Over the long New Years holiday, I found my law school’s “Lawyers of the Future” picture book in a box while cleaning out my basement.
This was a booklet all University of Tennessee College of Law students were given at the start of a school year, with pictures and biographies of all the law students.
My plan had been to throw all of this stuff away, but I just couldn’t. Instead, I strolled down memory lane, looking at all the faces of the people who I’d assumed would be part of my professional life forever, as opposing counsel, judges, and law partners.
Twenty years ago, though, I looked at those faces with less sentimentality. Back then, I looked at those people and their prestigious backgrounds, mainly, as competition. Competition for grades. For law review. Moot Court. Summer Jobs. Clerkships. Associate positions.
Lawyers, do you remember how much you agonized over your first semester 1L law school grades? I mean, it felt like everything in your life depended on Criminal Law, Contracts, Civil Procedure, Legal Writing, and Torts.
Law school grades just absolutely consumed our lives.
But, what about other types of long-term service contracts? Is the service-provider entitled to compensation for both past-due amounts and future contract payments coming due, regardless of whether they can find a “replacement” customer?
This exact issue is presented in three new lawsuits that were filed in mid-December in Davidson County. In the lawsuits, a commercial linen company (i.e. napkins, aprons, bar towels, mats, etc.) sued three Nashville restaurants for breach of the linen rental agreement. In all, the actual past due amount wasn’t that much–instead, the lions share of the requested judgment was for damages for the remaining months of the contract, which this particular agreement. Under this agreement, the provider could recover “60% of the weekly service charge for the unexpired term” as its future damages.
For instance, in the lawsuit against Woolworths on 5th, the restaurant had an actual overdue balance of just $1,430.11. But, after applying the damages clause, the rental company is asking for a total of $77,440.60, which includes 60% of the not-yet-due amounts owed over the 60 month service agreement.
This seems a bit unfair, right?
These types of damages are known as “liquidated damages.” When the actual amount of damages under a contract are uncertain and difficult to calculate, these provisions are agreed to by the parties at the time the contract is signed to provide certainty and establish a method for calculating those damages.
With real estate, it’s really easy to calculate damages —how long was the property vacant after the breach? With longer-term service contracts, it’s more difficult–what expenses and costs did the service provider not incur by not having to provide the linen?
In Tennessee, a liquidated damages clause will be generally be allowed unless the challenging party proves that the provision is really just a penalty and/or designed to punish the breaching party. Tennessee law does not favor penalties, and, if it’s a close call, Tennessee Courts will be inclined to disallow the penalty. Testerman v. Home Beneficial Life Insurance Co., 524 S.W.2d 664 (Tenn.App.1974). In short, a liquidated damages provision should be somewhat reasonable in relation to the possible injury suffered and not unconscionable or excessive.
More recent Tennessee cases tend to favor allowing parties to a contract the freedom to agree to whatever business deal they want, even it’s an awful deal with a fairly onerous damages provision. See Guiliano v. Cleo, Inc., 995 S.W.2d 88, 101 (Tenn.,1999). “‘The bargain may be an unfortunate one for the delinquent party, [but] it is not the duty of courts of common law to relieve parties from the consequences of their own improvidence.’” Id.
This will be interesting to watch. Sure, damages at 60% of the remaining term sounds really high, but maybe that’s representative of the expected profits in the linen rental industry. If it’s close, a Tennessee court will allow this.
I get 6 calls a year from out-of-state clients, asking me to file a lawsuit to enforce a confession of judgment contained in their out-of-state loan documents.
Some background: A confession of judgment is a provision in a loan or an entirely separate loan document that grants, at the time the loan is signed, the lender an unequivocal right to take a judgment for the debt under that note in the event of a breach, sometimes without the right to notice of the suit, a hearing, or any defenses. In short, when you sign the loan documents, you also sign an agreed judgment for the unpaid debt in advance. This is a device that is sometimes used by predatory lenders–lenders “of last resort,” who serve desperate borrowers and expect the loans to go bad.
Tennessee law expressly prohibits judgments based on confessions of judgment. Tenn. Code Ann. § 25-2-101(a) says:
Any power of attorney or authority to confess judgment which is given before an action is instituted and before the service of process in such action, is declared void; and any judgment based on such power of attorney or authority is likewise declared void.
