APPELLATE COURT OPINIONS

Two former police officers sought several tangible benefits of retirement guaranteed by Metro ordinances and police department policies. The officers requested such benefits and were denied, the Deputy Chief of Police citing a lack of good standing, as required by the ordinances, as the reason. The officers filed a declaratory judgment action. Metro filed a motion to dismiss asserting that a common law writ of certiorari should have been filed instead. The trial court granted the motion to dismiss. We reverse and remand.

This case concerns an employment agreement entered into by employees of a company. The employment agreement contained provisions against solicitation and competition. Four employees who signed the agreement later left the company and went to work for one of its main competitors. The company leveled numerous allegations against the four employees and their new employer, including breach of the employment agreement, breach of duty of loyalty, unlawful inducement of breach of contract, and tortious interference with contractual relations and business relations. The trial court granted summary judgments in favor of the four employees and their new employer. The judgment of the trial court is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.

The Defendant, Travis Young, was convicted of two counts of aggravated robbery, three counts of aggravated assault, two counts of reckless aggravated assault, and one count of intentionally evading arrest. The trial court sentenced the Defendant to an effective sixteen-year sentence. On appeal, the Defendant contends that the trial court erred when it: (1) classified him as a Range II offender; (2) enhanced the Defendant’s sentences; and (3) imposed consecutive sentences. We affirm the judgments of the trial court as modified, and we remand the case for entry of judgments consistent with this opinion.

Prisoner filed Petition for a writ of certiorari. The Trial Court refused to issue the writ. We affirm.

In this consolidated appeal, the Appellants, Maurice Leonard and Kenneth Shondale Mason, appeal their convictions by a Bedford County jury. Following a joint trial, Leonard and Mason were convicted of aggravated burglary, attempted robbery, assault, and false imprisonment. As a result of these convictions, Leonard received an effective sentence of four years, as a Range I offender, and Mason received an effective sentence of sixteen years as a Range II offender. On appeal, Leonard and Mason each raise two issues for our review: (1) whether the evidence is sufficient to support the convictions; and (2) whether the sentences imposed by the trial court are excessive. Following review, we affirm the judgments of conviction and resulting sentences.

This is a Title IV-D child support case. The Appellant State of Tennessee ex rel. LaJuanta McNeil Dauda was granted an order legitimizing the minor child and setting Appellee/Father’s child support obligation going forward. Appellee/Father filed a petition to set aside paternity, which was denied. Appellee/Father’s child support arrears were determined and, thereafter, the child’s mother sought to have Appellee/Father’s support obligation suspended and any arrears forgiven. The trial court granted the motion and the State appeals. We reverse and remand.

Employer and its insurer filed suit against employee for fraud in the procurement of workers' compensation benefits. Employee and his wife filed a counter-complaint alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress. retaliatory discharge and loss of consortium. The trial court dismissed the counter-complaint for failure to state a claim. Employee sought to amend the counter-complaint to add procurement of breach of employment contract and a tortious interference claim against the insurer. The trial court also denied these claims. Employee and his wife appeal. We reverse in part, affirm in part, and remand.

The Petitioner, Michael Henderson, appeals the lower court’s denial of his petition for habeas corpus relief. The State has filed a motion requesting that this Court affirm the trial court pursuant to Rule 20, Rules of the Court of Criminal Appeals. The Petitioner has failed to comply with the procedural requirements for seeking habeas corpus relief and has failed to allege any ground that would render the judgment of conviction void. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court’s dismissal.

Robert W. Bible d/b/a Chalet Village Chalets (“Plaintiff”) sued Ted Mullikin and Ted Mullikin d/b/a Mountain Rentals of Gatlinburg (“Defendant”) alleging, in part, that Defendant was in breach of a contract for the sale by Plaintiff to Defendant of Plaintiff’s chalet rental business. The case was triedwithout a jury, and the Trial Court granted Plaintiff a judgment against Defendant for $21,931.35. Defendant appeals to this Court. We affirm.

Indicted for rape of a child, the defendant, Eric Maxie, was convicted by a Shelby County Criminal Court jury of aggravated sexual battery. He appeals and challenges the sufficiency of the convicting evidence. Because the record supports the jury’s verdict, we affirm the conviction.

Aggrieved of his robbery convictions, the petitioner, William H. Stitts, sought post-conviction relief, which was denied by the Circuit Court of Madison County after an evidentiary hearing. On appeal, the petitioner presses his claim that appellate counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to ensure that a trial exhibit, a videotape of one of the robberies, was included in the appellate record on direct appeal. We affirm the denial of post-conviction relief.

This workers' compensation appeal has been referred to the Special Workers' Compensation Appeals Panel in accordance with Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-225(e)(3) for hearing and reporting to the Supreme Court our findings of fact and conclusions of law. In this appeal, the Employer, Bridgestone Americas Holding, Inc. (Bridgestone) asserts that the trial court erred in awarding to the Employee, Henry Estes, seven and one-half percent permanent partial disability to the right arm based upon inconsistent alternative findings of the trial court related to apportioning Mr. Estes’ injury to his hand. Mr. Estes alleges the injury should have been apportioned to his hand rather than the arm. We conclude the trial court correctly found Mr. Estes’ carpal tunnel injury should be apportioned to the arm and, based upon our review of the record, fix his impairment at five percent of the right upper extremity. Based upon this finding, we agree with the trial court that Mr. Estes will sustain a seven and one-half percent permanent partial disability to the right arm. Accordingly, the judgment of the trial court is affirmed.

