APPELLATE COURT OPINIONS

Plaintiff appeals from the trial court’s decision to deny his motion for discovery sanctions after granting a motion for summary judgment filed by the defendants. Discerning no reversible error, we affirm.

The defendant, Chad M. Varnell, appeals the order of the trial court revoking his probation and ordering him to serve his original
eight-year sentence in confinement. Upon our review of the record and the parties’ briefs, we reverse the judgment of the trial court and remand for a new hearing.

As issues regarding contempt and attorney fees remain pending, the order appealed from does not constitute a final appealable judgment. As such, this Court lacks jurisdiction to consider this appeal.

The pro se Petitioner, Jasper Lee Vick, appeals the summary dismissal of his fourth “Motion to Correct Illegal Sentence.” Upon our review, we affirm the summary dismissal of the motion.

This health care liability action arises from injuries suffered by a minor, Miyona Hyter, during her birth. Miyona Hyter, a minor by and through her next friend and mother, Brittany Borngne (“Plaintiff”) sued, among others, Dr. Michael Seeber who delivered the child via cesarean section and certified nurse midwife Jennifer Mercer who assisted with the birthing process. Plaintiff alleged that Nurse Mercer was negligent by failing to recognize concerning signs on the fetal monitoring strip and by failing to call Dr. Seeber for assistance sooner than she did. The Circuit Court for Hamilton County (“the Trial Court”), by agreed order, granted Dr. Seeber partial summary judgment on all claims of direct negligence against him; he remained in the case as a defendant only upon Plaintiff’s theory that he was vicariously liable for Nurse Mercer’s actions as her supervising physician. During his deposition, Dr. Seeber declined to answer questions that he argued required him to render an expert opinion regarding Nurse Mercer’s care during times that Dr. Seeber was not present and had no involvement in Plaintiff’s care. The Trial Court declined to require Dr. Seeber to answer questions that “call[] for an opinion by Dr. Seeber that asks him to comment on the actions of other healthcare providers and does not involve his own actions, as required by Lewis v. Brooks,” 66 S.W.3d 883, 887-88 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2001). After Nurse Mercer’s deposition, she submitted an errata sheet that substantively altered her answers to some of the questions. Plaintiff moved to suppress the errata sheet, arguing that Tenn. R. Civ. P. 30.05 does not allow a witness to make substantive changes to her deposition testimony. The Trial Court denied the motion but allowed Plaintiff the opportunity to reopen Nurse Mercer’s deposition and to fully cross-examine her at trial about the changes. The case proceeded to trial before a jury, which returned a verdict in Defendants’ favor. We hold that the Trial Court erred by refusing to order Dr. Seeber to answer the questions at issue in his deposition. Deeming this case distinguishable from Lewis v. Brooks, we reverse the Trial Court in its declining to compel Dr. Seeber to testify concerning the conduct of his supervisee, Nurse Mercer, and remand for a new trial.

I concur in the majority opinion on all issues except the compulsion of Dr. Seeber’s testimony. I believe the trial court correctly refused to compel this testimony in reliance on Lewis ex rel. Lewis v. Brooks, 66 S.W.3d 883 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2001).

In this divorce case, Father/Appellant appeals the trial court’s decision regarding custody of the parties’ minor children. Father contends that the trial court committed reversible error when it interviewed the minor children in camera without a court reporter or attorney present. In the absence of a transcript or a valid Tennessee Rule of Appellate Procedure 24(c) statement of the actual evidence adduced in camera or at the hearing, and in view of the fact that the trial court’s order wholly fails to comply with the mandates of Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 52.01, we cannot conduct a meaningful review of the trial court’s ultimate custody decision. Vacated and remanded.

Two cars collided at a four-way stop. One driver filed a personal injury action against the other. At trial, the two sides presented conflicting descriptions of the accident. The jury found the defendant driver was not at fault. And the trial court, as thirteenth juror, approved the jury verdict. Because the jury verdict is supported by material evidence, we affirm.