Couldn’t be more clear, right? Well, what happens when a New York creditor takes a judgment in New York (where it’s valid) based on a confession of judgment and asks a Tennessee court (where it’s not) to recognize it as valid and enforceable, under the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act?
Doesn’t the statute say “any judgment” based on a confession of judgment is “declared void”?
It’s an interesting question, and, yesterday, the Tennessee Court of Appeals issued the first opinion ever deciding this issue. The case is Capital Partners Network OT, Inc. v. TNG Contractors, LLC, et al. AL., No. M202000371COAR3CV, 2020 WL 6708232 (Tenn. Ct. App. Nov. 16, 2020).
The opinion provides a great background on defenses to the UEFJA and goes on to note that, under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution, every state must respect the judgments and sovereignty of its sister states, and that a state would be “reluctant” to question another state’s judgments on public policy concerns and only after the defendant satisfies a “stern and heavy burden.”
In order to deny another state’s judgment, then, it’s got to be a really, really big deal, and the words the Court used was “repugnant to the Federal Constitution.”
When discussing a judgment based on a confession of judgment or cognovit note, the Tennessee courts will look to whether the loan document “denies the debtor due process of law.” A question is whether there was a “voluntary and knowing waiver of the fundamental due process notice and a hearing.”
In the end, the Court wrote that “a foreign money judgment resulting from a cognovit note or clause that was entered into with a knowing, voluntary waiver of the right to notice and an opportunity to be heard must enjoy full faith and credit in Tennessee.” So, a small-print provision hidden in a loan note will not satisfy this test, but a separate document that clearly and prominent states the purpose of the document and the rights being waived will suffice.
Again, to be clear, this doesn’t mean that the Tennessee court will enter a judgment based on the out-of-state confession of judgment. Tenn. Code Ann. § 25-2-101(a) doesn’t allow that.
Instead, this case says that, if a creditor has a confession of judgment and is smart, the creditor will take a judgment in the other state (where these types of judgments are allowed), and then hire a Tennessee creditors rights attorney to enroll and domesticate this foreign judgment.
In a post from last month, I mentioned that, when a commercial tenant defaults and leaves a leased property, the landlord is faced with a hard decision: File the lawsuit for unpaid rent now, or do you wait 6-9 months until a replacement tenant can be found?
One thing we know for sure: A landlord can’t just file a lawsuit for all the rent due for the remainder of the term. Instead, the landlord has a duty to mitigate its losses, which means–in this situation–to try to find a replacement tenant.
I represent a lot of commercial landlords, and, when there’s a payment default and they want to evict a tenant, there’s an early strategy question that they all face: (1) Do we sue for possession only; or (2) Do we sue for money and unpaid rent (through the date of the court hearing)?
It’s a nuanced question. Most landlords choose # 2, especially since detainer lawsuits are filed in General Sessions Court and, due to a little-known exception, you can take a huge money judgment in “small” claims court.
But, they’ll generally say, what about the unpaid rent for time periods after we get a judgment and evict them from the property? That’s a second lawsuit. Isn’t there a rule against two lawsuits on the same issues?
Earlier this week, a lawsuit was filed in Davidson County Chancery Court by a landlord to collect $130,697.44 in unpaid rent from a Romano’s Macaroni Grill located in Rutherford County. There was no allegation that any of the facts of the case occurred in Davidson County or that the parties contractually agreed that the venue for any disputes would be in Nashville.
Should this lawsuit be dismissed for improper venue, where the business, all operations, and the leased premises were all in Rutherford County?
Not necessarily. Here’s why: All of the Defendants use corporate registered agents whose offices are based in Davidson County, and that subjects them to venue in Davidson County.
When analyzing venue for causes of action under Tenn. Code Ann. § 20-4-101(a), a defendant can be “found” in “any county wherein it has an office for the furtherance of its business activities.”
Tennessee courts have said that a registered agent’s address is an office for the furtherance of the defendant’s business activities, and it doesn’t matter that the defendant doesn’t actually operate a business out of that address or doesn’t otherwise have any other connection to that county. See Fed. Exp. v. The Am. Bicycle Grp., LLC, No. E200701483COAR9CV, 2008 WL 565687, at *3 (Tenn. Ct. App. Mar. 4, 2008).
Maybe this isn’t a big deal–most of these corporate agents are located in Davidson County, and Nashville uniformly has very strong courts and judges.
