News - Friday, July 4, 2014

Friends, family members, and colleagues of Judge Thomas L. Wyatt gathered in the courtroom of the Honorable W. Frank Brown III in the Hamilton County Courthouse on Thursday, June 26 to honor the appointment of Wyatt as one of eight judges in the new administrative Workers’ Compensation Court in Tennessee.

The signing of the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964 freed all people of color, and African Americans in particular, from the shackles of legalized racist oppression. But the liberation of the disenfranchised from Jim Crow law took more than a few strokes of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s pen; rather, years of untold struggle and deep, personal sacrifice prefaced the historic moment.

Local attorney George G. Hixson recently joined the law firm of Duncan, Hatcher, Hixson & Fleenor after working as counsel for several years with a local developer.

Hixson is licensed to practice law in Tennessee and has been practicing in Chattanooga for 22 years.  He is a graduate of the Baylor School, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, where he was chief justice of the Moot Court Board and was the Advanced Moot Court Winner of 1990. He practiced as a certified public accountant before attending law school.

Founded July 1, 1974 by Charles Gearhiser, Wayne Peters, and Sidney Carpenter, Gearhiser, Peters, Elliott & Cannon is a Martindale AV rated firm made up of 13 attorneys, including nine members and four associates collectively licensed to practice in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. 

Baker Donelson last week announced the passing of former Tennessee senator, presidential advisor, and ambassador Howard H. Baker Jr., senior counsel to the firm. Senator Baker, 88 years old, died June 26 from complications following a stroke he suffered on Saturday, June 20.

The Court of Appeals of Tennessee has ruled that Tennessee does not recognize a claim for “wrongful acceleration of a note in default”.

In Snyder v. First Tennessee Bank, N.A., No. E2013-01524-COA-R3, Janet Snyder was a beneficiary of a trust (“the Trust”) from her deceased father.  She was entitled to certain income from the Trust. 

The American Bar Association (ABA) last week submitted a statement to the House Judiciary Committee addressing the conditions faced by a growing number of children who have been apprehended crossing the border into south Texas and seeking assurances the minors receive basic legal services, counsel, and other protection.

Signature Brokers cuts the ribbon on Lake Breeze, its waterfront development in Harrison, Tenn. Lake Breeze will feature homes in the $200,000 to $500,000 range. Community amenities will include a community boat dock, county taxes, and quick access to Harrison Bay State Park.

Since 1969, the Realtors Political Action Committee (RPAC) has been promoting the election of pro-Realtor candidates across the United States. The purpose of RPAC is clear – Realtors raise and spend money to elect candidates whose philosophies are consistent with and supportive of the concepts of private property rights and the free enterprise system. 

Volkswagen Chattanooga last week hosted a group of young women from Girls Inc., a Chattanooga non-profit organization, in order to underline the importance of women in the technical professions.

Women with careers in Finance, IT, Paint Engineering, and Research & Development showed the variety of job opportunities for women at Volkswagen in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics.

Everyone needs to be aware of the financial resources they will have available in retirement. But if you’re a woman, you must be particularly diligent, for a variety of reasons. And that means you’ll need to know just what to expect from Social Security. 

Filmmaker Michael Bay has made only one non-Transformers movie since the first motion picture in the current series hit screens in 2007.

Allowing for two years of production on the first film, he’s spent nearly all of the last eight years of his life directing giant robot movies.

A rose is a rose,” but when is a rose not a rose? When it is a peach. If you do not already know, peaches are from the Rose family (Prunus), and are classified as a “stone fruit” or “drupe.” 

From that classification, comes two more – they are either a Clingstone or Freestone, (referring to how easily the flesh of the peach separates from the stone) and from there, several varieties within those two classifications. Looks like peaches are indeed, a class act! 

Drained of funds, depressed because another furiner was going to win our national championship, we plotted our exit strategy from the historic golf venue built beautifully on the sand piles of south central North Carolina.

It’s hard not to like Martin Kaymer, and he certainly looks like the class of the golf world and someone who might be dominant for a while. When you blister a U.S. Open field like he did, it’s not a fluke. I told that to Bob, one of my traveling companions, and he reminded me of Rory McIlroy back in 2011, when he set the Open record at 16-under, on his way to an eight shot win, the same margin as Kaymer won by last month at Pinehurst.

Happy July 4th! Today marks one of the best fun filled holidays of the year. July 4th brings delicious barbeques, vacations, fireworks, swimming, and fun in the sun. As people pack up their cars and hit the road this Independence Day it is important to note the risks involving the holiday.

Let’s start this column with holiday quiz:

1. Who immortalized Paul Revere’s “midnight ride” and how?

2. Which body of water did Washington and his men cross on Christmas 1776?

3. According to legend, who sewed the first American flag?

This column is about Africa, lawyers and the law of averages. Lawyers think we are pretty smart. That generally may be true, but smartness is an elusive thing. Are you smart if you anticipate your opponent’s argument and have a case ready to refute it (as opposing counsel did to me this morning)? Are you smart if you make a lot of money from your legal practice? Maybe you are smart if you know how to structure your life in a manner that results in you being happy. There are probably a lot of measures of “smart” and a question or two about its overall value.

I have always believed that education is the great equalizer. It does not solve all of a person’s problems, but a good education can go a long way toward leveling the playing field a person finds himself playing on over the course of his life.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.  – From the Declaration of Independence    

My brain is still on our Fourth of July vacation last week. Since there is nothing special on my mind, I have decided to just do a hodge-podge of trivia – some of it just plain silliness! Have fun! 

1. What do the initials GUI stand for? 

Fill in the blanks in the quote

using the following words:

courage, independence, happiness,

secret, liberty, won, secret,

“Those who ______ our ______ believed______ to be the ______of ______and ______ to be the ______ of liberty.”