Rule 65A.Form of Security; Proceedings Against Sureties

Rule 65A is a general-purpose bond rule that backs up every other place in the rules where security is required — injunction bonds under Rule 65.05, interpleader deposits, stays pending post-judgment motions, and stays of execution pending appeal among them. Rather than dictating one fixed form, it lets the court accept whatever form of security it finds sufficient to protect the other party, giving trial courts room to tailor the form of security to what a case needs.

When security does take the form of a bond or other undertaking backed by a surety, the rule requires each surety’s address to appear on the document, and it treats every surety as having submitted to the court’s jurisdiction by signing. That submission has a practical payoff: instead of filing a fresh lawsuit against the surety to collect on the bond, the party entitled to recover can enforce the surety’s liability by motion in the same case, as long as the surety gets at least 20 days’ notice of the motion under Rule 5.

Rule 65A has no real counterpart in the federal rules, and its own text does not tie it to any particular kind of bond — it applies wherever the Tennessee rules call for security, not only in the injunction context where bond requirements come up most often. Its function is almost entirely mechanical: making sure a surety’s obligation can be collected efficiently once it has been triggered, rather than setting out when a bond is required in the first place.