Sure, you could, but the current version created a process that was three times more complicated than just printing it and mailing the pleading. Long story short, the existing Rule 5.02 wasn’t quite as simple as “service by email is allowed.”
The new Rule 5.02(a) makes it that simple: “Service on any attorney or on a party may also be made by emailing the person the document in Adobe PDF to the recipient’s email address, which shall be promptly furnished on request. The sender shall include language in the subject line designed to alert the recipient that a document is being served under this rule.”
Old habits are hard to break, and there’s not much that lawyers love more than old habits. To that end, all you non-e-mailers will be happy to know that Rule 5.02 still provides three acceptable means of service of process, with service by mail remaining an option. See Tenn. R. Civ. P. 5.02(1).
I tend to assume that lawyers who send me pleadings the mail are either being sneaky (why not waste 3 days or so of the other party’s review and response time) or trying to avoid confrontation (worrying that an emailed pleading will open the door to a snarky response).
Not me. I’ll be saving some trees and sending e-mails.
As a matter of practice, I plan to continue to send full copies of pleadings via US Mail to pro se parties, even though the rule conspicuously doesn’t require different service for pro se parties.
It’s a smart amendment, which reflects how lawyers practice law in 2023.
One of the greatest current failures of Tennessee law is the lack of a penalty for fraudulent lien filings. In December, I wrote: “if somebody records a piece of paper with ‘Notice of Lien’ written somewhere on it (and includes the owner name and property address), they’ve got a totally un-lawful, but also practically-effective, lien.”
Last year, a hand-written, three sentence recorded “lien” brought a pending commercial property sale to a halt. When I politely explained to the lien claimant that there was no basis under Tennessee law to assert lien rights, she said “If that were true, then, why are you even calling me?“
What she was really saying was: Yeah, but what are you going to do about it?
So easy, in fact, that the group filed more than a hundred UCC-1s without legal or factual basis against a variety of folks who they had grievances with. The police officer who gave one a speeding ticket. An ex-wife. The local Chancery Court Clerk and Master. In all there were about 30 victims.
After one took his complaints to a lawyer, and was rebuffed, he attended the local meetings of this group, who taught him how to assert liens under the Uniform Commercial Code. By the UCC-1 filers’ logic, those “debtors” had done something that resulted in inconvenience to them and the UCC-1 filing was designed to obtain compensation (ranging, in this case, from 4 and 12 million dollars). The victims testified about the resulting failed home closings, the denied credit applications, and dings on credit reports.
The defendants were ultimately convicted of fraud and forgery, per Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 39-14-105(a)(6), 39-14-114, 39-17-117. This type of scheme is often referred to as “paper terrorism.”
The Supreme Court then analyzed the various actions against the requirements of Tennessee’s criminal statutes, and the Court upheld all criminal convictions.
In a footnote, the Court alluded to civil penalties, including at Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-9-625, and the ways that private citizens can protect themselves against these schemes.
Spoiler-alert: It’s far easier to file these bogus liens than it is to remove them.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-9-625 isn’t much help. It requires a party to seek court intervention (i.e. file a lawsuit), but the damages don’t include attorney fees. Per § 47-9-625(b), the party can only recover damages resulting from “the debtor’s inability to obtain, or increased costs of, alternate financing” (all very difficult to prove in court). There’s nothing in the statute setting a minimum penalty or, more importantly, allowing for the recovery of attorney fees.
Sure, these defendants made the headlines because of the breadth and shamelessness of their scheme, but the opinion and authorities cited in it do nothing to help the individual homeowner, who has a meritless lien recorded against her house and has a closing being held hostage. File a lawsuit and, then, simply recover the increased cost of her more expensive loan?
In short, there are no effective and efficient remedies under Tennessee law for this.
There are no internal fail-safes to protect against the schemes perpetrated by the defendants in this case. The Secretary of State isn’t watching these. Instead, the purported remedies (under Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 47-9-518 and 47-9-625) put the burden on the consumer to discover and challenge invalid liens, but with no effective remedy or deterrent for fraudulent liens.
The facts of this opinion should scare you, but I’d say that that the law in this opinion is the most terrifying aspect.
All the good Nashville lawyers I know are so busy right now. This is a good problem to have, but, nevertheless, it is a problem. There’s simply too much demand right now.
I overheard one local lawyer telling a story about a frantic call he received from a client, who was freaking out because they hadn’t filed an Answer to a lawsuit, and it had been more than 30 days after service.
“Have they filed a Motion for Default yet? If not, then it’s not late.”
