Facts: Mother and Father have been involved in ongoing litigation for over 17 years, resulting in a judgment of about $425,000 awarded to Mother for her attorney’s fees and costs.

Mother filed a lien on Father’s property to secure payment of the judgment while one of Father’s appeals was pending. Father responded by suing Mother for extortion, conspiracy, and abuse of process.

The trial court granted Mother’s motion to dismiss, at which point Mother moved to classify Father’s filing as an “abusive civil action” per TCA § 29-41-101, et seq. Mother alleged that Father filed his lawsuit to “exhaust, deplete, impair, and adversely impact her financial resources.” She sought recovery of her attorney’s fees and costs and prefiling restrictions on Father for four to six years. Father promptly voluntarily dismissed all remaining motions.

The trial court found that Father’s complaint was an abusive civil action and imposed prefiling restrictions on Father for four years, requiring Father to request permission before he could file another lawsuit against Mother in the trial court.

Father appealed.

On Appeal: The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court.

First, Father argued that his voluntary dismissal after Mother claimed his lawsuit was an abusive civil action deprived the trial court of jurisdiction to address Mother’s claim. This argument was quickly dispatched because the statute says the claim can be raised “by motion made at any time during the civil action,” which Mother did before Father voluntarily dismissed his lawsuit.

Second, Father challenged the trial court’s finding that his lawsuit was an “abusive civil action.” After examining the factual findings made over the 17-year course of this litigation, the Court found no error in the trial court’s designation of this case as an “abusive civil action.”

The evidence does not preponderate against [the trial court’s] findings and, furthermore, demonstrates by a preponderance of the evidence that [Father] filed the instant action to harass or maliciously injure [Mother]. We find the fact that another court previously determined that [Father] had used litigation to financially ruin [Mother] particularly relevant. … The paternity and custody action [resulted in a finding] had “intentionally manipulated this litigation in an attempt to ‘financially ruin’” [Mother] and accordingly awarded [Mother] $376,638.90 in attorney’s fees. The [trial] court further found that [Father] had “exhibited a pattern of manipulation, over-controlling and bullying in his life.”

In another order, [the trial court] found: “[I]t is the strategy of [Father] and [Father’s former counsel], Officers of the Court, to slander, harass, bully, and attempt to manipulate this Court to such an extent this Court will simply throw it hands up and walk away; they are mistaken.” The [trial] court denied his refusal motion and found that it was brought for the “improper purposes of harassment, delay, and to needlessly increase litigation costs.”

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The foregoing testimony and [trial] court orders, demonstrating [Father’s] past abusive litigation practices against [Mother], coupled with the baseless mess of his complaint in the current action, are evidence of [Father’s] intent to harass or maliciously injure [Mother].” … [Father’s] persistence, despite two different courts soundly rejecting his legal theory, is evidence that his motivation for filing and maintaining the action against [Mother] was improper. The present action is the latest in an onslaught of actions initiated by [Father] against [Mother], which we can only reasonably conclude was designed to deplete [Mother’s] financial resources and impair her well-being or, in other words, harass her by filing.

The Court affirmed the trial court’s judgment.

K.O.’s Comment: I have covered three other appeals in this seemingly never-ending case. This post is number four. What’s the over/under on how high that number will go?

Source: Nelson v. Justice (Tennessee Court of Appeals, Eastern Section, June 26, 2024).

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