Coffee Cnty. v. Spining
| Docket Number | M2020-01438-COA-R3-CV |
| Decision Date | 19 January 2022 |
| Parties | COFFEE COUNTY, TENNESSEE v. CARL SPINING ET AL. |
| Court | Tennessee Court of Appeals |
Session November 2, 2021
Appeal from the Circuit Court No. 2019-CV-46293 Robert E.
This appeal arises from a Rule 12.02(6) dismissal of a legal malpractice action as timebarred under the one-year statute of limitations in Tennessee Code Annotated § 28-3- 104(c)(1). In its September 17, 2019 Complaint, the plaintiff county alleged that its trial counsel in an underlying Public Employee Political Freedom Act (“PEPFA”) action committed malpractice by failing to object to the jury verdict form in conjunction with agreeing to bifurcate the issue of damage. The defendant attorney and his law firm moved to dismiss the complaint as time-barred under § 28-3-104(c)(1), asserting that the county's claim accrued no later than July 7, 2017-the date on which the court entered the final judgment against the county in the underlying PEPFA case. The county opposed the Motion asserting that its claim did not accrue until September 18 2018-the date on which the Court of Appeals issued its opinion in the PEPFA case-because it was on that date the county first reasonably became aware of the alleged malpractice. The trial court granted the Motion to Dismiss on the ground the county knew it had been injured and had sufficient constructive knowledge to trigger accrual of the action more than one year prior to its commencement. This appeal followed. We affirm.
Tenn R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Circuit Court Affirmed.
Robert L. Huskey, Manchester, Tennessee, for the appellant, Coffee County, Tennessee.
Gregory Brown, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellees, W. Carl Spining and Ortale, Kelley, Herbert & Crawford LLP.
OPINION
Facts and Procedural History
In September 2013, Melinda Keeling, a former Coffee County employee, commenced a PEPFA action against the County, seeking both equitable and emotional damages. See Keeling v. Coffee Cty., No. M2017-01809-COA-R3-CV, 2018 WL 4468401 (Tenn. Ct. App. Sept. 18, 2018). Ms. Keeling alleged that she had verbal and written communications with the County mayor about complaints she received from the public concerning her supervisor's lack of availability. Id. at *1. When Ms. Keeling's supervisor learned of her statement, he allegedly retaliated by, inter alia, eliminating some of the duties that provided Ms. Keeling with compensatory time off and placing an adverse employment report in her personnel folder. Id. In May 2010, the supervisor eliminated Ms. Keeling's position, ostensibly due to a lack of funds. Id. In her Complaint, Ms. Keeling sought front pay and back pay associated with her termination. Shortly thereafter, the County retained attorney Carl Spining and his law firm, Ortale, Kelley, Herbert & Crawford (collectively, "Ortale Kelley"), to defend the action.
During a bench conference in the PEPFA action on January 11, 2017, Mr. Spining and Ms. Keeling's counsel, Jerry Gonzalez, discussed how damages would be determined if the jury returned a verdict on the issue of the County's liability. At the conference, Mr. Gonzalez informed the court of his intent to seek only emotional damages during the jury trial and to pursue equitable damages with the court at a later date. Mr. Spining agreed that Ms. Keeling would be permitted to seek equitable damages upon the jury "finding a PEPFA violation." Based on the agreement of the parties, the trial court reserved the issue of equitable damages for a potential bench trial, depending on the jury's verdict. More specifically, the parties agreed to reserve the issues of back pay and benefits to be decided by the trial court after the liability phase. For this reason, and upon the agreement of the parties, the jury form posed only two questions:
The case proceeded to trial, and after finding that the County committed a PEPFA violation, the jury awarded Ms. Keeling $10, 000 in emotional damages. Acting pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated § 8-50-603, the trial court increased the award of damages to $30, 000. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 8-50-603(b) ().
Following the jury trial, Ms. Keeling moved for various equitable remedies resulting from her termination, including back pay, front pay, and loss of benefits. The County opposed the motion arguing that, because the jury form permitted the jury to award emotional damages without requiring it to determine that Ms. Keeling's termination actually resulted from the County's PEPFA violation, awarding equitable damages based on the jury's determination was inappropriate. For this reason, the County moved for a new trial, contending that the jury verdict, finding only that some PEPFA violation occurred, could not support an award of equitable damages by the court. On May 1, 2017, the court entered an order noting that Ms. Keeling's termination was "a continued act of discrimination" and that, as such, equitable remedies were appropriate. On July 7, 2017, the court awarded Ms. Keeling over $150, 000. Later, the court denied the County's Motion for New Trial.
At this point, Robert Huskey, the County Attorney, began reviewing the court file and investigating the decisions made by Mr. Spining during the trial. Specifically, Mr. Huskey went to the clerk's office and obtained a copy of the jury verdict form. After reviewing the jury verdict form, Mr. Huskey concluded that the form reflected exactly what Mr. Spining had represented to him. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Huskey, acting in his capacity as the County Attorney, authorized Mr. Spining to appeal the PEPFA case. Acting on behalf of the County, Mr. Spining filed a timely notice of appeal. The record on appeal was filed with the Court of Appeals on December 5, 2017, and the County filed its brief on February 5, 2018. Ms. Keeling filed her brief on April 6, 2018, in which she cross-appealed the amount of damages awarded. Significantly, the transcript of the bench conference in which Mr. Spining agreed to the stipulation at issue was filed as part of the trial court record on appeal.
On September 18, 2018, this court issued an opinion in which we held that the County waived any objection it may have had to the jury verdict form by agreeing at the January 2017 bench conference to allow for a determination of equitable damages at a later bench trial. See Keeling, 2018 WL 4468401, at *15. For this and other reasons, we determined that the trial court did not err in awarding the employee equitable damages. Id. We also modified and increased the monetary judgment against the County to $994, 000.
On September 17, 2019, the County filed the present malpractice action against Mr. Spining and his firm. In its Complaint the County contended in pertinent part:
Mr. Spining and his firm had represented Coffee County a number of times prior to the Keeling case and the County had no reason to question his effective professional handling of their litigations. The circumstances of his representation in this case which prompts the County to bring this action are based on their sound belief that his representation of the County in the trial court breached an appropriate Standard of Care resulting in a very bad trial court verdict and that further his failure to apprise the County of pertinent information when [deciding] whether or not to appeal the case compounded the County's damage. His failure to meet the Standard of Care in not objecting to a jury verdict form combined with a stipulation or agreement that Mr. Spining made with the plaintiff's counsel that the County was not aware of, ended up resulting in a huge verdict of nearly half a million dollars ($500, 000.00) in the trial court; and further when the County then had to decide whether or not to appeal, Mr. Spining still did not apprise the County of a stipulation he had made with opposing counsel which, in turn, prompted the County to appeal and in turn resulted in the appellate court denying our relief sought and sending the case back for awarding additional damage and ultimately resulting in a payout to Ms. Keeling of nearly a million dollars ($1, 000, 000.00).
In sum the County alleged that, when deciding to appeal the July 2017 judgment, it believed that Mr. Spining chose not to object to the jury form as a trial tactic. After this court issued its September 2018 opinion, however, the County contends that it learned, for the first time, about the January 2017 conference in which Mr. Spining agreed to reserve equitable remedies for after the jury verdict. Coffee County did not allege that failure to object to the jury verdict form, by itself, breached the standard of care. Instead, it claimed that it was malpractice for Mr. Spining to fail to object to the form in conjunction with agreeing to bifurcate the issue of damages without...
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