NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 22a0136n.06

No. 21-5498

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

MICHELLE HAMMOND-BEVILLE,

Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

JEFF LANDIS; CHEATHAM COUNTY, 

TENNESSEE,

Defendants,

KATHY MORANTE, RON CARTER; JASON 

SHARPE,

Defendants - Appellants.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE MIDDLE 

DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE

Before: GRIFFIN, DONALD, and BUSH, Circuit Judges.

BUSH, Circuit Judge. Appellee Michelle Hammond-Beville serves as a sergeant in the 

Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (“MNPD”). She alleges that three of the defendantsappellants, fellow MNPD Officers Kathy Morante, Ron Carter, and Jason Sharpe (the “MNPD 

Defendants”), knowingly subjected her to a baseless internal-affairs investigation on false charges 

of child abuse. After those charges were dismissed, she sued the MNPD Defendants for the 

Tennessee tort of malicious prosecution. The MNPD Defendants moved to dismiss her complaint 

for failure to state a claim and on qualified-immunity grounds, arguing that an internal-affairs 

proceeding cannot constitute malicious prosecution or that, if it may, no Tennessee case had clearly 

established that proposition at the time of the alleged misconduct. The district court rejected 

defendants’ arguments. We affirm. 
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I.

For purposes of this interlocutory appeal, the MNPD Defendants have stipulated to the 

allegations in Hammond-Beville’s complaint, and specifically to the district court’s recitation of 

those allegations. See Gillispie v. Miami Twp., 18 F.4th 909, 917 (6th Cir. 2021). In particular, 

they stipulate to the following passage from the district court’s opinion, which they concede 

accurately describes the allegations in Hammond-Beville’s complaint: 

As relevant to the Motion to Dismiss, the Amended Complaint alleges that the 

plaintiff is married and has two children and two step-children. During the 

timeframe relevant to this lawsuit, all four children resided with the plaintiff and 

her husband. In January 2018, one of her stepdaughters, S.B., made a false 

allegation of child abuse against the plaintiff, which led to an investigation by law 

enforcement and abuse charges filed against the plaintiff by the Tennessee 

Department of Children’s Services (“DCS”) in the Cheatham County Juvenile 

Court. Defendant [Jeff] Landis1[of the Cheatham County Sheriff’s Office] was 

involved in the investigation and reported to Morante that the plaintiff had abused 

her child. Morante relayed the report to the MNPD command staff, and the MNPD 

decommissioned the plaintiff on February 2, 2018, pending an internal 

investigation into the child abuse allegations. 

By April 2018, DCS and the Guardian Ad Litem assigned to represent the plaintiff’s 

children’s interest in the Cheatham County Juvenile Court proceeding had both 

independently determined that the abuse allegations were fabricated. DCS moved, 

on the record, to voluntarily dismiss the abuse petition against the plaintiff, and the 

Cheatham County Juvenile Court terminated the case with no adverse findings 

against the plaintiff. 

Landis, however, continued to press for criminal prosecution against the plaintiff 

and “remained in contact with [the Office of Professional Accountability (‘OPA’)], 

pressing for Plaintiff to be fired” from the MNPD. In June 2018, Morante, as OPA 

director, issued a “Notice of Complaint” to the plaintiff, advising her that she was 

being investigated on suspicion of child abuse based on an allegation by the 

Cheatham County Sheriff’s Office. The Notice of Complaint identified Ron Carter 

as the OPA Investigator assigned to the case and directed the plaintiff to 

immediately contact Carter to acknowledge receipt of the Notice and “voice her 

interest in the matter.”

1 Defendant Landis did not move below for dismissal based on qualified immunity, but instead 

filed an answer. Hammond-Beville’s claims against him and against his employer, Cheatham 

County, are not before us on this appeal. 
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The Notice also explained that the plaintiff had the option of “avoiding an 

investigation” by giving a “complete and unwavering truthful admission” of the 

allegations against her and participating in the MNPD’s “Pre-Investigation 

Settlement Process.” The plaintiff did not choose that option, but she fully 

cooperated with the investigation while continuing to deny the already discredited 

allegations against her. 

