CLEVELAND, Tenn. – Just days after the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a former Cleveland detective who claimed he was unfairly fired, the court called the city’s appeal in a separate termination lawsuit “frivolous.”
The cases involve Joshua Keller, a firefighter who was fired in 2012, and Duff Brumley, who was fired from the Cleveland Police Department in 2010.
In an order filed on Oct. 19, Chief Judge Charles D. Susano Jr. and judges John W. McClarty and Thomas R. Frierson II denied Cleveland’s request for them to intervene in Keller’s Chancery Court case by means of an interlocutory review. The judges sent the case back to Chancery Court.
“Upon due consideration we conclude that the order granting interlocutory review is insufficient to provide this Court with jurisdiction,” said the order, citing state law that requires the request to specify “the legal criteria making the order appealable.”
The order also referenced a 1999 appellate case, citing an opinion stating that an “appeal with no reasonable chance of success is frivolous.”