The Defendant, Amanda Dawn Freeman, appeals from the Sevier County Circuit Court’s revocation of probation for her aggravated burglary, theft, and drug-related convictions, for which she received an effective five-year sentence on probation. The Defendant contends that the trial court erred by revoking her probation and ordering her to serve the remainder of her sentence in confinement. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The pro se petitioner, Frederick Robinson, Jr., appeals the Davidson County Criminal Court’s summary dismissal of his motion to correct an illegal sentence, filed pursuant to Tennessee Rule of Criminal Procedure 36.1. Discerning no error, we affirm.

This appeal requires us to interpret provisions in the Prompt Pay Act, Tennessee Code Annotated sections 66-34-101 to -704, regarding retainage withheld on construction projects. The Prompt Pay Act requires the party withholding retainage—a percentage of total payment withheld as incentive for satisfactory completion of work—to deposit the funds into a separate, interest-bearing escrow account. Failure to do so results in a penalty of $300 per day. In this case, both parties agree the subcontractor’s retainage was not placed into an interest-bearing escrow account, and the retainage was not timely remitted to the subcontractor. Three years after completing its work on the contract, the subcontractor sued the contractor for unpaid retainage plus amounts due under the Prompt Pay Act. The contractor soon tendered the retainage; consequently, only the statutory penalty is at issue in this appeal. Tennessee Code Annotated section 66-34-104(c) states that, for persons required to deposit retainage into a separate interest-bearing escrow account, the penalty is assessed “per day for each and every day” retainage is not so deposited. Consonant with the statute’s language, its objective, the wrong the Prompt Pay Act seeks to prevent, and the purpose it seeks to accomplish, we hold that the $300 per day penalty is assessed each day retainage is not deposited in a statutorily-compliant escrow account. Consequently, while the subcontractor’s claim for the statutory penalty is subject to the one-year statute of limitations, if the subcontractor can establish that the contractor was required to deposit the retainage into an escrow account, the subcontractor is not precluded from recovering the penalty assessed each day during the period commencing 365 days before the complaint was filed. Accordingly, we reverse in part the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to the contractor and remand to the trial court for further proceedings.

We fully concur in the opinion of the Court but write separately to urge the General Assembly to clarify an issue that this decision does not address: whether Holladay Construction Group, LLC (“Holladay”), had a statutory obligation to deposit the retainage it received from 2200 Charlotte Avenue, LLC, (“Owner”) on May 27, 2015, into a separate, interest-bearing escrow account, or was obligated at that point only to pay subcontractors, such as Snake Steel, within ten days of receipt of the retainage from Owner.  

This is an appeal by Debo’s Bail Bond Company, LLC, (“Debo’s”) of an order issued by the Circuit Court for Rutherford County denying Debo’s Petition for Relief from Bond. The sole issue on appeal is whether the trial court erred in its application of Tennessee Code Annotated section 40-11-201(c) because the State declined to commence extradition proceedings. Following our review, we affirm the denial of the petition.

The plaintiff has appealed from the dismissal of her complaint for property damage stemming from a water leak. Because the plaintiff did not file her notice of appeal within the time permitted by Tenn. R. App. P. 4, we dismiss the appeal.

The Defendant-Appellant, Antonio Robinson, was convicted by a Shelby County jury of aggravated robbery, facilitation of aggravated assault, and criminally negligent homicide in violation of Tennessee Code Annotated sections 39-13-402, 39-11-403, 39-13-102, and 39-13-212. On appeal, the Defendant-Appellant claims: (1) the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress, and (2) the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support his convictions. Upon review, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The Defendant, Willie Austin Davis, was convicted by a Davidson County Criminal Court jury of aggravated criminal trespass, a Class A misdemeanor, based on his entering the property of a Nashville church from which he had been banned. On appeal, the pro se Defendant argues that he was denied a fair trial due to the trial judge’s failure to disclose his relationships with former and current members of the church and others. Following our review, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

To collect on its judgment, a judgment creditor served a garnishment on a bank. The garnishee bank initially responded that it held funds belonging to the judgment debtor, a limited liability company. Later, the bank responded “no accounts found.” The bank had two deposit accounts purportedly belonging to a different entity that shared the same name, address, and principal as the judgment debtor. The bank also had an escrow account of which the judgment debtor was a beneficiary. The judgment creditor argued that these three accounts were subject to the garnishment. The trial court disagreed. We affirm. 