Carter completed his draft investigation report and submitted it to Sharpe and 

Morante in August 2018. Carter’s report alleged that the plaintiff had abused her 

stepdaughter and lied by denying the abuse, relying on Landis’[s] assertions and 

discounting the conclusions reached by DCS and the children’s Guardian Ad Litem. 

Despite the report’s summarizing all of the evidence indicating that the plaintiff 

was, in fact, not guilty of abuse, Sharpe and Morante both signed off on Carter’s 

conclusion that the plaintiff was guilty of child abuse and dishonesty.2

As the plaintiff’s direct supervisor, Sharpe was authorized by MNPD policy to 

make initial charging recommendations for any MNPD disciplinary charges and to 

recommend sanctions for such charges. Pursuant to that authority, Sharpe 

completed an MNPD Form 313 “Internal Disciplinary Resolution” on October 23, 

2018, listing himself as “Complainant” and formally charging the plaintiff with 

violations of MNPD Policy 4.20.040, Personal Behavior, (B) Adherence to Law, 

and MNPD Policy 4.20.040, Personal Behavior, (H) Honesty and Truthfulness. 

Sharpe recommended a punishment of “dismissal.” Morante, in her capacity as 

OPA Director and being within plaintiff’s chain of command, signed off on the 

Form 313, thus “exercis[ing] final decision-making authority” regarding whether 

to charge the plaintiff with a disciplinary violation and whether to recommend a 

sanction. 

The plaintiff met with Sharpe on November 5, 2018, for an MNPD “Presentation 

Meeting” at which Sharpe read the disciplinary charges and advised the plaintiff 

that the MNPD would be seeking the plaintiff’s termination. The plaintiff invoked 

her right to a ten-day “Reflection Period,” and a “Settlement Meeting” was 

scheduled for November 16, 2018. 

The plaintiff met with Sharpe again on November 16 for the Settlement Meeting. 

At that meeting, the plaintiff pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the disciplinary charges and 

requested an administrative hearing with a Disciplinary Advisory Panel. The 

MNPD defendants, however, never actually scheduled a Disciplinary Advisory 

Panel hearing, but the plaintiff remained on decommissioned status until the 

charges against her were finally dismissed without a hearing almost two years later, 

in September 2020. 

For part of the intervening time during which the OPA charges remained pending, 

the plaintiff was also the target of criminal proceedings in Cheatham County. She 

2 Hammond-Beville alleges that the MNPD Defendants used the OPA proceeding to retaliate 

against her after she complained about OPA’s alleged practice of favoring white male officers 

accused of misconduct vis-à-vis their non-white-male counterparts. 
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was indicted by a Cheatham County Grand Jury in January 2019 for misdemeanor 

child abuse, based on false and material misrepresentations by Landis. In March 

2019, however, the Cheatham County Sheriff received a letter from Cheatham 

County District Attorney Ray Crouch, notifying him that Landis’[s] testimony had 

been “impeached so many times that the D.A.’s Office would no longer rely on 

Landis’[s] credibility, and would no longer be calling him as a witness in court.”

The Sheriff, at that point, instituted a review of Landis’[s] work, which ultimately 

led to Landis’[s] resignation from the Sheriff’s Department and the dismissal of all 

still-pending criminal cases initiated by Landis. The Cheatham County Circuit 

Court dismissed the indictment against the plaintiff in November 2019. 

Although MNPD officials were notified of the dismissal of the charges against the 

plaintiff and of Landis’[s] resignation, the disciplinary charges remained pending 

against her for another ten months, while MNPD officials kept the plaintiff on 

decommissioned status and continued to pressure her to accept a demotion. As 

indicated above, the charges were not dismissed until September 2020, at which 

time the plaintiff was returned to active duty.

Appellant’s Br. at 5–7 (quoting Mem. at 4–7, R. 37). 

Hammond-Beville then filed her current lawsuit against defendants in November 2020, 

asserting a claim against Landis under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (giving the district court federal-question 

jurisdiction) and a claim against the MNPD Defendants for malicious prosecution under Tennessee 

state law (over which the district court exercised supplemental jurisdiction). Shortly after, the 

MNPD Defendants moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim or, alternatively, on state-law

qualified-immunity grounds. See, e.g., Youngblood v. Clepper, 856 S.W.2d 405, 407–08 (Tenn. 

