Building on the success of the TBA Young Lawyers Division's popular Trial College, the TBA YLD is launching Business College, a new in-person program focused on sharpening transactional law skills. Designed for new and young lawyers — and any attorney wanting a refresher — this hands-on course covers core business law concepts, ethical considerations and emerging issues. Attendees will leave with practical insights and actionable tools they can immediately use to handle business matters with greater confidence. 

Session 1

Jack Wagster, Eden Firm PLLC, Nashville
Business Formation Fundamentals

Choosing the right business structure is one of the most important early decisions for any organization. This session provides a practical overview of the major business entity types and the mechanics of formation, helping attorneys identify structural options, avoid common pitfalls and understand the key legal formalities that matter when clients are starting or restructuring a business.

Session 2

Laura Chastain, Board of Professional Responsibility, Brentwood
Ethics for Transactional Lawyers and Ethics Updates from the Board of Professional Responsibility

This session will explore the ethical responsibilities of transactional lawyers, including managing conflicts of interest, responding when a client provides false or misleading information and navigating engagements involving services for third parties at a client's request. The session will also address other challenging ethical issues that arise in transactional practice. In addition, attendees will receive important ethics updates from the Board of Professional Responsibility.

Session 3

Claire Tuley, Baker Donelson, Chattanooga
How to Get to Closing: Deals, Documents and Averting Disasters

Your client signed the purchase agreement — now what? Turning a contract into a closed deal requires more than paperwork. This practical session on real estate and business transactions will walk through the key steps from contract to closing, including essential closing documents, county-specific variations and signature page best practices. Learn how to avoid the common mistakes that delay closings and how to handle the worst-case scenarios when they arise.

Join colleagues on Friday, April 10, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. CDT at Baker Donelson, 1600 West End Ave. in Nashville.
Parking and lunch are included. For more information and to register for the Business College, visit the TBA website.

The Tennessee Alliance for Black Lawyers (TABL) and the TBA Young Lawyers Division's (YLD) Diversity Committee will hold a networking mixer on April 30. The free event will run from 5:30-7:30 p.m. CDT at Burch Porter & Johnson, 130 N. Court Ave., Memphis, TN 38103. Special thanks to the law firm for sponsoring this event. All are welcome but an RSVP is required by April 23. See a flyer for more information.

SUTTON, Chief Judge. Minority shareholders of HPIL Holding, a Wyoming corporation, successfully petitioned a state court for the appointment of a receiver. Three years later, HPIL filed this lawsuit alleging that the minority shareholders looted the corporation during the receivership proceeding. Pointing to the state-court order that appointed the receiver, the district court dismissed the lawsuit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1257(a), which permits disappointed state-court litigants to seek review of state-court decisions in the United States Supreme Court but does not permit them to appeal such decisions to a federal district court. See Rooker v. Fid. Tr. Co., 263 U.S. 413, 416 (1923); Dist. of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 463 (1983). Because HPIL did not purport to seek a writ of certiorari or otherwise appeal the state-court appointment of a receiver, because the implied and vanishingly narrow jurisdictional bar under § 1257(a) does not apply, and because the bar does not displace the customary way that federal courts respect prior state court rulings (issue and claim preclusion), we reverse.

MURPHY, Circuit Judge. Since the Founding, some Americans have celebrated New Year’s Day by dangerously shooting firearms into the air. We must decide whether a police officer violated clearly established Fourth Amendment law when the officer used deadly force to stop this gunfire. At midnight on New Year’s Day in Canton, Ohio, James Williams fired dozens of shots into the air from a patio enclosed by a wooden privacy fence. Officer Robert Huber drove to the scene to investigate. Soon after Huber arrived, Williams began a second volley of this celebratory gunfire. Without giving a warning, Huber fatally shot Williams through the fence. When Williams’s wife sued, Huber asserted a qualified-immunity defense. But this case’s key factual dispute belongs to a jury. On the one hand, Huber testified that he shot at Williams because he saw Williams turning the rifle toward him and feared for his life. Under this view of the facts, Huber would have complied with the Fourth Amendment because he had probable cause to believe that Williams posed a serious risk of harm. On the other hand, video evidence would permit a reasonable jury to find that Huber saw Williams keep firing into the air the entire time. Under this view of the facts, Huber would have violated the Fourth Amendment because he lacked probable cause to believe that Williams posed a threat. And any reasonable officer would have recognized that the police may not (without warning) shoot a man when the only information they have about his “threat” status is that he was committing what Canton treats as a misdemeanor: discharging a gun into the air just after midnight to celebrate New Year’s Day. The district court thus properly denied summary judgment to Huber. We affirm.