The defendant, Christopher W. Norwood, was convicted by a Williamson County jury of conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery, a Class C felony, and evading arrest, a Class A misdemeanor. The trial court imposed a sentence of 2.7 years as a mitigated offender to be served on probation after the service of sixty days incarceration for the conspiracy offense and a concurrent sentence of eleven months and twenty-nine days for the evading arrest offense. The defendant argues on appeal that the trial court abused its discretion in denying him judicial diversion. Upon a full review of the record, arguments of counsel and applicable law, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.

This workers’ compensation appeal has been referred to the Special Workers’ Compensation Appeals Panel of the Supreme Court in accordance with Tennessee Code Annotated § 50-6-225(e)(3) for hearing and reporting of findings of fact and conclusions of law. The trial court found that the employee suffered a 5% medical impairment to the body as a whole and determined that the employee was entitled to a permanent partial disability award of 10% to the body as a whole. The employee contests the adequacy of this award and the failure of the trial court to award the employee additional amounts as a penalty against the employer for the employer’s delay in paying temporary total disability benefits. We affirm the trial court in all respects.

In this case, the employee, Christine Pesce, suffered an acute injury to her left knee during the course of her employment with Aerostructures/Vought Aircraft Industries (Vought) resulting in the dislodging of a large osteochondral fragment in the knee. This fragment was surgically removed and her treating physician found she had sustained a loss of joint space in the patellofemoral joint. Because the injury is not covered by the American Medical Association Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, the physicians who testified both for Ms. Pesce and Vought based their determinations on injuries that were covered by the Guides and thought by the testifying physician to be similar. The trial court found Ms. Pesce to have sustained a fifteen percent impairment to her left leg resulting in a fifty percent disability to that extremity. Vought has appealed challenging the amount of the award and the admissibility of the testimony of Ms. Pesce's treating and evaluating physicians based upon an alleged lack of their reliability. We find that the evidence does not preponderate against the disability award and that the trial court properly admitted the testimony of Ms. Pesce's expert witnesses. Accordingly, we affirm.

The plaintiff was rendered a quadriplegic after a car accident, and he received care at The Regional Medical Center at Memphis. The hospital staff included University of Tennessee School of Medicine residents, private physicians who were dual employees of a private corporation and the University of Tennessee as part of its residency training program, and nurses employed by another private corporation. The dual employee physicians treated patients independently in their capacity as employees of the private corporation and supervised resident physicians in their capacity as
employees of the University of Tennessee. A University of Tennessee resident physician intended to perform a lumbar puncture procedure on the plaintiff, and he left a written request for a nurse for a lumbar puncture kit for said procedure. The nurse provided this kit, but did not include an antiseptic. The day of the procedure, the resident physician lowered the plaintiff’s bed rail and placed the plaintiff on his side in anticipation of performing the lumbar puncture, but when he noticed that an antiseptic was missing from the kit, he briefly left the plaintiff unattended to obtain the antiseptic. When the resident physician returned to the room, the plaintiff had fallen off the bed onto the floor. The plaintiff ruptured his spleen from the fall, requiring major surgery which resulted in subsequent complications. The plaintiff filed suit in both the Tennessee Claims Commission and the circuit court against the resident, the University, the hospital, the nurse, and the present corporate defendants, alleging claims of medical malpractice and negligent supervision. The liability of the resident and the University was stipulated by the parties in the Claims Commission, and these parties were dismissed from the circuit court proceeding on the basis of immunity. The present defendant corporations remained in the circuit court action. After discovery, the plaintiff moved for summary judgment in the circuit court. The defendant physicians’ corporation moved for summary judgment based upon immunity and the plaintiff’s lack of expert testimony, and the defendant nurse’s corporation moved for summary judgment based upon the plaintiff’s lack of expert testimony.  The trial court granted both defendants’ motions for summary judgment and certified the judgments as final. The plaintiff filed a timely notice of appeal to this Court.  We affirm.

A Shelby County jury convicted the Defendant, Kascey Marquis Campbell, of first degree premeditated murder, two counts felony murder, robbery, and aggravated burglary. On appeal, he contends that there was insufficient evidence to support his convictions and that he acted under duress. Finding no error, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.

This is an action in conversion, fraud, and breach of fiduciary duty instituted by will beneficiaries against the decedent’s sister, who was also the Executrix of his estate. The threshold issue involves subject matter jurisdiction for this appeal. Although a recent amendment to the Tennessee Code would place appellate jurisdiction for this case in the trial court, we hold that a more specific, prior private act conferring appellate jurisdiction on this Court controls. The second, and pivotal, issue in this dispute involves the ownership of four certificates of deposit (CD) that were purchased by Mr. Paul Harris Nelson (Mr. Nelson), the decedent, and that were later claimed and cashed by Ms. Margie Little (Ms. Little), the Defendant/Appellee, just prior to the opening of the estate. The Estate of Mr. Nelson (the Estate) appeals the lower court’s ruling that Ms. Little owned the CDs at the time of Mr. Nelson’s death because the siblings held the CDs jointly with a right of survivorship. Thus, the Estate also appeals the court’s findings of no conversion, fraud, or breach of fiduciary duty by Ms. Little with respect to the CDs.  We affirm.

