Even Equity Has Limits: What A Reversal Of Florida Fortunes For Former President Trump Means For Civil Litigants In Tennessee

• Published date: 16 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Criminal Law, Trials & Appeals & Compensation, Crime
• Law Firm: Butler Snow LLP
• Author: Mr Gadson William Perry

*A recent federal appeals court's decision to reverse the stoppage of a criminal investigation in Florida has implications for civil litigants in Tennessee.*

On December 1, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit vacated a Florida federal district court's decision to block the use of documents in a criminal investigation. Former President Trump had sued the federal government and sought an injunction after the FBI executed a search warrant and seized several documents at his home. The district court granted the injunction, invoking "equitable jurisdiction," and appointed a special master to review the seized documents for attorney-client and Executive privilege before the government could use them.

In vacating the district court's decision, the appellate court first observed that "[e]xercises of equitable jurisdiction . . . should be 'exceptional' and 'anomalous.'" It then proceeded to mark the contours of such exercises, observing that federal courts wield limited, rather than general, jurisdiction and therefore it must be "presumed that a cause [of action] lies outside'" their authority. Concluding that none of the relevant factors supported equitable jurisdiction and that the district court had abused its discretion, the appellate court ordered the dismissal of the entire case.

That outcome has more to do with civil litigants in Tennessee than you might think. For starters, Tennessee is one of a handful of states that maintain separate civil courts of law and equity.¹ The judges of Tennessee's equity courts, called Chancellors, possess the extraordinary power, dating back to the colonial era,² to "modify the application of strict legal rules and adapt relief to the circumstances of individual cases."

But that extraordinary power is not without limits. On the contrary, its most common expression'the injunction'is freighted with requirements that simply do not exist for legal relief.³ Even a temporary injunction "shall be indorsed with the date and hour of issuance" and "shall set forth findings of fact and conclusions of law which constitute the grounds of its action." Tenn. R. Civ. P. 65.04(4), (6). Long-standing Tennessee precedent prescribes a four-factor test that must be met even to invoke it.⁴ And other expressions of equitable authority, such as the suspension of a final judgment, must meet even more exacting standards. See, e.g., Tenn. R. Civ. P. 60.02.⁵

The Eleventh Circuit described equitable jurisdiction as "exceptional" and...