But, Tennessee is a very, very long state. It’s definitely something to keep in mind when you’re a company in Greenville or Memphis, and you’re selecting a registered agent.
But, despite being in payment default, The Palm went on the offensive and premptively filed the first lawsuit, arguing that the landlord’s (i.e. the Nashville Hilton) own shut-down in response to COVID was a breach that excused The Palm’s payment of its rent.
At the time, I marveled at the audacity of the tenant in making the first move. Today, however, I’ve discovered that this dispute has gone absolutely bonkers, and it’s has been (or is being) litigated in nearly every trial court in Davidson County.
First, there was the Chancery Court lawsuit filed by The Palm on July 9, 2020.
Then, after the Hilton declared The Palm to be in breach on July 13, 2020, the Hilton filed a Davidson County General Sessions evictions lawsuit on July 14, 2020.
In response, The Palm filed a Notice of Removal of the detainer action to the District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee on August 7, 2020. This prompted the Hilton to file a notice of voluntary dismissal on August 10, 2020.
Then, the Hilton filed a second detainer action in General Sessions Court on August 13, 2020. On August 26, 2020, The Palm filed an Application for Removal of the matter to Davidson County Circuit Court, which was granted.
So, what courts did they miss? Criminal Court? Bankruptcy? Environmental Court?
This dispute involves two mega-law firms, so it’s fun to see big-time lawyers fighting over eviction issues in small claims court.
Still, though, I have to wonder if the Hilton could have opposed The Palm’s request to remove the matter to Circuit Court, which was–possibly–an attempt to get the matter moved to the slower-paced Circuit Court, but without having to post the detainer possessory bond pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-18-130(b)(2), which requires a tenant that loses in sessions court to post one year’s worth of rent in order to remain in possession of the property.
Sessions Judges don’t like to waste valuable docket time on complex commercial matters, so they are generally happy to allow complicated, discovery-heavy trials to be removed to Circuit Court pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 16-15-732.
But, at the same time, it’s a move that Sessions judges see all the time, and the Judges will sometimes ask tenant’s counsel “Is the rent paid current?” and, depending on the answer, grant a judgment for possession, and tell the tenant’s counsel to appeal and sort it out in Circuit Court.
I don’t want to ruin the developing story, so I will remain quiet about the Landlord’s options in Circuit Court to force payment of rent. But they have a few.
Whatever direction this goes, in the age of COVID, this qualifies as entertainment (for law nerds).
Statute of Limitations; when a breach of contract cause of action accrues; and the standard of review for a 12.02(6) motion. This case from yesterday, In re Estate of Donald Cowan, No. M2019-01597-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Aug. 25, 2020) has a great statement of the law on statutes of limitation, when the clock starts ticking on a claim, and a good recap of the standards in granting a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 12.02(6).
It’s a well written opinion, and a litigant with those issues can literally cut and paste those sections into a brief.
Motions to Intervene under Tenn. Riv. Civ. P. 24.Regions Bank v. The Blumberg Trust, et. al., No. E202000051COAR3CV, 2020 WL 4919783 (Tenn. Ct. App. Aug. 21, 2020). This opinion, issued on Friday, has a great summary of the statutes and case law on Intervention as of Right and Permissive Intervention in Tennessee under Rule 24.
In that case, the party seeking to intervene was an assignee of the debt and was really only trying to substitute itself as a party, so it’s strange that intervention was even an issue.
In an even stranger twist, the prevailing party (appellee) most definitely submitted the Order Denying the Motion, and the submitted (and entered) trial court order was entirely devoid of factual or legal analysis. As a result, the Court of Appeals refused to rule on the issues on appeal and remanded the case for further proceedings.
My question is this: It was clearly a deficient bare-bones trial court order, but doesn’t the appellant share the responsibility of curating the record? Shouldn’t the appellant have submitted a competing order that had enough substantive details to properly present the issue on appeal?
Just a strange case.
Prejudgment Interest under Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-14-123. The Court of Appeals revisited the case of 101 Constr. Co. v. Hammet, No. M201801321COAR3CV, 2019 WL 5606610, at *7 (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 30, 2019), appeal denied (Mar. 26, 2020), and I can’t tell exactly why, but I appreciated the reminder about this case’s very detailed lesson about the importance of detailed communication in legal fee arrangements.
Also, it has a nearly “cut and paste” perfect discussion of the standards in Tennessee for awarding prejudgment interest under Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-14-123.
