If you’ve been here long enough, you know that I’m an advocate for filing lawsuits in Tennessee’s General Sessions Courts.
Matters move fast, are cost-efficient, and judges are some of the most no-nonsense jurists you’ll ever meet.
Some lawyers like a little bit of “making things more complicated than necessary” and prefer cases with lots of billable hours, and those lawyers tend to object to “small claims court” because they aren’t a “court of record” and, thus, the judgments may not be enforceable in other states.
I’ve always said they’re wrong and that a judgment entered by a Tennessee General Sessions Court is likely entitled to full faith and credit and enforceable in other states under the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act, even though such courts are not courts of record.
If you are facing an argument about enforceability in Tennessee, here’s some text from a 2001 case that will be useful:
[Defendant’s] first argument is that the [Plaintiff’s] judgments are not entitled to full faith and credit because they were not rendered by a court of record. This argument is wrong … Tenn. Code Ann. § 26-6-104(b) does not, even by implication, limit the judgments entitled to full faith and credit to those rendered by a court of record.
Tenn.Code Ann. § 26-6-104(b) provides that our state courts will treat a foreign judgment “in the same manner as a judgment of a court of record in this state.” Based on this language, [Defendant] asserts that in order for a foreign judgment to be accorded the same treatment as a judgment of a Tennessee court of record, the judgment must have been rendered by a court of record. This reasoning overlooks that neither U.S. Const. art. IV, § 1 nor Tenn.Code Ann. § 26-6-103 limits the judgments entitled to full faith and credit to judgments of “courts of record.” According to Tenn. Code Ann. § 26-6-103, a “foreign judgment” entitled to full faith and credit in Tennessee is “any judgment, decree, or order of a court of the United States or of any other court which is entitled to full faith and credit in this state.”
See Boardwalk Regency Corp. v. Patterson, No. M199902805COAR3CV, 2001 WL 1613892, at *3 (Tenn. Ct. App. Dec. 18, 2001.
Under this same reasoning, the question of whether an “outgoing” Tennessee General Sessions Court judgment is entitled to full faith and credit in other states ultimately depends on the law of the enforcing state. But, under the UEFJA, those courts will generally look to whether the judgment is final and valid in Tennessee, and most states don’t introduce anything about “courts of record” into their version of the Act.
Lawyers are risk adverse, and, faced with a risky decision that will save the client money but introduce a drop of risk, many Tennessee lawyers will opt for to file a matter in chancery or circuit court.
This issue comes up more than you’d think, and that case citation could get you where you need quickly and in a cost-efficient manner.
Creditors Rights 101 