In 1985, the Petitioner, Donnie E. Johnson, was convicted of the first degree murder of his wife, Connie Johnson. See State v. Johnson, 734 S.W.2d 154, 155 (Tenn. 1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 994, 108 S. Ct. 1303 (1988). The jury imposed and the trial court approved a sentence of death. Id. The conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal by both the Court of Criminal Appeals and the Tennessee Supreme Court. The Petitioner later sought post-conviction relief, which was unsuccessful. See Donnie E. Johnson v. State, No. 02C01-9111-CR-00237, 1997 WL 141887, at * 1 (Tenn. Crim. App., at Jackson, Mar. 27, 1997), perm. to appeal denied, (Tenn. Sept. 8, 1997); Donnie Edward Johnson v. State, No. 02C01-9111-CR-00237, 1995 WL 603159 (Tenn., Oct. 9, 1995); Donnie Edward Johnson v. State, No. 02C01-9111-CR-00237, 1994 WL 90483, at *1 (Tenn. Crim. App., at Jackson, Mar. 23, 1994); Donnie Edward Johnson v. State, No. 02-S-01-9207-CR- 00041, 1993 WL 61728, at *1 (Tenn. Crim. App., at Jackson, Mar. 8, 1993). On June 9, 2006, Petitioner Johnson filed a petition to compel testing of biological evidence as provided by the Post- Conviction DNA Analysis Act of 2001. The post-conviction court denied the petition on October 9, 2006. Upon review of the record, we affirm the judgment of the post-conviction court.

The petitioner, Eric D. Wallace, appeals from the circuit court’s summary dismissal of his second pro se petition for writ of habeas corpus. Following our review of the parties’ briefs and applicable law, we affirm the circuit court’s judgment.

The defendant, Johnny Baxter, was convicted by a McMinn County jury of rape of a child, a Class A felony, for which he received a sentence of twenty years in the Department of Correction. In this appeal, he argues that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the conviction, that the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury on child abuse as a lesser included offense, and that the trial court failed to account for mitigating proof in its sentencing determination. We hold that no error exists, and we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The defendant, Tommy Lee Henry, was convicted by a Sullivan County jury of tampering with evidence, a Class C felony, and a third offense of possession of cocaine, a Class E felony. The defendant was sentenced as a Range I, standard offender to four years for the tampering conviction and two years for the possession conviction to be served concurrently in the Department of Correction. In this appeal, the defendant claims that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress. He claims that the police illegally detained him when they found him inside a parked car with two other individuals in a high-crime area at approximately 3:00 a.m. and that they illegally seized evidence during the detention. We hold that the trial court properly denied the motion, and we affirm its judgments.

This is an adoption case involving a child support arrearage. By consent of the biological father, the trial court entered an order terminating the father’s parental rights and permitting the husband of the biological mother to adopt the child. The order further stated that the biological father had satisfied all child support obligations. The State intervened in the action and filed a motion to alter or amend the order to include a provision stating that the father still owed child support. At a hearing, the mother stated that she had no desire to collect any child support arrearages from the father. In light of this, the trial court amended its order to reflect that the biological father owed the State a reduced child support arrearage, but owed nothing to the mother. The State now appeals, arguing that the trial court’s order constituted an impermissible retroactive modification of the original child support order. We modify the order, finding that the trial court’s order was, in fact, a retroactive modification of a valid child support order.

This is a petition to set aside an order establishing parentage. The child at issue was born in 1990. In 1997, the juvenile court entered an order establishing the petitioner as the child’s father. Eight years later, the petitioner took an independent DNA test which indicated that he was not the child’s biological father. The petitioner then filed a petition to disestablish his parentage of the child, attaching the results of the independent DNA test to his petition. After a hearing, the juvenile court referee recommended court-approved DNA testing to prove or disprove the petitioner’s parentage. This recommendation was confirmed by the juvenile court judge. The respondent mother filed a motion for a rehearing before the juvenile court judge. The motion was granted. After a rehearing, the juvenile court judge dismissed the petitioner’s petition for court-ordered DNA testing to determine parentage. The petitioner now appeals. We reverse, determining that relief should be granted under these circumstances, and remand to the trial court for further proceedings.

The defendant, Heath Baldwin, pled guilty to misdemeanor assault and received an agreed eleven month, twenty-nine day sentence with the manner of service to be determined by the trial court. Following a sentencing hearing, the court ordered that the defendant serve his sentence in confinement. On appeal, the defendant challenges the denial of an alternative sentence,  specifically the denial of probation. After our review of the record and the parties’ briefs, we affirm the judgment of the Shelby County Criminal Court.