Brown v. Weaver

JAMES MCDONALD SHEA BROWN JR. v. JOHN F WEAVER

No. E2018-00783-COA-R3-CV

COURT OF APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE

October 18, 2018 Session

December 19, 2018

Appeal from the Circuit Court for Knox County

No. 3-160-17

Robert E. Lee Davies, Senior Judge

Appellant, a beneficiary under the will of Decedent, brought this action in 2017 to recover funds that Appellee allegedly improperly safeguarded when he served as conservator for Decedent in 1980. On Appellee's motion to dismiss, the trial court granted the motion finding that the complaint failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The trial court also found that any cause of action arising from Appellee's conduct as conservator was barred by the statute of limitations. Appellant then filed a motion to reconsider. Following a hearing, the trial court denied Appellant's motion finding that Appellant's action was barred by the statute of limitations. Discerning no error, we affirm.

Tenn. R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Circuit Court Affirmed and Remanded.

KENNY ARMSTRONG, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which JOHN W. MCCLARTY, J. and D. KELLY THOMAS, JR., SP. J., joined.

Arthur C. Grisham, Jr., Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the appellant, James McDonald Shea Brown, Jr.

James S. Tipton, Jr., Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellee, John F. Weaver.

OPINION

I. Background

In April 1978, Appellee John F. Weaver was appointed conservator for Stella Jean Brown ("Decedent"). In 1980, Jackie Reneau, an employee of Mr. Weaver's law firm, stole 54 checks on Ms. Brown's account and made those checks totaling $27,391.88 payable to herself, signing Mr. Weaver's name as payor. These thefts took place over a four month period before Mr. Weaver discovered the forgeries. Upon Mr. Weaver's discovery of the forgeries, Ms. Reneau made one restitution payment of $1,148.96. Because the bank refused to credit Ms. Brown's account for the forged checks, Mr. Weaver hired an attorney to file an action against the bank for wrongfully honoring the forged checks. The bank ultimately paid $24,142.92. Following collection of these funds from the bank, Mr. Weaver filed a petition in Chancery Court, in October 1984, requesting the court to approve two distributions from Ms. Brown's conservatorship account: a fee for himself in the amount of $2,867.70 and a fee in the amount of $8,000.00 plus expenses for attorney's fees associated with the lawsuit filed against the bank.¹ By order entered October 19, 1984, the Chancery Court judge granted Mr. Weaver's petition for fees. Subsequently, in 1993, Mr. Weaver became Clerk and Master of Knox County Chancery Court and a new conservator was appointed to handle Ms. Brown's affairs.

Ms. Brown died on November 1, 2011. After her death, Appellant James McDonald Shea Brown, Jr., one of the beneficiaries of Ms. Brown's estate, received notice of the proceeding in chancery court to establish a lost will of Ms. Brown. In August 2013, Mr. Brown attempted to review Ms. Brown's conservatorship file but was denied access to the file by the clerk's office, not by Mr. Weaver who, at that time, was a judge in Chancery Court. On May 14, 2014, Mr. Brown returned to Chancery Court with his attorney and was granted access to the conservatorship file.

On May 10, 2017, Appellant filed a complaint in the trial court accusing Appellee of committing a fraud upon the court when he was conservator for Stella Jean Brown in the 1980s. Specifically, Appellant alleged that

[i]n the process of reviewing the conservatorship file, [Appellant] learned of [Appellee's] negligent and wrongful acts and misrepresentations regarding the forged checks and of his being paid out of the estate of his ward, Stella Jean Brown, for the time spent in recovering the funds caused by his negligence, wrongful and fraudulent acts.

The complaint requested compensatory damages in excess of $150,000 plus unspecified punitive damages. The request for such damages was not on behalf of the Decedent's estate, but on behalf of Appellant. In his complaint, Appellant alleged that any cause of action that Decedent had passed to her heirs upon her death. Although the actions alleged in the complaint occurred over 30 years ago, Appellant averred that his complaint wastimely because it was filed within three years of his discovery of Appellee's purportedly wrongful acts.

In June 2017, Appellee filed a motion to dismiss under Rule 12.02(6). Appellee's motion alleged the following: (1) The complaint attempts to set forth an action for fraud on the court by which the plaintiff can recover damages; however, the State of Tennessee recognizes no such cause of action; (2) The complaint constitutes an impermissible collateral attack on a valid order of the Chancery Court; (3) The complaint does not show that the plaintiff is the owner of the purported claim or has standing; (4) The action is barred by Tennessee Code Annotated section 28-1-106; and (5) The action is barred by Tennessee Rule Civil Procedure 60.02.

