APPELLATE COURT OPINIONS

Husband appeals a trial court judgment awarding permanent alimony to the Wife, asserting in the appeal that the evidence preponderates against the judgment of the trial court. We affirm the action of the trial court.

This appeal involves a dispute over the conservatorship of an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. The woman’s son moved his mother to Tennessee against the wishes of his stepsister who had been appointed guardian in Florida, and filed an action in the Rutherford County Probate Court to be named conservator. The stepdaughter objected to her stepbrother’s petition and demanded an accounting of her stepmother’s property. The probate court dismissed the son’s petition and ordered an accounting. The son asserts on this appeal that the probate court had jurisdiction over his petition. We have determined that the probate court properly dismissed the son’s petition for the appointment of a conservator and properly ordered the son to account for his use of his mother’s assets.

Defendants U. S. Professionals, LLC and Satya B. Shaw and Rajashree S. Shaw, individually, appeal the judgment of the trial court awarding Plaintiff Neeraj Chopra compensatory and punitive damages for breach of contract and intentional misrepresentation. We affirm.
 

Appellant appeals from the trial court’s order imposing Tenn. R. Civ. P. 37 sanctions, which includes dismissal with prejudice of Appellant’s post-divorce “Motion for Rehearing of Child Support” and “Petition to Modify Custody and/or Visitation.” Finding no evidence on which to conclude that the trial court abused its discretion in applying these sanctions, we affirm the judgment of the trial court, and remand for determination of damages for the filing of a frivolous appeal.

This appeal involves a civil contempt sanction against a former husband for failing to make payments required by the parties' marital dissolution agreement. The former wife filed a petition in the Circuit Court for Williamson County seeking to hold her former husband in either criminal or civil contempt. Following a hearing, the trial court awarded the former wife a $26,378 judgment for the arrearage and a $2,000 judgment for attorney's fees. The trial court also found the former husband to be in civil contempt and ordered him incarcerated for six months or until he made the payments required by the martial dissolution agreement. The former husband appealed. We affirm the portions of the judgment awarding the former wife $28,378; however, we vacate the civil contempt judgment against the former husband because the trial court failed to make an affirmative finding that he was presently able to meet his financial obligations under the marital dissolution agreement.

Paternal grandparents, the legal guardians of their granddaughter, filed a petition to terminate the mother’s parental rights and to adopt their granddaughter. The child’s father joined in the petition.  The trial court found that the mother had abandoned the child by her willful failure to provide financial support; however, the trial court denied the grandparents’ petition based on its finding that termination of the mother’s parental rights was not in the best interest of the child. Grandparents appealed. We affirm.

Adhering to my longstanding view that a clear and convincing evidence standard is totally incompatible with a preponderance of the evidence standard both at the trial level and on appeal, I disagree with a portion of majority opinion dealing with such issue.

The appellant principally alleges that she had a plea agreement with the State that if she pleaded guilty to the charge of vehicular assault, the punishment for which would run consecutively to prior sentences, she would be paroled after serving thirty percent of her sentence, and that the State, in effect, reneged on the agreement. She presented no evidence other than her own assertions of the plea, and her petition was denied.

We granted the Tenn. R. App. P. 9 application of the AIG defendants to review their claim that an order of the trial court entered December 31, 2003, nunc pro tunc December 22, 2003, pertaining to pre-trial discovery is "overly broad, unduly burdensome, and extraordinarily costly both in terms of human effort and financial expense, and that disclosure of the documents ordered by the trial court would violate the [federal] Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act." We have determined that the AIG defendants' application was improvidently granted. Accordingly, this appeal is dismissed. This case is remanded to the trial court for further proceedings as outlined in this opinion.

This appeal involves a former husband's efforts to avoid paying spousal support. Less than one year after the parties' divorce, the husband filed a petition in the Circuit Court for Davidson County seeking to reduce his spousal support obligation because his income had decreased. He also unilaterally stopped paying spousal support. Following a bench trial, the trial court denied the former husband's petition to modify his support payments based on its conclusion that he was wilfully underemployed. The trial court also found the former husband to be in criminal contempt for wilfully failing to make five spousal support payments. The husband appeals. We affirm the trial court's conclusion that the former husband is wilfully underemployed and two of the five counts of criminal contempt.

The petition sought judicial review by way of certiorari to review the Warden's action in terminating his wife's visitation for inappropriate behavior. We affirm the dismissal of the petition on grounds of subject matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim.

The Town of Cornersville filed suit against a local business seeking injunctive relief to require compliance with its zoning ordinance. During the pendency of the matter, the trial court found the local business in contempt on three separate occasions for failure to comply with orders of the court requiring compliance with the ordinance. At a hearing on the merits, the trial court found that since the property at issue was within the town limits, it was subject to the zoning ordinance. Furthermore, the court found the business in contempt for failure to comply with its prior orders and thus subject to a fine of fifty dollars ($50.00) per day. The business appeals insisting that part of the subject property is not within the town's zoning jurisdiction, that the trial court exceeded its statutory contempt authority, and that the town is estopped from raising any complaint regarding zoning noncompliance. We agree with the trial court and affirm its judgment.

The trial court terminated the parental rights of F.S.B. ("Father") with respect to his two minor children, K.L.B. (DOB: September 19, 1997) and S.L.B. (DOB: July 21, 1999). Father appeals, arguing, inter alia, that the evidence preponderates against the trial court's finding, stated to be by clear and convincing evidence, that grounds for termination exist. We affirm.