Ct. App. 1993). They contended that an OPA investigation is not a judicial or quasi-judicial 

proceeding for purposes of a Tennessee malicious-prosecution claim or that, even if it is, that point 

was not clearly established at the time of their conduct. Hammond-Beville filed an amended,

operative complaint in January 2021, and the MNPD Defendants renewed their motion to dismiss 

for failure to state a claim or on qualified-immunity grounds. The district court eventually denied 

the MNPD Defendants’ motion in April 2021, after which they took the present appeal. 
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II.

Ordinarily we would have jurisdiction to review the denial of qualified immunity on an 

interlocutory basis under a combination of 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and the collateral-order doctrine. 

Denials of qualified immunity are not strictly final, because they do not produce a final judgment, 

but we treat them as “final” under the collateral-order doctrine because they are “effectively 

unreviewable” upon appeal from a final judgment. Mohawk Indus., Inc. v. Carpenter, 558 U.S. 

100, 106 (2009) (quoting Swint v. Chambers Cnty. Comm’n, 514 U.S. 35, 42 (1995)). That is 

because qualified immunity provides, at the very least, an immunity from trial, and there is no way 

to “undo” a trial that an officer wrongly had to undergo. See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 

526 (1985); see also King v. Betts, 354 S.W.3d 691, 704 (Tenn. 2011). 

This appeal has a slight twist. It does not involve the usual federal-common-law qualifiedimmunity defense to a § 1983 action alleging constitutional violations. Instead, it involves the 

rejection of a state-law qualified-immunity defense to a state-law tort. We can treat the denial of a 

state-law qualified-immunity defense as immediately appealable under the collateral-order 

doctrine if the relevant state courts would likewise permit an immediate appeal within the state 

system upon the denial of a state-law immunity. See Livermore ex rel. Rohm v. Lubelan, 476 F.3d 

397, 407–08 (6th Cir. 2007).

Though the caselaw is sparse,3 Tennessee appellate courts apparently do permit 

interlocutory appeals after the denial of state-law immunities. See, e.g., Boling v. City of Pigeon 

3 The cases the MNPD Defendants cite suggesting that an interlocutory appeal is permissible are 

not on point, since they deal with Tennessee courts entertaining immediate appeals of denials of 

qualified immunity in § 1983 actions; qualified immunity there being a federal-common-law 

defense rather than a state-law defense. See Fann v. Bailey, 841 S.W.2d 833, 835 (Tenn. Ct. App. 

1992) (permitting an immediate appeal, pursuant to U.S. Supreme Court precedent, of a qualifiedimmunity denial in a § 1983 action); Cantrell, 78 S.W.3d at 904 n.3, 906 (same). Yet under 

Livermore, the relevant question is whether the state courts would permit immediate appeal after 
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Forge, No. E2007-01652-COA-R10-CV, 2008 WL 4366119, *1–2 (Tenn. Ct. App. Sept. 22, 2008) 

(permitting interlocutory appeal after denial of qualified immunity under Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-

5-204(d)); Smith v. Pratt, No. M2008-01540-COA-R9-CV, 2009 WL 1086953, *1 (Tenn. Ct. App. 

Apr. 22, 2009) (permitting interlocutory appeal after denial of qualified immunity under Tenn. 

Code Ann. § 63-6-219(d)); Friedli v. Kerr, No. M1999-02810-COA-R9-CV, 2001 WL 177184, 

*1 (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 23, 2001) (permitting interlocutory appeal after denial of qualified 

immunity under Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 44-20-101–105). Thus, because Tennessee courts would treat 

the present denial of qualified immunity as a collateral order properly subject to an interlocutory 

appeal, we may do the same. 

III.

We review the decision to deny qualified immunity de novo. Hardy v. Jefferson Cmty. 

Coll., 260 F.3d 671, 677 (6th Cir. 2001); accord Cantrell v. DeKalb County, 78 S.W.3d 902, 906

(Tenn. Ct. App. 2001). Because this appeal comes to us at the motion-to-dismiss stage, we accept 

“the facts alleged in the complaint as true” and draw “all reasonable inferences therefrom in the 

plaintiff’s favor.” Hardy, 260 F.3d at 677.

