Volume 515 — South Western Reporter, Third Series

We granted permission to appeal to clarify the nature of the employment relationship of a trial judge's secretarial assistant. We hold that a trial judgeʼs secretarial assistant is an at-will employee. As a result, the secretarial assistant's employment may be terminated at any time during the term of the trial judge to whom he or she is assigned, either by the judge or the secretarial assistant. If the relationship is not terminated during the trial judge's term, the secretarial assistant's employment automatically terminates when the trial judge's service ends. Because the plaintiff secretarial assistant's employment automatically ended when the trial judge's term ended and because she remained employed until the end of the trial judge's term, as a matter of law, the defendant did not tortiously interfere with the plaintiff's employment relationship. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals, vacate the judgment of the trial court, and remand for entry of a judgment granting the defendant's motion to dismiss the plaintiff's complaint, and for any further proceedings, consistent with this decision, that may be necessary in the trial court.

We granted the State's appeal primarily to determine whether the intermediate appellate court erred in finding the search warrant affidavit insufficient to establish probable cause, and in doing so, to revisit the continuing vitality of State v. Jacumin, 778 S.W.2d 430 (Tenn. 1989). In Jacumin, this Court refused to follow Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983), which adopted a totality-of-the-circumstances analysis for determining whether an affidavit establishes probable cause for a search warrant, and instead embraced, as a matter of Tennessee constitutional law, another test derived from two earlier United States Supreme Court decisions, Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (1964) and Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410 (1969). For the reasons explained herein, we overrule Jacumin and adopt the totality-of-the-circumstances analysis for determining whether an affidavit establishes probable cause for issuance of a warrant under article I, section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution. Applying this standard, we reverse the Court of Criminal Appeals' decision holding the search warrant invalid. We also reverse the intermediate appellate court's conclusion that the evidence was insufficient to support the defendant's convictions for conspiracy to possess over 300 pounds of marijuana with intent to sell or deliver and conspiracy to commit money laundering and reinstate the trial court's judgment approving the jury's verdict. Finally, we affirm, on separate grounds, the Court of Criminal Appeals' decision upholding the trial court's judgment ordering forfeiture of the $1,098,050 cash seized when the search warrant was executed.

At issue in this appeal is the liability of a general contractor and two flooring subcontractors for damages sustained by the plaintiffs when a fire destroyed their partially completed house. The plaintiffs alleged that the negligence of the general contractor and the subcontractors caused the fire and that the general contractor had breached the construction contract. The trial court granted summary judgment to the general contractor, holding that the plaintiffs could not rely on res ipsa loquitur to establish an inference of negligence granted summary judgment to the subcontractors based on the plaintiffs' failure to prove that any negligence of the subcontractors caused the fire and granted summary judgment to the general contractor based on evidence that the plaintiffs were the first party to materially breach the construction contract. The Court of Appeals, in a divided opinion, affirmed summary judgment to the general contractor based on the inapplicability of res ipsa loquitur and reversed summary judgment to the subcontractors on the negligence claim and to the general contractor on the breach of contract claim, finding genuine issues of disputed material fact. We hold that the plaintiffs cannot rely on res ipsa loquitur because they did not produce sufficient evidence that the general contractor was in exclusive control of the specific cause or all reasonably probable causes of the fire. We further hold that the plaintiffs did not produce sufficient evidence to establish that any negligence of the subcontractors was the cause in fact of the fire. For these reasons, the general contractor and flooring subcontractors are entitled to summary judgment on plaintiffs' claims based on negligence and breach of contract. We affirm the trial court's grant of summary judgment.