The Tennessee Court of Workers' Compensation Claims announced today that it will implement a new process for settlement approvals in Memphis and open a new satellite office in Lauderdale County to help alleviate the volume of cases at the Memphis office. The Memphis office will transition from an appointment to a first-come, first-served process. On Tuesdays, 20 settlements will be accepted from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. and nine will be accepted from 1-2 p.m. CDT. On Thursdays, the office will accept 20 settlements in the morning. Then in July, the court will operate a satellite location in Ripley on the third Friday of each month from 9 to 11:30 a.m. CDT in the chancery courtroom. The satellite location also will operate on a first-come, first-served process.

Gov. Bill Lee signed new legislation this week aimed at protecting the elderly population in the state, Action News 5 reports. Backed by the Tennessee Commission on Aging and Disability, HB630/SB439 creates a searchable registry of unlicensed facilities and increases the penalty for operating a facility without a license. “This law will provide transparency for Tennessee families as they look to find care for a loved one and deter habitual unlicensed operators who seek to take advantage of our most vulnerable,” said commission director James Dunn. The state’s Elder Abuse Task Force reported in 2022 that elderly and vulnerable adults residing in unlicensed facilities are especially susceptible to neglect, abuse and financial exploitation.

After months of trying to get answers as to why his son died while in custody at the Hardeman County Correctional Facility, Eddie Tardy now knows. With the help of attorney Daniel Horwitz and questions from Tennessee Lookout, Tardy has learned that his 34-year-old son Laeddie Coleman was fatally stabbed by three inmates in a prison day room in September 2021. District Attorney General Mark Davidson said his office has received a file on the case and will present it to a grand jury in September. Coleman is at least the fifth inmate to be murdered at the Hardeman County facility since 2014, Tennessee Lookout reports. In 2020, the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office conducted an audit that found both CoreCivic, which operates the facility, and the Tennessee Department of Correction failed to properly document inmate deaths and identify the causes.

Gov. Bill Lee on Friday signed a the campaign finance and ethics bill into law, the Associated Press reports. The bill, which was opposed by several influential advocacy groups, requires politically active nonprofits to disclose spending totaling at least $5,000 within 60 days of an election on communications that contain a state candidate’s name or likeness. It also requires political committee leadership to provide identification. “I think that transparency is a good idea,” Lee said earlier this month. “I think that whenever we have transparency into organizations that politically lobby, that’s a good thing.” Opponents of the bill include Americans for Prosperity, Tennessee Right to Life and the National Rifle Association.

Legal services company Latitude has named Anne McKnight as director of legal recruiting and placement in the company’s Nashville office, the Nashville Post reports. McKnight was most recently senior counsel at Ogletree Deakins and has also worked at Wimberly Lawson Wright Daves & Jones and Howell & Fisher. In her new role, McKnight will work with attorneys, paralegals and other legal professionals on placements at law firms and in corporate legal departments. Since being established in Nashville, Latitude has expanded into several markets across the country, including Boston, Miami and Minneapolis.

A lawsuit filed last week by the mother of a Hawkins County eighth grader says the county’s school system failed to act after her son was repeatedly subjected to racially-motivated attacks, the Tennessee Lookout reports. The lawsuit says the student, who is biracial, was subjected to a “racially-hostile school environment” where he was called by a “barrage” of “racial epithets” and taunted with hate-based drawings and caricatures. The suit says officials from the Hawkins County Board of Education “knowingly tolerated, condoned, and were deliberately indifferent to the pattern of racial harassment suffered by” the plaintiff’s son. School officials “vehemently” deny that the system “tolerates racial discrimination or harassment of any kind.” The suit seeks an injunction against the school system to prevent further abuse and $2.5 million in damages.

The lack of an ethics code for U.S. Supreme Court justices is “unimaginable,” U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said during a conference in Chicago on the independence of the federal judiciary. Walton said some might consider his remarks "heresy" but he saw no reason justices should not be subject to the conduct code as lower-court judges. "If the perception of the American public is that we have a segment of our judiciary that's not policing itself adequately because it has no rules that dictate how they are to conduct themselves, I think it does create a real problem," Walton said. Reuters has more on the story.

A review of state executions records by the Tennessean has found that the state has not followed its own policies for carrying out lethal injections since it resumed executions four years ago. The paper says it reviewed thousands of pages of records and found that the state’s lethal injection protocol is “fraught with problems.” It also found that the state uses a “troubled Texas-based pharmacy to obtain its lethal cocktail of drugs.” Two executions have taken place under these protocols: Billy Ray Irick in 2018 and Donnie Johnson in 2019. Issues with the process came to light when Gov. Bill Lee halted the execution of Oscar Franklin Smith last month. He has suspended executions through the end of the year while an investigation is conducted. The governor’s office and the Department of Correction did not respond to the paper’s questions citing the review by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton.

The American Bar Association’s Center for Innovation has launched a new website, Justice System Metrics, that catalogues 200 key metrics and performance indicators that can be used to evaluate progress and innovation in the justice sector. The site also provides real-world examples of how the metrics are being used to understand and drive progress in the justice system. According to Bob Ambrogi’ LawSites blog, the metrics are keyword searchable based on key focus (e.g., consumer harm, market viability), data source (e.g., bar association, regulator, court) and data type (qualitative, quantitative or hybrid).

The Tennessee Bar Association will be closed Monday for the Memorial Day holiday. We will reopen at 8 a.m. CDT on Tuesday.  Staff are working both remotely and in person at the new TBA office, 3310 West End Ave., Suite 590. Access email addresses and direct lines here.