IV.

Having established our jurisdiction and the standard of review, we turn now to the merits 

of the MNPD Defendants’ motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim and for qualified 

immunity. For the reasons below, we conclude that the district court properly denied the MNPD 

Defendants’ motions.

the denial of a state-law immunity. 476 F.3d at 407 (“[W]e must look to state immunity law to 

determine whether a denial of immunity based on state law is appealable.”) (emphasis added). 
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1. Tennessee Malicious Prosecution and the Qualified-Immunity 

Defense

The tort of malicious prosecution under Tennessee law contains three elements: “(1) a prior 

suit or judicial proceeding was instituted without probable cause, (2) [the] defendant brought such 

prior action with malice, and (3) the prior action was finally terminated in [the] plaintiff’s favor.” 

Roberts v. Fed. Exp. Corp., 842 S.W.2d 246, 247–48 (Tenn. 1992). For purposes of this appeal, 

the MNPD Defendants dispute only the first half of element (1)—whether the OPA investigation 

was “a prior suit or judicial proceeding” for purposes of malicious prosecution. Their argument is 

twofold. They first assert that the OPA investigation was not a “judicial proceeding” as that term 

has been defined in the caselaw. But they also claim that even if we determine that the OPA 

investigation, on the facts alleged, constituted a “judicial proceeding,” that point was not “clearly 

established” at the time of defendants’ behavior. Thus, they argue, they are still entitled qualified 

immunity and a reversal of the district court.

Defendants are at least correct that Tennessee recognizes a state-law qualified-immunity 

defense to state tort actions against government officers for their discretionary functions. See 

Youngblood, 856 S.W.2d at 405. As the Tennessee Supreme Court has explained, this defense is 

highly analogous to the qualified-immunity defense the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized for 

state officers sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Id. at 406–07. Of course, the relevant question in a 

§ 1983 suit is whether the defendant violated clearly established federal law, while here we must 

decide whether defendants committed a clearly established state tort violation. Otherwise, the 

federal and state qualified-immunity analyses are “the same.” Willis v. Neal, No. 1:04-CV-305, 

2006 WL 1129388, *2 (E.D. Tenn. Apr. 24, 2006); see also Cawood v. Booth, No. E2007-02537-

COA-R3-CV, 2008 WL 4998408, *11–12 (Tenn. Ct. App. Nov. 25, 2008) (noting Tennessee’s 

application of qualified immunity to state-law torts when the alleged violation was not “clearly 
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established”); Rogers v. Gooding, 84 F. App’x 473, 477 (6th Cir. 2003) (affirming the district 

court’s grant of qualified immunity on Tennessee assault and battery claims). Thus, if extant 

precedent would have put any reasonable officer on notice during the events in question that an 

allegedly baseless MNPD OPA investigation could constitute malicious prosecution, we must

affirm the district court’s denial of the MNPD Defendants’ qualified-immunity request. See Kisela 

v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1153 (2018).

2. The Tennessee Supreme Court Established Long Ago that a Baseless 

Internal-Affairs Investigation within the MNPD Could Constitute 

Malicious Prosecution

The OPA investigation, to be sure, was not a “judicial proceeding” in a strict sense of the 

term; it was neither a civil lawsuit nor a criminal prosecution. Cf. Kauffman v. A.H. Robins Co., 

448 S.W.2d 400, 403 (Tenn. 1969). But the MNPD Defendants have not appealed the district 

court’s order on the ground that administrative proceedings cannot support malicious prosecution; 

if that were their argument they would lose. Back in 1969, the Tennessee Supreme Court 

confronted in Kauffman v. A.H. Robins, Co. whether the prior “judicial proceeding” alleged to be 

the forum for a malicious prosecution must be, literally, a civil or criminal proceeding. Id. That 

argument might have had some force as a matter of the tort’s early history, since it “originally 

arose from criminal proceedings.” Id. at 402. But the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected the idea 

that malicious prosecution could thus arise only from classic “judicial proceedings.” In more recent 

times, it noted, greater and greater responsibility to adjudicate individuals’ legal rights had been 