I’m sure the lawyer was more tactful in the actual conversation, but the reasoning has some basis in local custom. Often, in Davidson County courts, if a defendant files an Answer before the hearing on a Motion for Default Judgment and pleads a tenable defense, a court will not grant a judgment under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 55, under the theory that the justice system prefers that “matters be decided on the merits” not a technicality. (See, generally, Discover Bank v. Morgan, 363 S.W.3d 479, 491 (Tenn. 2012)).
A recent opinion from the Tennessee Court of Appeals shows that there are risks in waiting to file an Answer.
That case is Conserv Equip. Leasing, LLC v. Schubert Enterprises, LLC, No. E2022-00535-COA-R3-CV, 2023 WL 1489768 (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 3, 2023). There, the creditor filed a motion for default, and, a few days later, received a phone call from an attorney who “expected to be retained” by the defendants and asked for a 3 week continuance on the motion hearing. After the hearing was so continued, that defense attorney “fax-filed” an Answer at 3:59pm on the Friday before the Monday morning default hearing, with an original copy filed with the Clerk about 33 minutes before the hearing.
Defendant appeared at the hearing, objecting to the relief and presumably with filed Answer in hand, but the default judgment was nevertheless granted. At the trial court level, Defendants later tried to set aside the ruling on excusable neglect grounds and Tenn. R. C. P. 60.02.
The Court of Appeals noted that “[a]lthough courts construe Rule 60.02 ‘with liberality to afford relief from a default judgment,’ the movant bears the burden of showing ‘why the movant was justified in failing to avoid the … neglect’.” Id. at *2. The Court wrote that “[i]f the court finds that the defaulting party has acted willfully, the judgment cannot be set aside on ‘excusable neglect’ grounds…” and “[m]aking ‘deliberate choices’ amounts to willful conduct. Id.
In the end, the issue was remanded back to the trial court, whose order denying the Rule 60 motion failed to include findings of act and conclusions of law (per Tenn. R. Civ. P. 52.01). In short, the trial court didn’t provide any explanation for its ruling.
To be clear, though, the Court of Appeals didn’t say the trial court was wrong; instead, it sent it back down for the trial court to provide more explanation for its refusal to set aside the judgment. The most likely outcome, of course, is that the plaintiff will prepare a properly supported proposed order, the judge will sign it, and, then, that order will be appealed.
It’ll be an interesting case to watch, but, procedurally, it’s also a reminder: Don’t delay when dealing with court deadlines.
When a mortgage or judgment gets paid off, the creditor has to release its lien. It’s not only common sense, but it’s a duty imposed by Tennessee statute (seeTenn. Code Ann. § 66-25-101).
It’s an easy process to prepare a Release of Lien and record it with the register of deeds. Also, it’s not particularly expensive. Depending on how many pages the release is, the fee can be as little as $12.00.
Not too onerous for a lender who just got paid in full, right?
Well, not so fast. Ask any of my creditor clients, and they’ll tell you that “paid in full” means “fully paid, including that release fee.” When I get a payoff request on a deed of trust or judgment lien, I generally include a line for the $12.00 release costs.
Not anymore, in light of a December 2022 Tennessee Court of Appeals opinion, Eudaley v. U.S. Bank Nat’l Ass’n, No. M202100344COAR3CV, 2022 WL 17751378 (Tenn. Ct. App. Dec. 19, 2022). In that case, the mortgage lender got paid in full, recorded the release, and sent a bill to the borrower for $12.00. In response, the borrower filed a class action lawsuit in Davidson County Circuit Court, arguing that, per Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-25-106, “[a]ll costs … for registering a formal release[ ] shall be paid by the holder of the debt secured by the … deed of trust.”
Despite the very clear statutory text, the trial court dismissed the case after finding that federal law allows such fees and preempts the state law. The Court of Appeals affirmed, but not before providing some useful guidance to other lienholders (who may not have a federal banking regulation to hide behind).
Specifically, the Court wrote that “§ 66-25-106 prohibits holders of debt from seeking reimbursement of costs associated with recording a release of a deed of trust” because “[t]he debt holder’s obligation to record a release only arises if the debt has been paid in full or satisfied, indicating that nothing further is owed to the debt holder.” In affirming the trial court’s dismissal, the opinion makes clear that the lienholder bears those costs and can’t seek reimbursement, but, nevertheless, “that prohibition is preempted by federal law when the debt holder seeking reimbursement is a national bank.”
So, what if you’re not a national bank? Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-25-106 applies, and the creditor must chalk up $12.00 as the cost of getting paid.
What about other sorts of liens, like judgment liens or mechanic’s liens? § 66-25-106 seems to apply to any lienholder, but the judgment creditor may nevertheless have an argument that the release fees are “costs of collection” or allowed court costs/discretionary costs.
