Day on Torts
A recent Court of Appeals decision serves as a good refresher on the elements and defenses in a malicious prosecution case. In Preston v. Blalock, No. M2014-01739-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. May 29, 2015), tenant’s plastic surgery business had signed a lease to rent landlord’s office suite. Tenant stopped paying rent, and landlord filed a breach of contract claim for rent, build-out costs and attorneys’ fees. Landlord was awarded a default judgment, and tenant eventually paid to satisfy that judgment. Landlord subsequently filed another complaint seeking additional attorneys’ fees. Landlord then nonsuited that complaint but filed again seeking additional rent that he claimed had come due.
While this complaint was pending, tenant filed an abuse of process complaint against landlord. The factual basis for tenant’s complaint was that landlord had filed against tenant personally as a guarantor before filing against the business as the principal, that landlord had filed a document entitled partial satisfaction of judgment when tenant had paid the entire judgment, that landlord had given “false and misleading testimony at depositions,” and that landlord had filed “a multiplicity of claims in order to drive up the amount of attorney’s fees.” The trial court granted summary judgment to landlord in the abuse of process case.
After the abuse of process case was finalized, landlord filed a complaint alleging malicious prosecution against tenant and tenant’s lawyer. He asserted that “defendants filed the abuse of process suit…for an improper purpose and without probable cause in an attempt to gain an advantage in the pending breach of lease litigation[.]” The trial court granted summary judgment to tenant/defendant, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.