granted to administrative agencies. Id. at 403. (Kauffman itself concerned false allegations against 

a pharmacist made before Tennessee’s state board of pharmacy. Id. at 401.) As a result, the court 

noted, “[t]he same harmful consequences may result from malicious prosecution in this type of 

proceeding as from strictly judicial proceedings.” Id. at 404. The court therefore expressed its 
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“view that the ‘prior judicial proceeding’ need not be conducted in a ‘court’ in the strict technical 

and legal sense.” Id. at 403. Rather, insofar as administrative proceedings could “injur[e] . . . the 

legally protected rights of another,” such “proceedings are at least ‘quasi-judicial’ to the extent 

that they may be the basis for a malicious prosecution action.” Id. at 404, 403.

So Kauffman establishes the general point that Tennessee malicious-prosecution claims do 

not require a prior “judicial proceeding” “in the strict technical and legal sense.” Id. at 403. It is

instead sufficient to have been subjected to some administrative proceeding capable of adversely 

affecting the plaintiff’s “legally protected interests.” Id. at 403. Those points are helpful to

Hammond-Beville, no doubt, but they are insufficient on their own to defeat the MNPD 

Defendants’ assertion of qualified immunity. See, e.g., Cawood, 2008 WL 4998408, at *11 (“The 

right allegedly violated cannot be asserted at a high level of generality[.]”) (quoting Rogers, 84 

F.App’x at 475). What Hammond-Beville really needs is precedent applying Kauffman in the 

specific context of an internal-affairs proceeding within a police department and holding that such 

an internal-affairs proceeding can likewise constitute malicious prosecution. 

But, it turns out, the Tennessee Supreme Court decided a case in 1985 called Lewis v. Allen 

that applied Kauffman to Hammond-Beville’s own department—the MNPD—to hold that a 

baseless internal-affairs investigation can likewise constitute a “quasi-judicial proceeding” for 

purposes of a malicious-prosecution action. Lewis, 698 S.W.2d at 59–60. There, a motorist accused 

several officers of having stolen cash during a traffic stop. Id. at 59. The allegations triggered an 

investigation by the OPA’s predecessor unit within the MNPD, the Internal Security Section 

(“ISS”). Id. The ISS eventually determined that the theft claim was baseless, and the exonerated 

officers sued the motorist for malicious prosecution. Id. The motorist moved to dismiss, arguing 

that the ISS proceeding was neither judicial nor quasi-judicial. Id. at 58–59. Taking the plaintiffs’ 
No. 21-5498, Hammond-Beville v. Landis et al.

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allegations as true, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that they were sufficient to show 

at least at the motion-to-dismiss stage that the ISS investigation had been a quasi-judicial 

proceeding. Id. at 60.

The court reached that conclusion in two steps. It first clarified its understanding of 

Kauffman, explaining that it interpreted the case

as holding that any administrative tribunal or body duly established 

to conduct investigations or investigatory hearings and to make 

adjudicatory findings that may adversely affect legally protected 

interests of persons subjected to its jurisdiction will satisfy the first 

element of a malicious prosecution claim. 

Id. It then explained why, in its view, the Internal Security Section satisfied the Kauffman test: 

Plaintiffs have alleged in essence that the Internal Security Section 

received defendant’s charges, called them before it to respond, took 

other investigatory action, and ultimately made an adjudication 

exonerating them. They allege that those actions were quasi-judicial 

administrative proceedings. We find those allegations sufficient on 

the questioned element of an action for malicious prosecution[.]

Id. The court thus held that the plaintiffs had stated a claim for malicious prosecution, reversed 

the lower court’s dismissal of their complaint, and remanded the case for trial. Id.

Lewis v. Allen clearly establishes that a police internal-affairs investigatory body, within 

the MNPD no less, can constitute a “quasi-judicial proceeding” for purposes of a subsequent 

malicious-prosecution action. The same body within the MNPD has, of course, undergone a 

name-change in the intervening years—from the “Internal Security Section” to the “Office of 

Professional Accountability.” But the operative features have remained the same. Note the four 

factors that Lewis highlighted: the body’s ability to (1) receive charges against an officer, (2) call 

the officer before it to determine the officer’s response, (3) take investigatory action based on 

such charges, and (4) make “adjudicatory findings” “that may adversely affect legally protected 

interests of persons subject to its jurisdiction.” Id. As Hammond-Beville has plausibly alleged 
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(and, indeed, as defendants have stipulated on appeal), the modern-day OPA likewise possesses 

all of those features. 