On December 29, 2017, the trial court entered an order granting Appellee's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The order also states that the statute of limitations for intentional misrepresentation ran three years after the death of decedent, and that any cause of action against Appellee became barred as of November 1, 2014. As mentioned supra, the instant complaint was filed on May 10, 2017, some five and a half years after Ms. Brown's death.

On January 22, 2018, Appellant filed a motion to reconsider the trial court's order dismissing his complaint.² Appellant argued in his motion that the trial court erroneously characterized his complaint as a fraud on the court by Appellee. Instead, Appellant contended that his complaint alleged that Appellee "committed a wrongful act against his ward, Stella Jean Brown, while acting as her conservator, and should be required to answer, account, and make amends and atone for the wrong done to his ward and her estate." On April 2, 2018, the trial court entered an order denying Appellant's motion to reconsider again finding that the statute of limitations, which ran on November 1, 2014, barred the action filed by Appellant on May 10, 2017. Appellant appealed but only designated the order on the motion to reconsider in his notice of appeal.

II. Issues

Although Appellee raises five issues on appeal, we only reach one dispositive issue, which is whether the trial court erred in ruling that the complaint was barred by the three year statute of limitations following the death of the decedent.

III. Standard of Review

Generally, we review a trial court's ruling on a motion to alter or amend a judgment filed pursuant to Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 59.04 under the abuse of discretion standard. Stovall v. Clarke, 113 S.W.3d 715, 721 (Tenn. 2003); Linkous v. Lane, 276 S.W.3d 917, 924 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2008). Abuse of discretion is found "only when the trial court applied incorrect legal standards, reached an illogical conclusion, based its decision on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence, or employed reasoning that causes an injustice to the complaining party." State v. Jordan, 325 S.W.3d 1, 39 (Tenn. 2010) (quoting State v. Banks, 271 S.W.3d 90, 116 (Tenn. 2008)). The abuse of discretion standard does not permit an appellate court to merely substitute its judgment for that of the trial court. See Henry v. Goins, 104 S.W.3d 475, 479 (Tenn. 2003); Eldridge v. Eldridge, 42 S.W.3d 82, 85 (Tenn. 2001). Instead, "[u]nder the abuse of discretion standard, a trial court's ruling will be upheld so long as reasonable minds can disagree as to [the] propriety of the decision made." Discover Bank v. Morgan, 363 S.W.3d 479, 487 (Tenn. 2012) (quoting Eldridge, 42 S.W.3d at 85).

Here, we must first address whether Appellant's complaint is barred by the statute of limitations. Whether a claim is barred by an applicable statute of limitations is a question of law. Brown v. Erachem Comilog, Inc., 231 S.W.3d 918, 921 (Tenn. 2007); Owens v. Truckstops of Am., 915 S.W.2d 420, 424 (Tenn. 1996). We review the trial court's resolution of questions of law de novo, with no presumption of correctness. Kelly v. Kelly, 445 S.W.3d 685, 692 (Tenn. 2014); Armbrister v. Armbrister, 414 S.W.3d at 692.

IV. Analysis

Appellee argues that Appellant's action is barred by Tennessee Code Annotated section 28-1-106, which states in pertinent part:

(c)(1) If the person entitled to commence an action, at the time the cause of action accrued, lacks capacity, such person or such person's representatives and privies, as the case may be, may commence the action, after removal of such incapacity, within the time of limitation for the particular cause of action, unless it exceeds three (3) years, and in that case within three (3) years from removal of such incapacity, except as provided for in subdivision (c)(2).

(2) Any individual with court-ordered fiduciary responsibility towards a person who lacks capacity, or any individual who possesses the legal right to bring suit on behalf of a person who lacks capacity, shall commence the action on behalf of that person within the applicable statute of limitations and may not rely on any tolling of the statute of limitations, unless that individual can establish by clear and convincing evidence that theindividual did not and could not reasonably have known of the accrued cause of action.

Tenn. Code Ann. § 28-1-106(c)(1)(2). In analyzing this statute, the Tennessee Supreme Court has concluded that "[t]he tolling ends when 'such disability' is removed. . . . The disability of unsound mind is removed when the individual is no longer of unsound mind, due either to a change in the individual's condition or the individual's death." Abels ex rel. Hunt v. Genie Indus., Inc., 202 S.W.3d 99, 105 (Tenn. 2006). Here, it is undisputed that Ms. Brown lacked capacity from April 7, 1978, when Appellee was appointed as her conservator until her death on November 1,...