McKEAGUE, Circuit Judge. Employees at Brown-Forman Corporation’s (“Brown- Forman”) Woodford Reserve facility were unhappy with their compensation. To meet an unanticipated increase in demand for the facility’s whiskey products, Brown-Forman attempted to ramp up production, but employee wages remained stagnant and uncompetitive. Naturally, Brown-Forman started to experience difficulties retaining its workforce. Some employees contacted the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to discuss forming a union. Initially, the organizing efforts did not gain much traction. However, after Brown-Forman announced a mere $1 across-the-board salary increase, and informed employees that no further increases would be forthcoming, support for the union grew. Meetings with the union became well-attended, union representatives were prevalent outside the facility to hand out fliers, and the union displayed an inflatable “fat cat” outside the entrance. But as the organizing campaign gained momentum, Brown-Forman did not sit idly by. In an alleged effort to curtail the organizing campaign, Brown-Forman announced it would make three significant changes to employee compensation. Brown-Forman told employees it was going to (1) give a new $4-per-hour across-the-board pay raise to all employees, (2) expand its pay progression and merit-based salary increase policy, and (3) allow employees to save their vacation hours during the December holidays. By giving employees what they wanted—better compensation—union support began to dwindle. Nonetheless, the union declared its purported majority support via authorization cards and petitioned for an election. As the election approached, Brown-Forman did not back down. Management would meet with employees (to, at least in part, articulate anti-union talking points), and a week before the election, Brown-Forman gifted employees bottles of bourbon. When it came time to vote, the union failed to secure a majority. Only 14 employees voted in support of the union while 45 employees voted in opposition. An Administrative Law Judge determined that Brown-Forman committed unfair labor practices and interfered with its employees’ efforts to unionize. The Administrative Law Judge recommended issuing a bargaining order under the standards articulated in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, 372 NLRB No. 130, 2023 WL 5506930 (2023) and NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U.S. 575 (1969). The National Labor Relations Board (the “Board”) adopted the Administrative Law Judge’s factual findings and recommended remedy, but it modified the reasoning. Rather than consider whether a new election could be held by applying the Gissel standard, the Board relied solely on the standard articulated in Cemex (a previous Board decision that upended over 50 years of precedent and called for the Board to issue a bargaining order as the default remedy once it set aside an election). Because the Board relied solely on the Cemex standard to issue the bargaining order against Brown-Forman, we must—for the first time— determine whether this new standard can serve as the basis for a bargaining order. Because the Cemex standard was created through an improper exercise of the Board’s adjudicatory authority, it cannot serve as the basis for a bargaining order. Thus, we GRANT Brown-Forman’s petition for review, DENY the Board’s cross-petition for enforcement, and REMAND for proceedings consistent with this Opinion.

Defendant, Raymond Antonio Smith, appeals from his convictions for first degree premeditated murder and theft of property valued at $2,500 or more but less than $10,000, for which he is serving a sentence of life plus twelve years. On appeal, Defendant contends that the evidence was insufficient relative to premeditation and to the stolen property’s value. After a thorough review of the record, we affirm.

The Defendant, Cedric Peter Hopgood, pleaded guilty to multiple felony drug possession offenses and received an agreed-upon sentence of thirty-three years. See T.C.A. § 39-17- 417 (2025). The Defendant filed a motion to withdraw his guilty pleas, which the trial court summarily denied. On appeal, the Defendant argues that the trial court erred by denying his motion. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The defendant, Vidal Chad Bryant, pled guilty to attempted possession with the intent to sell butyrylfentanyl, a Class C felony; possession with the intent to sell less than half a gram of methamphetamine, a Class C felony; and possession of a firearm after having been previously convicted of a felony drug offense, a Class C felony, for an agreed-upon effective sentence of six years in the Tennessee Department of Correction (“TDOC”). On appeal, the defendant argues that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion to suspend the remainder of his sentence to probation. Following our review of the record, the parties’ briefs, and applicable law, we affirm the trial court’s denial of the defendant’s motion.

The Defendant, John Bassett, appeals from his conviction for first degree premeditated murder, for which he received a life sentence without the possibility of parole. On appeal, the Defendant contends that (1) the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction because the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was responsible for the victim’s death and that he acted with premeditation and (2) the evidence was insufficient to support an enhanced sentence based upon the aggravating circumstance that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel. After review, we affirm the judgment of the trial court with respect to the Defendant’s conviction. However, we reverse the judgment of the trial court with respect to the Defendant’s sentence and remand the case for the entry of an amended judgment sentencing the Defendant to imprisonment for life.

In this interlocutory appeal, the employer challenges the trial court’s award of temporary disability benefits and attorneys’ fees. The employee suffered multiple injuries requiring treatment at an emergency room when a tripod fell on him at work. After the employee’s discharge, the employer did not offer a panel of physicians, so the employee followed up with his primary care physician, who restricted him from working. The employee then suffered a stroke, necessitating additional emergency medical care. Several weeks later, after the employee retained counsel, the employer offered two separate panels but indicated that it would not authorize any appointments until it had received the employee’s recent medical records. The employee returned the signed panels more than four months later, and both panel-selected physicians opined the employee should have been restricted from working since the date of the accident. The employer paid temporary disability benefits as of the date the employee first saw an authorized physician, but it denied any temporary disability benefits before that date due to the employee’s delay in returning the signed panels, which it deemed noncompliance. After an expedited hearing, the trial court awarded the requested disability benefits and also awarded attorneys’ fees, determining the employer had acted unreasonably in delaying the authorization of medical treatment and the payment of temporary disability benefits. The employer has appealed. Having carefully reviewed the record and arguments of counsel, we affirm the award of temporary total disability benefits, reverse the award of attorneys’ fees, and remand the case.