First, the OPA received charges against Hammond-Beville. Defendant Morante, acting as 

the OPA’s Director, received the child-abuse allegations against Hammond-Beville in June 2018. 

Morante then issued a “Notice of Complaint” informing Hammond-Beville that the OPA was 

launching its own child-abuse investigation based on the reports from Cheatham County. 

Second, the OPA called Hammond-Beville to respond. Morante’s “Notice of Complaint” 

advised Hammond-Beville that she was being investigated for child abuse “and directed the 

plaintiff to immediately contact Carter to acknowledge receipt of the Notice and ‘voice her 

interest in the matter.’” The Notice also requested that Hammond-Beville give “a ‘complete and 

unwavering truthful admission,’” supposedly so that she could “avoid[] an investigation,” and it 

also requested that she participate in MNPD’s “Pre-Investigation Settlement Process.” Last, 

Hammond-Beville had to attend a “Presentation Meeting” at which defendant Sharpe read the 

charges against her and she had to enter her corresponding “plea.” 

Third, the OPA took investigatory action based on the charges. Defendant Carter 

completed an “investigation report and submitted it to defendants Sharpe and Morante in August 

2018.” “Carter’s report alleged that the plaintiff had abused her stepdaughter and lied by denying 

the abuse,” thus crediting Landis’s false allegations over “the conclusions reached by” both child 

services and the juvenile-court guardian ad litem. 

Fourth, the OPA both actually made adjudicatory findings contrary to HammondBeville’s legal interest and could have made further adverse findings had defendants’ child-abuse 

allegations not fallen apart. That is, Sharpe and Morante had to adjudicate the veracity of Carter’s 
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August 2018 investigative report to reach a formal charging decision.4 Sharpe and Morante 

“signed off” on Carter’s report—lending the allegations their imprimatur—and formulated 

charging decisions against Hammond-Beville. As a result, she was formally charged with both a 

violation of the law and dishonesty during the investigation; supposed offenses for which Sharpe 

and Morante recommended dismissal. Id. These decisions adversely affected Hammond-Beville’s 

legally protected interests, as they plausibly contributed to her having to remain on 

“decommissioned” status until September 2020.5 Likewise, had defendants’ allegations not fallen 

through, Hammond-Beville would have faced further disciplinary hearings to determine whether 

she would, indeed, be terminated. 

Lewis, therefore, clearly established well before 2018 that defendants’ behavior could 

constitute malicious prosecution. Said differently, any reasonable officer would have understood 

after Lewis that bringing baseless allegations against another officer in an internal-affairs 

proceeding could have supported a subsequent malicious-prosecution action. See King, 354 

S.W.3d at 705 (discussing “whether under preexisting law a reasonable defendant official would 

have understood that his or her acts were unlawful.”). Thus, the district court properly denied the 

MNPD Defendants’ motion to dismiss.

4 Hammond-Beville alleges that though Carter lacked a formal charging role under the OPA 

structure, he still exercised de facto influence over Sharpe and Morante’s formal charging decision. 

5 Strictly speaking, Hammond-Beville was already on decommissioned status by February 2, 2018, 

before the OPA investigation began. But drawing all reasonable inferences in Hammond-Beville’s 

favor, as we must at the motion-to-dismiss stage, we can reasonably infer that the OPA’s 

subsequent ratification of Landis’s claims contributed to the duration of Hammond-Beville’s 

decommissioning period. In other words, had the OPA investigation properly determined the 

allegations false, it is reasonable to conclude that Hammond-Beville could have returned to active 

duty sooner. Accordingly, the OPA’s charging decision adversely affected Hammond-Beville’s 

legally protected interest in returning to active duty.
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The MNPD Defendants’ counterarguments are unpersuasive. Perhaps realizing that Lewis 

disposes of their case, the MNPD Defendants have devoted significant energy to explaining why 

it should not actually govern. Their basic contention is that the ISS investigation at issue in Lewis 

was not in fact a quasi-judicial proceeding, and so Lewis could not have clearly established that an 

internal-affairs proceeding could constitute malicious prosecution. Recall that Lewis was decided 

at the motion-to-dismiss stage, and thus that the Tennessee Supreme Court took the officers’ 

allegations about the ISS’s powers as true. See Lewis, 698 S.W.2d at 59–60. When it assumed the 

