A Tennessee case, Smith v. Hi-Speed, Inc. (Tenn. Ct. App. 2016), which involved a commercial lease, sets forth a very useful analysis of the parol evidence rule and the statute of frauds. The facts and legal arguments, as well as the analysis of the Court of Appeals of Tennessee, align…
In early 2019, the Supreme Court of Tennessee issued an opinion that, without exaggeration, can be said to be one of the most important Tennessee cases, if not the most important Tennessee case, to contemporary commercial litigation lawyers on the subjects of contract interpretation and the parol evidence rule. The…
Under well-established Tennessee law regarding the partition of jointly owned real estate, there is a presumption that the proceeds of the sale of the property should be divided equally between the co-tenants (co-owners). However, that is only a presumption and, quite often, the proceeds are not ultimately divided evenly because…
Under Tennessee law, when a defendant has affirmatively made an untrue statement of material fact, a plaintiff may well be able to recover for intentional misrepresentation (also called “fraud”) or for negligent misrepresentation. What if, instead of making an untrue statement of fact, the defendant failed to disclose an important…
When sales representatives, brokers, agencies, or other businesses are owed commissions, but are not paid, sometimes they have to retain an attorney to file a lawsuit to recover the unpaid commissions. Our firm, over the years, has represented many commissioned sales representatives in such lawsuits. Many times, not only have…
A partnership can be created under Tennessee law without the partners ever having a written partnership agreement. Even where parties have not expressly agreed, verbally, to operate a partnership, an implied partnership can be formed under Tennessee law where the parties involved intended the acts that give rise to a…
It happens sometimes that someone, or some company, which owes a debt will transfer assets that could have been used to pay the debt in order to avoid paying it. Such transfers are often to family members, related or successor businesses, or preferred creditors, and often, when the asset transferred…
Tennessee has a statute, T.C.A. §28-2-110, which can come into play in a lawsuit about the ownership of real estate where the party initiating the lawsuit (the “Plaintiff”) is alleged not to have paid property taxes on the property at issue for more than twenty (20) years. To paraphrase the…
A recent opinion of the Court of Appeals of Tennessee provides a good roadmap of the law for joint owners of land involved in partition cases where there are claims that the proceeds from the sale of the property should not be divided equally because of rental value received by…
Zoning laws and zoning maps are not caste in stone. They are subject to change for any number of reasons including recognition by a legislative body of a change in the character of an adjacent area. In Middle Tennessee these days, it is not at all fantastical for a land…