Court of Appeals Judge D. Michael Swiney had been practicing law in Knoxville for about eight years when he and his colleagues decided to leave their practice and open their own litigation firm.
“It was Don Paine, any of the older lawyers around will know him, Dwight Tarwater, now Justice Tarwater, and a lawyer named Harold Pinkley and I set up our law firm,” said Judge Swiney. “I’ve always found it kind of interesting that out of this four-person law firm that’s still around, that we started, that Dwight ended up where he did, as Justice Tarwater, and I ended up as Chief Judge on the Court of Appeals (COA). I always thought that was a pretty good percentage out of the four of us.”
Judge Swiney and Justice Tarwater were law partners for 20 years prior to Judge Swiney’s appointment to the bench by then Governor Don Sundquist in 1999. Judge Swiney was elected to the bench in August 2000 and re-elected in 2006 and 2014.
“In the Knoxville area if you tried a case, you appealed a case,” said Judge Swiney. “They really didn’t have appellate lawyers or anything like that. I enjoyed trying cases, but I also enjoyed arguing cases before the Court of Appeals.”
In 2016, he was selected to serve as Presiding Judge of the COA, a post he’s held for the past 10 years. The role includes assigning appellate cases to judges, ensuring the cases on appeal move through in a timely manner, and other administrative duties.
“I got very, very familiar with the workings of the court and it helped,” he said. “Each of the other two sections have presiding judges in the section where the chief judge sits. That’s been Judge [Frank G.] Clement and Judge [J. Steven] Stafford. The three of us have worked very, very closely together for the whole time.”
Judge Swiney says the work has always been engaging because of the wide variety of cases.
“I can remember going home one day and telling my wife we had oral arguments in two cases,” said Judge Swiney. “One of them involved something like a $250 dispute. I don’t remember the details, but the amount of the dispute was about $250 and the parties each argued their case. The next case after that was a construction case where the amount in question was millions of dollars. That pretty much sums up the kind of range that comes up before the COA, monetarily from very small to monetarily huge.”
More recently, however, many of the cases involve domestic matters.
"The way we always try to approach it is that every case that was in front of us was very, very important to the parties to that case.”
Judge Swiney said it’s tough to pinpoint what he will miss most about his judicial career, but daily interaction with his colleagues ranks high on his list.
“All the judges that we’ve had were up here for the right reasons and all took the job very, very seriously,” he said. “And even though we might disagree on the outcome of a particular case, we always manage to work together to try to come up with what everybody thought was the right decision and the right resolution for that case. I just enjoyed working with them, and the ability to walk down the hall or call another judge that’s on the panel and say help me work through this.”
He also views his time on the bench as an important civic duty.
“I don’t want to say I was called to be a judge, but I’ve always thought that public service is important and it’s something that those of us that have the opportunity to do it need to consider it.”
It’s a mindset he’s passed down to his children.
“Our two sons both went to, as I tell them, small boutique law schools up north,” he said. “One of them was Harvard. The other one was Yale. And they’re both in public service, too. That’s where their careers have led them, which is gratifying.”
As for post-retirement life, you might say Judge Swiney and his wife Suzann continue to take that matter under advisement.
“We decided we are going to wait and then decide when the time actually arrives,” he said. “I know I’d like for at least a little while not to have anything scheduled, even if it’s supposed to be something that’s fun.”
Judge Swiney is a 1978 graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Law. He worked in the private practice in Knoxville from 1979 to 1999. Beginning in 1994, he served as a certified mediator with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee until he was appointed to the Court of Appeals in July 1999. Judge Swiney also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law from 1997 to 2006. He is a member of the Knoxville and Tennessee Bar Associations, and the Hamilton Burnett American Inn of Court. He also served as a member of the Court of the Judiciary from 2003 to 2011.
Judge Swiney officially retires from the bench on Jan.12, 2026.
