PTB News

Bickers Named Lawyer of the Year

Knoxville, TN, November 2, 2011 - Best Lawyers, the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession, has named Thomas A. Bickers as the “Knoxville Best Lawyers Mass Tort Litigation / Class Actions - Defendants Lawyer of the Year” for 2012. Bickers is the only Knoxville area attorney listed in this particular area. Bickers was also selected as a Best lawyer in the practice area Commercial Litigation. Bickers was first selected as a Best Lawyer in 2007 Read more

Tarwater Named Best Lawyer

Dwight Tarwater was recently selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2012. This is Tarwater’s tenth listing in the annual publication. Tarwater was selected in a total of five areas: Bet-the-Company Litigation, Commercial Litigation, Mass Tort Litigation, Mass Tort Litigation/Class Action Defendants and Personal Injury Litigation Defendants. Read more

Griswold Receives Pro Bono Award from the Tennessee Bar Association

This year’s Harris Gilbert Pro Bono Volunteer of the Year Award is presented to Scott Griswold of Knoxville. The award recognizes private attorneys who have contributed significant amounts of pro bono work and have demonstrated dedication to the development and delivery of legal services to the poor. The award is named after Gilbert, a Nashville attorney and past Tennessee Bar Association president, who exemplifies this type of commitment. Read more

Articles

Elder Named to Knoxville Area Top 40 List

John Elder downplays his role in bringing free monthly legal counseling services to low-income individuals and families in Blount County. “I didn't have any great, big innovative ideas,” Elder, a partner in the law firm of Paine, Tarwater and Bickers, says of his efforts to establish the Blount County Saturday Bar Clinic. “I just saw that it worked well in Knox County and asked if we could start it in Blount County.” Read more

TENNESSEE’S LOCAL RULES: TRAPS FOR THE UNWARY

The Rules of Civil Procedure were designed to create uniformity throughout our state courts.1 Local Rules were designed for another purpose. Peruse Volume III of the most recent “Tennessee Rules of Court” from West Publishing, concisely titled “LOCAL.” The contents are anything but concise, running to 701 pages.2 It weighs 1 pound and 15.5 ounces, and is an excellent paperweight. By contrast, Volume I weighs a bit less (1 pound, 12.5 ounces), and its 628 pages contain nothing short of every other rule you need to know. Read more

Why You Gotta Be So Mean?

“If you’re horrible to me, I’m going to write a song about it, and you won’t like it. That’s how I operate.” True to her word, Taylor Swift recently released Mean, which chronicles several children tormented by the cool kids.1 In Taylor’s world, the tormented end up realizing their dreams while the tormentors result in nothing more than just being, well, mean. Read more

Taylor A. Williams: Commentary for a Little Security in an Unsecure World

Hackers are probably stealing your identity right now. A sixteen year-old kid by the code name “I_pwn_U”1, probably has your clients’ confidential information and is chugging Mountain Dew Code Red, listening to Justin Bieber (although he denies it to his friends), and purchasing a new television after selling your clients’ secrets. Really? No . . . well, probably not. Short of never accessing the internet and handcuffing your computer to your wrist like a nuclear football, a computer will never be truly safe. Read more

John W. Elder: The Tennessee Civil Justice Act of 2011: What a Difference a Day Made

Public Chapter 510 became law on June 16, 2011, when signed by Gov. Bill Haslam. Effective for causes of action that accrue on or after Oct. 1, 2011,[1] the Tennessee Civil Justice Act of 2011 will greatly alter aspects of Tennessee law in medical malpractice, products liability, personal injury and consumer protection cases. Read more

Taylor A. Williams: The Sixth Circuit Upholds the Individual Mandate of Affordable Care Act: Where are the Limits to the Commerce Clause?

Federalism is not dead; the Tenth Amendment still breathes life, but it seems those breaths grow shorter and more labored under the ever-growing squeeze of the Commerce Clause. Read more

Daniel C. Headrick: ON LATE-FILED EXHIBITS

Here is an odd fact about our profession which has an almost Alice in Wonderland quality: in almost every deposition, there is at least one exhibit that does not exist which is marked as an exhibit. This happens all of the time and is known as a “late-filed exhibit.” A late-filed exhibit is the name for discovery we wished we had asked for prior to the deposition, and frequently, they are not even “exhibits” in any strict term. Read more

J. Scott Griswold: Service of Process After Hall v. Haynes: Practice Tips for Counsel and Advice for Management

For most practitioners, interest in service of process issues pales in comparison to more hot topics, such as tort or health care reform. However, the Tennessee Supreme Court recently highlighted some important issues surrounding service of process under Rule 4 of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure dismissing a medical malpractice case because the plaintiffs did not serve the defendants properly. Read more

Judges honor Don Paine, announce new law scholarships

The Tennessee Judicial Conference (TJC) opened its fall meeting in Franklin yesterday with remarks from Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Connie Clark, TJC President and Third Judicial District Chancellor Skip Frierson, and TJC Foundation President Steve Daniel. Circuit Court Judge Jeff Hollingsworth of Chattanooga, who is serving as chair of the TJC Public Confidence in the Courts Committee, also spoke, announcing that the group is working with the TBA on a speaker's bureau to make judges and lawyers available to speak to school, charitable and community groups. The conference also honored Knoxville attorney Don Paine for 40 years of service to the legal community and to the judiciary as "the judges' professor." Read more

J. Scott Griswold: Health Care Reform Litigation: Examining Constitutional Challenges from the States

The health care reform debate is a political minefield. Politicians, pundits, and just about everyone else has spent the better part of the past year arguing which side is ruining the Nation. Regardless of which side you are on, one advantage is that people are talking more about constitutional issues. Read more

Daniel Headrick: A REMOVAL CHECKLIST

If you need to remove a case, do not panic, just follow this checklist:
1. Can I remove this case?
a. If you represent the plaintiff, stop. You can't remove this case. Read more

PTB Press Release

Paine, Tarwater, and Bickers Named Top Law Firm by U.S. News

Knoxville, TN, September 30, 2010 - Paine, Tarwater, and Bickers, LLP has been recognized by U.S. News Media Group and Best Lawyers as a top law firm in the inaugural edition of “Best Law Firms 2010.” Paine, Tarwater was selected as a first-tier law firm within the Knoxville metropolitan area in three different categories: general commercial litigation, mass tort litigation/class actions (defendants), and personal injury litigation (defendants). Read more