Spoiler: Tennessee Courts should always be awarding pre-judgment interest.
Elements to Determine Value of Damages under Quantum Meruit Claims (and who can testify). This is an issue that doesn’t show up in appellate cases often: what type of proof is required to establish the amount of damages in a quantum meruit claim.
The Court of Appeals provided a really good road map last Tuesday, in Blount Mem’l Hosp. v. Glasgow, No. E201900776COAR3CV, 2020 WL 4809951, at *2 (Tenn. Ct. App. Aug. 18, 2020).
The Plaintiff had an awful contract, so it had to rely on unjust enrichment/quantum meruit to recover the value of the hospital services provided to the Defendant. The Plaintiff presented proof from the “hospital’s financial representative” (not a doctor or service provider) that “she was familiar with the customary charges in the medical industry and that the hospital’s charges for the services were reasonable and customary.”
This knowledge wasn’t gleaned from a survey of the industry or by first hand knowledge of what other hospitals were charging; instead, it was based solely on what Medicare allowed hospitals to pay. (As an added note, though, the Court mentioned that the mere fact that “this is what the hospital usually charges” isn’t good enough proof.)
But, because the proof presented, i.e. that the “medical services were comparable to all hospitals in the area that accepted Medicare patients…,” was presented by a “hospital representative who is familiar with what is reasonable and customary,” the Court found that it was “sufficient to make [a] prima facie case for the reasonable value of the services rendered.” Id. at *3.
Keep this case for those situations where your witness is the controller / bookkeeper, but has no idea how to perform the underlying services. This comes up alot.
Last One: Setting Aside a Judgment Under Rule 60.03.Reese v. Amari, No. M201900329COAR3CV, 2020 WL 4342734 (Tenn. Ct. App. July 28, 2020).
This one is really interesting. A judgment debtor attacked a decades old judgment, arguing that it was a default judgment.
In denying the attack, the Court noted that, even though it was called a “default” judgment, the trial court actually entered the judgment at a trial, which the defendant didn’t attend. So, it wasn’t technically a default judgment, as that is defined under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 55, and wasn’t entitled to the more generous standards to set aside default judgments.
Separately, though, Judge Dinkins’ opinion has a very precise presentation of when a court will set aside a final judgment under Rule 60.02(3).
And, new associates, this comes up far more than you’d imagine.
The point of that opinion was that a judgment creditor seeking to domesticate a foreign judgment under the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 26-6-101 to-108) would be limited to the actual amount of the foreign judgment. In Wolf, the issue was that the creditor was asking for the judgment amount plus more post-judgment attorney fees to be allowed. The Wolf Court said that the claim for additional attorney’s fees was a separate claim.
I appreciated this case, since it provided resolution of an obscure, but common, issue under the Tennessee Foreign Judgment Act.
Well, a little more than a year later, the Wolf litigants are back at it, with another interesting issue. The latest is Friday’s opinion, The Wolf Organization, Inc. v. TNG Contractors, LLC, M202000093COAR3CV (Tenn. App. Aug. 21, 2020).
The new issue? If the foreign judgment provides for a specific post-judgment rate of interest, but the Order enrolling the foreign judgment doesn’t mention interest, what happens?
The Court makes two useful observations:
Regardless of whether the new Order says anything about post-judgment interest, all judgments are automatically entitled to post-judgment interest.
But, in the absence of a specific statement or order about the amount of post-judgment interest in the enrollment Order, the rate of interest is just the Tennessee statutory rate, found at Tenn. Code Ann. § 47-14-121.
My take-aways from this opinion:
Details matter. If you think you will need it in the future, include it in the text of the Order. An order from a court will always be the most important pleading you’ll draft, and a smart lawyer will think about all the things she will need from this order and work backwards.
Are Orders always required? Under the Foreign Judgment statute, an order is not expressly required. Instead, under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 3A.04, the Clerk simply “enrolls” the original judgment after 30 days after service.
Sure, the Wolf creditor could have avoided all of this with a more detailed Order; could they have avoided all this by not filing any order? Maybe.
Also, following the first Wolf opinion, the creditor needed to go back to the other state to get an award of attorneys fees. Couldn’t the creditor also get a judgment for post-petition interest at the higher rate and then come back to Tennessee?
Either way, it’s an interesting case on a rarely litigated statutory scheme.
Creditors Rights 101 