APPELLATE COURT OPINIONS

The Trial Court terminated parents’ parental rights. The father has appealed. We affirm the Trial
Court.

This case involves the seizure and forfeiture of a leased vehicle. The Department of Safety ("the Department") sent a notice of the forfeiture proceedings to the corporate owner/lessor at the address listed on the vehicle's certificate of title. Because the owner had moved two years previously and the Postal Service had ceased forwarding its mail, the unopened certified letter was returned to the Department marked "Not Deliverable as Addressed Unable to Forward." The Department took no further steps to locate the owner and summarily ordered the forfeiture of the vehicle. Upon learning of the forfeiture, the owner filed a petition for a stay and reconsideration, which the Department denied. The owner then filed a petition for review in the Chancery Court of Davidson County in which it challenged the adequacy of the notice procedure. The trial court ruled the notice procedure did not meet constitutional due process requirements under the circumstances, in which the corporate owner had a registered agent for service of process whose name and address were easily obtainable through the Secretary of State's Office. The Department appeals, arguing that due process does not require that it seek out a corporate owner that has failed to notify the Department of its change of address, as required by Tennessee Code Annotated section 55-4-131. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

This is a contract dispute between the plaintiff, an incorporated municipality, and the defendant, a nonprofit water systems corporation that supplied water to residents living outside the city limits. The parties entered into several agreements for the sale of potable treated water from the plaintiff to the defendant, the specific terms for which varied under each agreement. In particular, a 1981 agreement placed limits on the defendant's ability to assign its rights under the contract and required that the defendant purchase all its water requirements up to eight million gallons per month from the plaintiff, while an agreement executed in 1994 contained no minimum purchase requirement for the defendant and expressly provided that successors to the defendant, "whether the result of legal process, assignment, or otherwise," succeeded to the rights of the defendant under the contract. In 2002, the defendant entered into negotiations for the sale of its assets to a third party water company. In response, the plaintiff filed a petition for injunctive relief, alleging, inter alia, that the contract between the parties did not allow the defendant to assign its rights without the plaintiff's prior consent and that the City would suffer irreparable harm if deprived of the income generated by its water sale to the defendant. Following an injunction hearing and a subsequent trial, the trial court ruled, inter alia, that the 1994 contract superceded the previous agreements between the parties and the defendant was free to transfer its assets to the third party water company without the plaintiff's consent. The plaintiff appeals, arguing the 1994 contract was ultra vires because its mayor lacked the authority to execute it, there was no meeting of the minds to form a valid contract between the parties, and the trial court abused its discretion in dissolving the temporary injunction and denying the City's request for a permanent injunction. Having reviewed the entire record in this case, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

This is a divorce case involving the division of marital property. In 1988, the husband moved into the wife's house. The parties married in 1992 and remained married for ten years. During that time, the parties sold the wife's house and bought a new home with the proceeds. The new home was purchased in the names of both the husband and the wife. In 2002, the parties divorced. The trial court found that the parties' property had become so commingled that virtually none of it could be considered separate property, and divided the marital assets evenly. The trial court also allocated to the wife a larger portion of a marital debt to the wife's mother. From that decree, the wife now appeals. We affirm, finding that the evidence clearly supports the trial court's finding of commingling and transmutation of property, and finding no abuse of discretion in the trial court's allocation of the marital debt.