of the child's injuries. We affirm.

Enforcement of arbitration agreement, law-of-the-case doctrine, Civ.R. 60(B), Evid.R. 702, expert witness, manifest weight of the evidence. A trial court's reversal and remand places the parties in the same position they were in prior to the error. A trial court's determination of an expert witness's qualification will not be reversed unless the trial court clearly abused its discretion. The trial court's finding that the signature on the arbitration agreement was valid is not against the manifest weight of the evidence.

This is a health care liability action in which the plaintiff asserted claims of professional negligence, negligent supervision, and medical battery against a physician's assistant, a dermatologist, and their employer. The trial court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment under Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 56.02, motion for dismissal under Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 37.02, and motion for sanctions under Tennessee Code Annotated section 29-26-122(d). We agree with the trial court's determination that the plaintiff failed to obtain a competent expert witness to testify on the applicable standard of care as required by Tennessee Code Annotated section 29-26-115 and violated Tennessee Code Annotated section 29-26-122 by filing a non-compliant certificate of good faith. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court's dismissal of plaintiff's action and award of sanctions.

In this legal malpractice lawsuit, the trial court granted summary judgment for the defendant after the plaintiffs' counsel failed to respond to the defendant's motion and appear at the hearing. Thereafter, the plaintiffs filed a motion to set aside the judgment, arguing their attorney's failure to respond was due to excusable neglect. The trial court denied the motion, and this appeal followed. We affirm the trial court's denial of the plaintiffs' motion to set aside because the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that they had a meritorious defense.