ISS had the four responsibilities noted above, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that those 

powers—taken as true that the ISS possessed them—amounted to a quasi-judicial proceeding for 

malicious-prosecution purposes. Id. at 60. But, say the MNPD Defendants, it was revealed in 

Lewis’s subsequent history after remand to the trial court that the ISS in fact did not possess those 

four powers. At least that is the lesson the MNPD Defendants would have us draw from the trial 

court’s unreasoned summary-judgment order6entered on remand in response to Allen’s counsel’s 

motion for summary judgment, which had argued the ISS in fact lacked such powers. 

The MNPD Defendants’ argument has multiple problems. The first is that Lewis—just as 

this case—arose at the motion-to-dismiss stage. See id. at 59. So the question in Lewis was not 

what features the ISS in fact had, but what features the plaintiffs had alleged it to have. Id. at 60. 

If those allegations, taken as true, would amount to a quasi-judicial proceeding, then those 

allegations sufficed to state a claim for malicious prosecution. Id. The allegations by themselves 

obviously could not win the case but, taken as true, were at least sufficient to survive a motion to 

6 That 1989 trial-court order states, in its entirety, “After a careful review of the entire record in 

this cause, the Court concludes that the original Defendant, Thomas C. Allen, Jr’s. [sic] Motion 

for Summary Judgment is well taken and therefore, is respectfully granted. The original Plaintiffs 

will pay the costs. Enter an order accordingly. The clerk will serve a copy hereof on counsel.” See 

Mem., R. 21-2. 
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dismiss. Id. Whether those allegations turned out to be true or not at a later stage does not affect 

whether, on a motion to dismiss, they stated a claim. 

Because this case likewise arises on a motion to dismiss, we undertake the same inquiry as 

did Lewis—not some other inquiry the trial court undertook on remand at a different stage of the 

proceeding. We do not now ask what powers the OPA in fact possesses; we instead review what 

powers Hammond-Beville has alleged the OPA to possess. See Hardy, 260 F.3d at 677. We then 

take those alleged powers as true, id., and compare them with the four alleged powers of the ISS

found sufficient in Lewis to state a claim to see whether the OPA’s alleged powers meet or exceed 

the ISS’s alleged powers. And because they do, Hammond-Beville has at least stated a claim for 

malicious prosecution. She may still lose if it turns out that she cannot muster evidence for her 

allegations at later stages of the suit, after her allegations have lost the presumption of truth. See, 

e.g., Leonard v. Robinson, 477 F.3d 347, 353–54 (6th Cir. 2007). But whether the ISS lacked some 

power in fact, or whether the OPA may eventually be shown to lack some power in fact, does not 

mean that Hammond-Beville has failed to state a claim. 

Moreover, under no principle of qualified-immunity jurisprudence of which we are aware 

may a litigant use an unreasoned trial-court order to essentially “de-establish” a legal proposition 

otherwise clearly established by a published state supreme court decision. And on further 

inspection, defendants’ argument is even more tenuous than that. They do not rely on the trialcourt order itself, which contains no reasoning. They instead rely on the arguments from a

summary-judgment brief supposedly incorporated by reference into the trial-court order. But that 

brief itself does not even accurately apply Lewis. The brief claims that the ISS was not quasijudicial because it had (1) no power to impose penalties on the officers, (2) no power to affect 

legally protected interests, (3) no power to hold hearings, and (4) no power to issue subpoenas or 
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administer oaths to witnesses. Yet Lewis itself never made (1), (3), or (4) prerequisites for a quasijudicial proceeding. See generally Lewis, 698 S.W.2d at 60. It never purports to require that the 

body impose “penalties”—only that it “may adversely affect legally protected interests of persons 

subject to its jurisdiction.” Id. It also never requires that the body “hold hearings”—only that it 

“conduct investigations or investigatory hearings and [ ] make adjudicatory findings.” Id.

