APPELLATE COURT OPINIONS

This is an appeal from the Criminal Court for Hamilton County, which overruled the defendant’s
motion to suppress all evidence obtained by the State after the defendant was stopped by a police
officer on suspicion of driving while under the influence of an intoxicant. The defendant entered a
conditional plea of guilty and reserved for appeal as a dispositive question of law the issue of the
lawfulness of the stop. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment. The
defendant thereafter sought, and this Court granted, permission to appeal on the following issue: whether reasonable suspicion, based on specific and articulable facts, existed to authorize a stop of the defendant’s vehicle. Having reviewed the record in this case, we hold that the evidence does not support the trial court’s finding that the police officer acted with reasonable suspicion when he stopped the defendant. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals is reversed, the
conviction as entered by the trial court is vacated, and the charge of driving while under the influence of an intoxicant is dismissed. Tenn. R. App. P. 11 Appeal by Permission; Judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals Reversed; Case Dismissed
 

I respectfully dissent. There is no need to adopt a new standard to review the videotaped evidence presented in this case. I would hold that an application of the standard of review
traditionally applied in Tennessee establishes that the officer in this case had reasonable suspicion to stop Binette.

I concur in the result reached by the majority. I write separately to state the basis for my
concurrence. In McIntyre v. Balentine, 833 S.W.2d 52 (Tenn. 1992), we adopted a modified system of comparative fault in which parties contributing to the plaintiff’s injuries were to be held liable only to the extent of their relative percentages of fault. Ridings v. Ralph M. Parsons Co., 914 S.W.2d 79 (Tenn. 1996), highlighted the problems inherent in the application of McIntyre to workers who sustained employment-related injuries and who filed tort actions against persons other than their employers. These workers found themselves in a unique situation. They were subject to both the tort system’s doctrine of comparative fault adopted by this Court and the workers’ compensation system’s doctrine of no-fault recovery created by the legislature.

This is an appeal from the Circuit Court for Shelby County which allowed a jury, in an action alleging malpractice, to allocate fault to resident physicians who were immune from suit. The Court of Appeals reversed the judgment of the trial court and concluded that the trial court should not have permitted the jury to apportion fault to the residents because they were immune. We then granted this appeal to decide whether the trial court erred in allowing nonparties who were immune from suit to appear on a jury verdict form. After examining the record, considering the arguments of the parties and amicus curiae, and analyzing the applicable law, we conclude that the trial court did not err in allowing the immune nonparties to appear on the jury verdict form. Accordingly, for the reasons herein, we reverse the Court of Appeals and reinstate the judgment of the trial court.

The majority departs from settled principles of law in holding that a jury may allocate fault to an immune nonparty. In so doing, it refuses to apply and overrules the application in this case of the Tennessee Supreme Court’s unanimous decision just four years ago in Ridings v. Ralph M. Parsons Co., 914 S.W.2d 79 (Tenn. 1996), that a jury may not allocate fault to an immune nonparty because the immune nonparty owes no duty to the plaintiff and therefore the plaintiff has no cause of action against the immune nonparty.