Tennessee Wife Not Entitled to Having Judge Removed Due to Dissatisfaction

Tennessee law case summary on judicial recusal in divorce from the Court of Appeals.

Damon Tatum v. Mercedeas Tatum – Tennessee judge recusal

This was the third appeal in the protracted divorce proceedings between Damon and Mercedeas Tatum.  The case had been particularly acrimonious and involved proceedings both in Shelby County, Tennessee, but also in Missouri, after the father and children moved to that state.

Included in the proceedings were two emergency motions by the wife to have the judge recused.  Both motions were denied, and in the second one, the trial judge noted that the allegations were almost identical to those in the first.  Dissatisfied with those rulings, the wife appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The appeals court first acknowledged that the right to a fair trial before an impartial tribunal is a fundamental constitutional right.  A judge should recuse him or herself if there is an appearance of bias which is injurious to the integrity of the judicial system.

But the appeals court went on to say that the mere fact that there are adverse rulings against a party does not mean that the judge is biased.  In short, not every bias merits recusal.  The bias has to have a personal character, and not just be from what the judge learned while presiding over the case.

In this case, the wife was not able to point to any facts or circumstances that even suggested bias, prejudice, or misconduct.  The appeals court noted that her arguments focused on her dissatisfaction with the rulings that the court had made.  The court couldn’t find anything in the record that even suggested bias of the type that would warrant recusal.

For these reasons, the appeals court affirmed the lower court’s order, and assessed the costs of the appeal against the wife.

No. W2013-02112-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Dec. 12, 2014).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Tennessee Divorce Laws.