Either way, this December 2022 opinion provides pretty compelling authority to support a lender’s decision to simply record the release and write off the $12.00. In a very creditor-friendly state like Tennessee, Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-25-106 is an outlier, but this case is a very good reminder that it exists.
No matter what the actual ailment is. Food poisoning. Anxiety. Indigestion. Insomnia.
When you wake up at 2am, with a racing heart, and a feeling that something isn’t quite right, and get asked “Do you think you might be having a heart attack?”
Well, in that moment, you think one thing. That you might be having a heart attack.
I know this from my own experience, just last month. It was the very early Tuesday morning evening of a very busy week: I had a trial scheduled to start 32 hours later in Memphis and, at the end of the week, a bankruptcy conference in California.
And, in that moment, at 2am, yes, it felt like I was having a heart attack.
Where a foreign judgment is based on substantive law that is inconsistent with Tennessee law, will a Tennessee court deny domestication of that judgment in Tennessee? The short answer is “no.” A Tennessee court will only look at whether the judgment is valid in the foreign state and will not consider substantive defenses based on Tennessee law.
Last week, the Tennessee Court of Appeals that reaffirmed that outcome, in Mantis Funding LLC v. Buy Wholesale Inc., No. M202200204COAR3CV, 2022 WL 17986892, at *1 (Tenn. Ct. App. Dec. 29, 2022).
In Mantis, the judgment creditor sought to enforce a New York judgment in Davidson County Circuit Court. The judgment debtor objected, but Judge Brothers looked only to whether the New York court was willing to set aside or entertain a challenge to the validity of the underlying judgment. When the New York court denied the debtor’s motion to vacate the judgment, the Tennessee decision was easy: “the New York judgment is entitled to full faith and credit in Tennessee pursuant to the Constitution of the United States of America.” Id. at *1.
The Court of Appeals agreed. Sure, confessions of judgment are void under Tennessee law pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 25-2-101, but “full faith and credit” doesn’t require that the sister state’s judgment be consistent with Tennessee law. Instead, assuming that there are no service or procedural issues, the Tennessee Court will consider only whether the judgment debtor has challenged the foreign judgment and/or the substantive legal issues in the foreign jurisdiction. If not, “the decision is res judicata… [and o]nce decided, these issues cannot be raised in another, later case seeking to enroll the foreign judgment.” Id. at *2.
This is a fairly settled issue in judgment enforcement, but, because a judgment debtor has such limited bases to challenge a foreign judgment, the debtor will nevertheless “throw the kitchen sink” at the creditor. This new opinion reaffirms that such challenges should be denied.
The court cases where attorneys sue clients for unpaid legal fees always get my attention.
As an attorney who bills clients for my work and expects every client to pay every penny, I’m generally curious about what went wrong.
There are unhappy clients. Unhappy attorneys. Bills that are too high, or too late, or for work that made the client unhappy. When attorney-client relationships go bad, there’s always a lesson to be learned.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals issued an opinion yesterday that has a dozen of these lessons, at Luna Law Group, PLLC v. Richardson M. Roberts, M2021-00699-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. July 28, 2022).
I won’t cover them all, but I will discuss one creditor’s rights high-point: When does a breach of contract occur?
Per this opinion, the six-year statute of limitations at Tenn. Code Ann. 28-3-109(a)(3) is calculated from the “termination of the attorney-client relationship,” and not from the date of the unpaid individual invoices.
The Court wrote that contracts can be “severable” or “entire,” with the relevant statute of limitation depending on the nature of the contract. Since the work at issue related to the same general engagement and the attorney’s work “would be continuously rendered over a period of time,” then, the attorney’s work was “entire.” As a result, “the statute of limitations begins to run only on the completion of such legal services” (or upon termination of the attorney’s work).
Here, the attorney filed the lawsuit (barely) within 6 years from the termination, but only after $136,283 in unpaid invoices had accumulated in the preceding 10 months (with many or most of those invoices coming due and unpaid longer than 6 years prior).
Honestly, I’d have thought that the statute would have run on some of those early invoices, but that the creditor would have had valid claims on the invoices that had gone into default within 6 years. Under this case, I would have been wrong.
Breaches, defaults, and calculating the statute of limitations isn’t as easy as you’d think. Remember this 2019 post about a debtor who didn’t make a payment for 8.5 years, but the Court found that each installment missed was an independent cause of action, resulting in a new, later statute of limitations for each new installment? I was also wrong about that one, because (as I wrote back then) “you’d think a six year old, long defaulted debt would have expired, well, six years from the default.”