(emphasis added). Likewise, nowhere does the Lewis opinion mention oaths or subpoenas. See id. 

So the trial court’s opinion is unreasoned, and the brief on which it is based is itself a patent 

distortion of the Lewis requirements. There is no logical reason that either should displace the 

holding of Lewis itself. 

The MNPD Defendants also argue that the OPA investigation was not a quasi-judicial 

proceeding because it never resulted in a “formal disciplinary hearing.” This argument has a certain 

irony to it, since the reasons that Hammond-Beville never received her formal hearing were that 

(1) defendants would not give it to her, and (2) defendants’ false allegations collapsed before a 

hearing could take place. In any event, defendants once again seek to graft onto Lewis a 

requirement that it does not contain. Lewis explains that the body must be “duly established to 

conduct investigations or investigatory hearings and [ ] make adjudicatory findings that may 

adversely affect legally protected interests of persons subject to its jurisdiction.” Id. at 60. The 

OPA satisfies those requirements. It both conducted an investigation—Carter’s report, which 

Sharpe and Morante endorsed—and it then made an adjudicatory finding that Hammond-Beville 

had likely committed the abuse, violated two portions of the MNPD code of conduct, lied by 

denying the abuse, and deserved the sanction of dismissal. 

The MNPD Defendants retort that it ultimately would have been some official outside the 

OPA itself to actually impose the penalty of dismissal, rather than the OPA, and thus that the OPA 
No. 21-5498, Hammond-Beville v. Landis et al.

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must not be quasi-judicial. But again, Lewis never says that the body must have the power to 

impose formal penalties. It just says that it must have the power to “make adjudicatory findings 

that may adversely affect legally protected interests of persons subject to its jurisdiction.” Id. The 

plaintiff officers satisfied that requirement in Lewis itself by alleging that the ISS had determined 

the defendant-mororist’s accusations false—what Lewis called “an adjudication exonerating” the 

officers. Id. at 59–60. The OPA did the same here, just in reverse—it made an adjudication 

inculpating Hammond-Beville. That satisfies Lewis’s “adversely affect legally protected interests” 

test, whether or not the OPA itself had the power to formally execute the penalty it recommended.

Nor are we convinced, given Lewis, that the district court erred in light of the four other 

cases defendants broach: Spain v. Connolly, 606 S.W.2d 540 (Tenn. 1980); Wells v. Hefner, No. 

M.2004-02313-COA-R3-CV, 2006 WL 1184216, *1 (Tenn. Ct. App. May 3, 2006); Blizzard v. 

Aquinas College, No: 3:11-2016, 2011 WL 3291812, *1 (M.D. Tenn. Aug. 1, 2011); and Pagliara 

v. Moses, 605 S.W.3d 619 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2020). None presents a compelling rationale against 

applying Lewis to deny qualified immunity. Those cases were resolved before Lewis (Spain), did 

not deal with a formally begun internal-affairs investigation or a malicious-prosecution claim 

(Spain), or involved other kinds of investigations, like university disciplinary hearings and a 

criminal investigation (Wells, Blizzard, and Pagliara). 

Last, the MNPD Defendants argue that the district court “impermissibly imposed the 

burden” on them to show their entitlement to qualified immunity, rather than imposing the burden 

on Hammond-Beville to illustrate their lack of qualified immunity once they had invoked the 

defense. We are satisfied that both here and below, Hammond-Beville discharged her burden to 

identify the relevant precedent (Lewis) establishing that defendants violated her clearly established 
No. 21-5498, Hammond-Beville v. Landis et al.

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rights. See, e.g., Warda v. C.I.R., 15 F.3d 533, 539 n.6 (6th Cir. 1994) (explaining that we “may 

affirm on any ground supported by the record”). 

V.

By the time of the MNPD Defendants’ alleged misconduct, it had been clearly established 

for over thirty years that a baseless internal-affairs proceeding within the MNPD could constitute 

malicious prosecution. The district court properly denied the MNPD Defendants’ motions to 

dismiss for failure to state a claim and on qualified-immunity grounds. Thus, we AFFIRM.