Loring Justice (“Plaintiff”), individually and as next friend of N.N./N.J. (“the Child”) sued Vey Michael Nordquist, Ph.D. (“Defendant”) in the Circuit Court for Knox County (“the Trial Court”) over Defendant’s actions in connection with paternity litigation to which Plaintiff was a party. Defendant filed a motion to dismiss, but never filed a responsive pleading to the original complaint. The Trial Court granted Defendant’s motion to dismiss. Before time for appeal expired, Plaintiff filed an amended complaint as he was entitled to do under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 15.01 given that Defendant never filed a responsive pleading to the original complaint. However, the Trial Court never ruled on Plaintiff’s amended complaint. The order appealed from is not a final judgment, meaning we lack subject matter jurisdiction to hear this appeal. Therefore, we dismiss this appeal.

James H., II (“Father”) appeals the termination of his parental rights to the minor child, James H., III (“the Child”). In April 2017, Ashley P. (“Mother”) and Trinity P. (“Stepfather”) filed a petition to terminate Father’s parental rights in the Weakley County Chancery Court (“Trial Court”). Following a trial, the Trial Court terminated Father’s parental rights on two grounds of abandonment due to Father’s willful failure to visit the Child and willful failure to support the Child prior to Father’s incarceration. The Trial Court further found that termination of Father’s parental rights was in the Child’s best interest. Discerning no error, we affirm.

The Defendant, Byron Sidney Doss, was convicted after a bench trial of false imprisonment, a Class A misdemeanor, and aggravated assault involving strangulation, a Class C felony. See Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 39-13-102(A)(iv), -13-302. The trial court imposed an effective sentence of five years, suspended to time served plus five years on supervised probation. On appeal, the Defendant contends that the trial court imposed an excessively long five-year sentence. After our review, we affirm and remand the case for the entry of corrected judgment forms.

The plaintiffs in this action are operators of businesses that collect and transport municipal solid waste. The plaintiffs filed suit against the defendants, a company that operates a landfill and the county that is a partial owner of the landfill, alleging violations of certain statutes regulating solid waste disposal and landfill operations. Upon a motion to dismiss filed by the defendants, the trial court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims based upon, inter alia, the plaintiffs’ lack of standing and the court’s determination that the statutes did not create a private right of action. The plaintiffs have appealed. Discerning no reversible error, we affirm the trial court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims.

A Montgomery County Circuit Court Jury convicted the Appellant, Paul Steven Murphy, of rape and incest. The trial court ordered the Appellant to serve concurrent sentences of ten years for the rape conviction and four years for the incest conviction. On appeal, the Appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence sustaining his convictions and the length of the sentences imposed by the trial court. Upon review, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.  

This is a negligence case that was dismissed in the Tennessee Claims Commission for several articulated reasons, including that Tennessee’s recreational use statute barred the plaintiffs’ claims. For the specific reasons stated herein, we affirm the decision of the Claims Commission.

The Petitioner, Jared Scott Aguilar, appeals the Montgomery County Circuit Court’s determination that his coram nobis petition, wherein he challenged his multiple child pornography convictions, failed to state a cognizable claim for relief. On appeal, the Petitioner argues that the coram nobis court erred by finding that he had not presented newly discovered evidence entitling him to relief, specifically, evidence that the search warrant affidavit was deficient due to the investigating officer’s allegedly untrue statement therein that he discovered three child pornography files in the Petitioner’s shared computer folder, that the detective who performed a forensic examination of the Petitioner’s laptop allegedly committed perjury at trial by stating that he found the incriminating files in the Petitioner’s shared folder, and that the investigating officer had undisclosed contact with the Petitioner’s wife. Following our review, we affirm the denial of relief because the Petitioner is merely presenting “repackaged claims” that have been previously determined and which do not state a cognizable claim for relief in the coram nobis context.