This appeal involves a customer who tripped over a floor mat while waiting in a cashier's line at a home improvement store. The customer filed suit against the store in the Circuit Court for Davidson County, and a jury returned a verdict for the store after determining that the customer was sixty-five percent at fault for his injuries. The customer asserts on this appeal that the evidence does not support the jury's verdict. We affirm the judgment.

This case arises out of an action filed by the former client of an attorney, seeking damages pursuant to the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act and theories of breach of contract, fraudulent
misrepresentation, and common law fraud. Appellees filed a motion for summary judgment in the
trial court below, and the court granted the motion. Appellant now seeks review by this Court, and,
for the following reasons, we remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
 

This appeal involves a lawsuit brought by a prison inmate against his former wife for defamation and failure to properly care for their child including the failure to facilitate visitation. The trial court dismissed the complaint after determining that the inmate's slander claim was barred by the statute of limitations and that the remainder of the complaint failed to state a claim for which relief could be granted. We affirm the judgment.

In this appeal, Appellant Michael Rowan challenges the trial court's grant of a post-divorce contempt petition. Appellee Lisa Rowan challenges the trial court's denial of her attorney's fees in connection with the petition, and seeks frivolous appeal damages in this court. We hold that the language of the parties' marital dissolution agreement is plain and unambiguous, affirm the trial court's grant of the wife's petition, reverse the trial court's refusal to award attorney's fees, and hold the appeal frivolous.

Following their divorce in 1995, Wife filed a petition for contempt against Husband in 1997, alleging Husband failed to comply with certain provisions of the parties’ marital dissolution agreement. Husband filed an answer and submitted his counter-petition for modification of his child support obligation based on changed circumstances. Wife, in turn, filed a motion asking the court to determine Husband’s child support obligation following his receipt of a large severance payment from his previous employer. After holding a hearing on the parties’ respective petitions, the trial court entered one order addressing the visitation of the parties’ minor daughter and another order addressing the financial issues. In the order addressing the financial issues, the trial court increased Husband’s base child support obligation, ordered Husband to pay additional child support in various amounts pursuant to the marital dissolution agreement, ordered Husband to pay additional amounts from improperly withheld taxes on the exercise of certain stock appreciation rights, and ordered Husband to pay Wife’s attorney’s fees. For the reasons set forth herein, we affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
 

Bruce Varner seeks review of the trial court's dismissal of his Petition to Modify Custody. The trial court dismissed the petition at the close of the petitioner's proof, holding that petitioner had failed to carry his burden of proof that a change of custody was in the best interest of the child. The trial court assessed attorney's fees and costs to the petitioner. We affirm the decision of the trial court.

This Tenn. R. App. P. 9 interlocutory appeal concerns a father's efforts to set aside a default judgment granting custody of his daughter to the child's maternal grandparents. The grandparents asserted in their petition for custody that the father's whereabouts were unknown and they therefore served their petition on the father by publication in a Lebanon, Tennessee newspaper. Two and one-half years later, the father filed a motion to set aside the custody order asserting that service by publication was insufficient because the grandparents knew or should have known he was residing in Greensboro, North Carolina at the time they filed their petition for custody. We have determined that the default judgment is void for lack of personal jurisdiction and we thus reverse the trial court's order denying the father's motion to set aside.

This involves the termination of parental rights. The child at issue was taken into protective custody after police raided the parents’ home and found an active methamphetamine lab. Drug charges were filed against the child’s mother and father. The father was on parole from a prior murder conviction in Illinois, and his drug-related activities were a violation of his parole. As a result, the father was returned to Illinois to serve further time in prison on the prior murder conviction. The mother’s parental rights were terminated by default judgment. The father’s parental rights were terminated based on having the child in the home with a meth lab, and the father’s resulting incarceration in Illinois. The father appealed, arguing that the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services did not make reasonable efforts to reunite him with his child. We affirm, finding that under the circumstances of this case, the Department of Children’s Services was not required to make reasonable efforts to reunite the father with the child.

The threshold issue presented in this appeal is whether the Plaintiff timely filed her notice of appeal so as to give this Court jurisdiction to hear this case. The trial court entered its order granting the Defendant's motion for summary judgment on January 15, 2004. This order adjudicated all the
claims of the parties. On February 25, 2004, the Defendant filed a motion for contempt alleging nonperformance of the order by the Plaintiff. On March 19, 2004, an agreed order awarding the Defendant pre-judgment interest was entered. The Defendant had not sought pre-judgment interest
in her counter-complaint or in any subsequent pleadings. The Plaintiff filed a notice of appeal on April 19, 2004. We find that the notice of appeal was not filed within thirty days of entry of the judgment appealed from pursuant to Rule 4 of the Tennessee Rules of Appellate Procedure.  Therefore, we dismiss this appeal because this court does not have jurisdiction to hear the issues in this appeal.

The issues presented in this appeal are: whether the trial court properly ruled that the employer had good cause to terminate the employee; whether the trial court properly ruled that the employer was not bound by a written employment agreement with the employee through the year 2003; and whether the trial court properly ruled that the employee was not entitled to a bonus for the year 2002. We hold that the trial court's rulings were proper and so affirm the judgment of the trial court.

This case involves judicial review of a zoning administrator's refusal to issue a certificate of compliance with all zoning laws to a newly-constructed hotel. We reverse the trial court's denial of the local government's motion to dismiss because such review is appropriate under the common law writ of certiorari, not a direct action for declaratory judgment, and the hotel owners failed to meet the exhaustion requirements prerequisite to certiorari review.

The Trial Court entered Judgment for plaintiff on loan to defendant and set off the amounts of certain forged checks on defendant's accounts with bank against plaintiff's recovery. We affirm.