To refresh your memory, debtor entered into a mortgage (final maturity date: February 1, 2021), and defaulted in 2008, but bank waited until 2016 to declare default and until 2017 to file the lawsuit.
Using the reasoning of this new case, could the Bank simply have argued that: (i) the 15 year mortgage is one, continuous debt; (ii) thus, the individual installment payments are payments on that debt and not severable obligations; (iii) and, as a result, the real statute of limitations on the failure to pay the 2008 installment payments didn’t start to run until the final maturity date on February 1, 2021?
The answer is, most likely, that the attorney’s future performance of services is indefinite and any invoices are merely progress billings toward that larger “entire” engagement, which is unlike a bank debt, which has definite and exact terms for the repayment. Having said that, though, a smart lawyer will have ample case citations to argue either direction.
In the end, I have two take-aways: (a) determining the date of breach is harder than you’d think; and (b) when in doubt, file your lawsuit sooner, rather than later.
It’s news-worthy because it seems like such a jerk thing to do, especially given the public persona of Sudeikis, who is famous for playing the nicest character on modern TV and, generally, regarded as a nice person in real life.
Seriously, Ted Lasso isn’t just nice, but inspirationally nice. I can’t count the number of showy LinkedIn posts talking about life lessons people have learned from Ted. One review called the show a “warm hug of nice.”
Personally, in trying serve an evasive defendant, I’ve researched social media, court dockets, or anything else that will help me locate where and when the defendant may be. My process server has shown up holding a bouquet of flowers, an empty cardboard box, and waited at the end of a bike race, looking for Racer # 3433 at the finish line.
So, did Sudeikis do something wrong? It depends. Was Olivia Wilde evading service, requiring them to go to this extra mile to “catch” her? We don’t know that.
But, we do know this: This move is inflammatory and is going to make this litigation more difficult. As lawyers, we are faced with all sorts of “allowed” procedural tactics that sound great on paper, but that can also skew litigation into scorched earth territories in real life. Part of a good lawyer’s job is to talk clients out of those tactics and focus on the bigger picture.
But, looking at the big picture, the damage may already be done. This custody battle just got a lot more contentious. And, honestly, it’s going to be weird watching Ted Lasso manage his own divorce and custody issues knowing what I know about this messy real-life drama.
For nearly a decade, I’ve been writing about the Tennessee post-judgment interest statute, Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-14-121, which was amended in 2012 to change from the long-standing fixed rate of 10% to a variable rate that changes every 6 months.
My initial concern was one that many Tennessee lawyers shared: Because the interest rate is subject to change every six months, will the applicable rate on an existing judgment also change every six months?
From the TNCourts.gov website: “Beginning July 1, 2012, any judgment entered will have the interest set at two percent below the formula rate published by the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions as set in Public Chapter 1043. The rate does not fluctuate and remains in effect when judgment is entered.”
In an opinion issued last night, however, we have our answer!
In the case (Laura Coffey v. David L. Coffey, No. E2021-00433-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 11, 2022), the Tennessee Court of Appeals notes this long-standing confusion and then immediately dispels it.
In its analysis, the Court notes that the rate to be applied under Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-14-121(a) is clear and unambiguous (it’s math), and it’s the entirely separate provision at Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-14-121(b) that introduces fluctuations in the general rate. Noting the clarity in (a), the Court finds that (b) does not create ambiguity as to existing judgments.
Under Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-14-121(a), the Court writes, the “applicable post-judgment interest rate does not fluctuate when applied to a particular judgment; instead, it remains the same for the entire period of time following entry of the judgment…until the judgment is paid.”
It’s always a great day when an unresolved issue gets clarity. Sometimes I make a joke that only “law nerds” will appreciate a legal development like this; for this one, though, I think all Tennessee lawyers will benefit from this opinion.
A good rule of thumb for prevailing parties in litigation is this: If you want something, be sure to include that in the court order.
Well, duh. The Judge can’t give it to you if it’s not expressly written in the order.
A recent opinion from the Tennessee Court of Appeals (Hartigan v. Brush, No. E202001442COAR3CV, 2021 WL 4983075 (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 27, 2021)), however, makes clear that post-judgment interest applies on all monetary judgments in Tennessee, no matter if the order expressly says so.
There, the Court noted that, under Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-14-122, “Interest shall be computed on every judgment…,” and, as a result, post-judgment interest is “mandatory.”
It’s an issue that’s unlikely to come up often, partially because every prevailing party generally includes an express grant in their judgment. But, when the order doesn’t expressly say it, have this recent case ready to go.
Creditors Rights 101 